HRM Pub Night - August 24th, 2004
The stage was set, and with lots of excitement in the air, it was finally time for the HRM Pub Night! The Hurricane Geeks headed to "Dr. Sharp's Route 2 Roadhouse" at approximately 6:20pm, to prepare for the Geocachers who were set to arrive at 7pm. Upon arrival, a startling realization was made...no one ever verified the coordinates! The original coordinates were simply taken from a map! There were supposed to be cachers coming from Moncton and from BC. Hopefully they could make it to the cache, even with the 200m error!Cachers started rolling in around 6:30pm. The cachers seemed a bit shy at first...sneaking around the corner...saying relatively softly "Are you guys cachers?". The seats at the first and second tables seemed to fill relatively quickly. Around 7:15pm, there were only about 20 people at the bar. We had been expecting approximately 35 people, so we hoped that people were just being shy. Luckily, the cachers continued to arrive, the reserved area in the bar continued to fill. By 7:45pm, the reserved area in the bar was full! We quickly found some extra tables, and began fitting people in.
As the orders for food and beer were made, a joyous chatter of caching began to take hold. The cachers began to share stories about their recent caches that they had done, which lead to more stories, and lots of laughter and interest. It was obvious we had a great mix of cachers. Some cachers hadn't yet ventured out to find their first cache yet. Some cachers had only started this summer, but had already managed to visit several caches. Several experienced cachers were there as well. It was a great mix, which made for a great variety of stories.
The team from Vancouver had already started to mingle with the Nova Scotia crowd. The "Moncton Gang" arrived around 8pm, and quickly took their seats, and joined in the festivities. The atmosphere continued to be joyous and festive, and people continued to arrive. By 8:15pm, there were more than 45 cachers, at the event. So many people came up, that a separate table had to be setup outside the actual reserved area.
Soon after, it was time to do the draw for some prizes. The first prizes drawn for were the "Smashed Pennies". These 5 pennies were donated by the MGA. Many of the cachers at the event had never seen a "Smashed Penny" before, so the winners of these prizes were very intrigued by the coins, and excited to win them. "The 3 Geeks Outdoor Store" had donated some official Geocaching Merchandise including a new set of Travel Bug tags! They also donated an Ammo Can, which will hopefully be used to put out a new cache! The draw took place for all of these prizes, and we had a wide range of winners. It was great to see the prizes get spread around among so many different cachers.
Once the prizes had been handed out, everyone went back to their conversations about caching and tried to finish up their dinner. It was amazing to listen to the different stories and the different perspectives all of the cachers had. The cache stories ranged anywhere from their favorite caches, hardest caches, far away caches. One common story that was heard throughout the night was how a cacher would rush out in an attempt to be FTF, they pull out the log book, and they discover that the Red Fox Raiders had already beaten them to the cache! :-) I would wager that most cachers at the event were already very familiar with the legend of RFR.Once the food had been devoured, it was time to gather everyone for a group picture. The waitress was given several different digital cameras. As you can imagine, there was some difficulty in figuring out all of the different cameras. Every camera seemed to have their own unique way of having a picture taken from them. The pictures really look impressive, giving a great representation of how many people made it out for the event cache.
After the pictures were taken, we all went back to our tables and had some more beverages, and it was time for some travel bug trading. Some placed the bugs in a big pile on the table, while others preferred the 1-to-1 travel bug trade. There were certainly enough travel bugs around so that anyone who wanted to help a travel bug with their journey, walked away with one. After the TB trade, cachers left their tables, and started mingling. Around 10pm or so, about half of the group had left, but the beverages were still flowing, and some lengthly discussions had begun regarding everything from politics to caching etiquette. A big thumbs up goes to the cachers from the Moncton area, as they hung in there with us until the very end, around 11pm.
In closing, it appears that everyone really enjoyed themselves. The food was great, the service was great, and the turn out was excellent. It was really great to see everyone, and we look forward to some more of these events in the future.
Tim Patton
(aka: The Geek of The Hurricane Geeks)
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