US Trip 2014 – The big event weekend

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We started the big event weekend with a User Insights meeting at the HQ on Friday. I can’t say too much about the meeting, but I will say that it was something completely different than what I expected!

The main event on Friday was GIFF, but we also got time to find a few caches in the area, join a tour of the HQ and attend the event GC57KW3 Worlds Collide in Seattle! We met AmayaTom several times during the day, and ended up spending the rest of the day caching with him.

When we arrived in Gas Works Park, a bit early, we saw a lot of people walking around in circles – like if they were doing a Wherigo or something… We quickly figured out that a new Wherigo was published, and a few seconds later we were a part of their tail. When we eventually got to the cache, and started to sign the log, I though I recognized one of the signatures. When I checked my event log book later, I realized that we had just followed HurricaneJuan, which attended our event in Miami last year.

Like last years GIFF, we were going to see our Norwegian friend laffa on the big screen. And just like last year we had to wait a lot, first for the sun to move away, and then their film was shown last. Sounds like a lot less films were submitted this year, but there was still a lot of great stuff shown!

laffa on the big screen

The highlight of the day was when I could call home, where they held an event (started 5am in the morning, so it would be at the exact same time as GIFF), and tell them that they had won the award for the funniest film!

Funniest film!

We started quite early at the Block Party, to make sure we got a parking spot. But there was no need to worry, plenty available! We met up with AmayaTom, and walked around doing some of the lab caches. We found all of them, but to me this years lab caches was a huge disappointment. They were so much better last year! I decided I didn’t bother logging them.

We also attended a few of the main stage events, the highlight was listening to Moun10Bike talking about geocoins.

Moun10Bike

To me it looked like there was a lot less people at the Block Party this year, compared to last year. The log wall also only looked half full. I guess the giga event have drawn some people away from the Block Party, too bad those two events had to be on the same date.

Compared to last year, I think this years event was a disappointment. It was way too much aimed towards kids, and compared to last year a lot of the lackeys almost seemed to be hiding this year. I think the awesome lab caches was a vital part of what made last years Block Party so great. Some things were a lot better this year, like the event package and the food trucks.

But, we still enjoyed it! And we had a lot of fun walking around with AmayaTom.

We hope to be back next year, and I hope it’s back to the awesomeness we saw last year then!

After the Block Party, we decided to go down to the waterfront to get some of the worlds best lemonade. But we didn’t make it that far. We stopped when we saw a group of cachers attempting to find GC3G2EH John T. Williams memorial totem pole. Since we had found it two years ago, we just had to go over and see if they could find it.

Finding it was easy, but getting it out was hard! We spent probably over one and a half hour trying to get the cache out! Several cachers came, and went. We almost gave up several times, but giving up is hard! So we continued. At one point we made it worse, by jamming a stick between us and the cache. We eventually got the stick back out, and also discovered that there was a total of four caches tucked away in the hiding spot!

The group of cachers trying to get it out

After a lot of hard work, we managed to get two of them out! Awesome! I recommend reading HurricaneJuans log!

Since we spent so much time finding a cache we wasn’t even going to sign, we missed the lemonade at the waterfront. There’s only one possible solution to that problem, we have to go back to Seattle next year!

The weekend was rounded of with the Going APE mega event, which we didn’t stay too long at. We had a long drive ahead of us, as the next hotel we had booked was in Coeur d’Alene, ID. We arrived a bit late (just around announced starting time), and it was too late to get a parking spot in the main parking. But the overflow lot was a lot closer than we thought.

We got to pick up our stuff, sign the log, talk to some people, say goodbye to AmayaTom, and walk around a bit. We decided to skip the lab caches here as well, since they only mess up our statistics, and we had no time to log them anyway (I like to log in the correct order, and on the correct date). This is our second Going APE event, and I think it was better organized this year (it was good last year also). We hope to be able to attend next year, and then we’ll walk the tunnel again!

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