[Jeremy]

I will also throw out two other local restaurants that are worth trying:

Dublin’s Irish Pub (opened last year, Irish themed, always packed, has the GeoTour stickers)

Ninja Japanese Steakhouse (a little pricey, but good food and they “perform” as they cook your food on a grill in front of you)

[Jeremy]

The pancake toss game problems are partially my fault. I found out we didn’t have someone to run the game, but was unable to reassign a volunteer to this task because we were scrambling early in the morning just trying to get enough food prepared for everyone.

I think the main problem was this was a brand new activity and there were many unknowns (and therefore the rules had to be flexible). How far away should the game board be? Should kids be given a break and throw from a shorter distance? Would it be way too easy and everyone would win a prize, or frustratingly difficult to win a prize? What point values to assign the prizes? How many prizes to offer?

I think if we’d offer the pancake toss again, we could do a better job and have fewer complaints. But maybe switching to a less competitive activity during the breakfast as Shane suggests would be better.

[Jeremy]

Bump.

If you are going to be at the Ba$h next week and want to help with something, please post.

We are especially in need of people to help with downloads Friday afternoon and evening, and to man the WGA booth on Saturday from 4 to 6pm. Additional help at the pancake breakfast would also be welcome.

We also need people to take new geocachers to practice caches from roughly 9:30am to 10:30am Saturday morning. Last year there were close to 20 students in the “Geocaching 101” class, so a number of folks with GPS units they are willing to let others use are needed.

Thanks to everyone who has signed up to help!

[Jeremy]

Updated the volunteer list. Note to those volunteering for Saturday morning… we are starting at a more reasonable time this year (7am), so you don’t have to roll out of bed so early. Still, there will be free coffee and donuts for the helpers.

[Jeremy]

Thanks to everyone who has volunteered so far. I think we are getting close to having enough folks to cover Saturday morning, but could definitely use more help on Friday (especially in the evening, when we were flooded with people who wanted downloads last year).

The current list of download and other activity volunteers for the Cache Ba$h can be found here: [http://wi-geocaching.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=11331]2010 Cache Ba$h Master Volunteer Thread[/url]. Please post there instead of in this thread if you’d like to help us with downloads.

[Jeremy]

Master Cache Ba$h Volunteer List

GPS downloads on Friday and Saturday
(downloading cache information to attendee GPS units)

FRIDAY:
Noon-2pm: kmhiker
2pm-4pm: kmhiker
4pm-6pm: jahnfamily, Jeremy
6pm-8pm: frmr, Jeremy

SATURDAY:
7am-10am: Jeremy, kmhiker, lone_gunman, frmr, sandman4182 x 2, Lego Lover

Introduction to Geocaching class on Saturday
(take new geocachers to temporary practice geocaches)

9:30am-11am: Jeremy, Trekkin’ and Birdin’, kmhiker

WGA booth on Saturday
(sign up new members, make nametags, sell WGA merchandise)

7am-9am (need 3): Scrappy Scout, Averith
9am-11am (need 2): GR8_Eyes, AuntieNae?
4pm-6pm (need 3): RJ McKenzie, labrat_wr, Team Deejay

WGA Big Ba$h Breakfast on Sunday morning
(need cooks, kitchen helpers, servers, and folks to manage the games)

Setup @ 6am: Jeremy, hotdogs_off_trail

Rest of tasks are from 7:30am to 10am unless noted
Money collector (need 1):
Cooks / kitchen help (need 4+): Jeremy, Averith x 2, hotdogs_off_trail, Scrappy Scout?, Team Honeybunnies
Food servers (need 3+): kmhiker x 2
Pancake toss game operator 7:30am-8:45am (need 1-2): LDove?
Pancake toss game operator 8:45am-10am (need 1-2): -cheeto- and fam

[Jeremy]

When volunteering to help with GPS downloads, please indicate:

– Time(s) during which you are willing to help.
– Whether you plan to bring a laptop running GSAK 7.5+ (if you don’t have GSAK installed, we can put it on temporarily). Can the laptop be used by others when you are not there?
– Any GPS cables you plan to bring (we can always use more Garmin and Magellan USB cables).

You do not need a laptop to volunteer. If you know the basic operation of GSAK (can go to download in the menu essentially) we can use your help. We will have a number of laptops set up the whole weekend that just need folks to drive them.

We are working on a complete list of GPS units that we will be able to download to. Basically all Garmin and Magellan units and the new DeLorme units, plus a few oddballs.

[Jeremy]

Those wanting to help with the pancake breakfast should plan to arrive at Beach Shelter East #3 (N42° 37.692′ W088° 07.919′) at 7am Sunday morning. At the campout on Saturday Jeff L. (hotdogs_off_trail) will confirm that you are still able to volunteer and figure out how we can best use your “skills”.

We will start serving pancakes at 8am.

[Jeremy]

A belated thanks to the WGA members who helped out at this event last weekend. This includes pharmteam (Lucien did the lion’s share of the work planning and executing this event), kmhiker, nohandsgps, Scrappy Scout, and jvechinski (and others I am probably forgetting). Also thanks to those who were there earlier and hid the new permanent caches on the WCTC campus, which gave the volunteers something to find during breaks in the action. 🙂

We estimate that around 200 scouts of all ages picked up a GPS and tried to find at least one of the six temporary caches that were hidden. I’m sure we added a few more families to the geocaching fold, as a few of them were really into the activity, found all six caches and wanted to do even more.

Many more scouts (and their parents) stopped and looked at our display, picked up a brochure, and asked questions. Quite a few were already familiar with geocaching, and some had already done or planned to do it with their troop / pack. Interest in geocaching was high due to the imminent availability of a geocaching merit badge.

In addition to teaching the scouts about geocaching, we also branched out into sausages later in the day:

A few more photos taken at the event can be found in the album below… if you have any more, please upload them (the album is public).

2010 Potawatomi Area Council Expo

[Jeremy]

Almost 150 people stopped by the geocaching booth at the HGL show this weekend for a quick introduction to the sport. Visitors were instructed as to the basic concepts of geocaching, the equipment needed, how to find caches in their area on geocaching.com, shown typical cache containers and their contents, and (later in the show) given a Groundspeak “Guide to Geocaching” brochure. Thanks to a neighboring booth (Lammscapes) we were even able to hide a practice micro cache in a small pine tree for folks to find. 🙂

Total show attendance was close to three thousand, and hopefully those that didn’t stop and chat with us at least read our display boards while walking by so they are now more aware of what geocaching is.

We’d like to thank the following geocachers for helping man the booth during the show:

– lone_gunman (Will)
– Averith (Karen & Rob)
– kmhiker (Cary & Maryann)
– ecorangers (Tami)
– Kate Peterman (West Bend Parks & Rec.)
– nohandsgps (Kevin)
– MikMac4 (Nancy)
– jvechinski (Jeremy)

kmhiker (Cary & Maryann) man the geocaching booth on Sunday

[Jeremy]

Bump.

Thanks to the two people who volunteered to possibly help us with the HGS show next weekend. However, it appears we are not going to have anyone to work part of the Friday evening shift… so it would nice if someone was available to help on Friday from 4pm (arrive a bit early to help set up) to 6 or 7pm.

Also, we could use more help Saturday if others are interested.

[Jeremy]

Those are some nice pictures Brian… thanks for acting as the official event photographer.

Also sorry to the half dozen or so people who arrived after 3pm and discovered the chili had run out. We thought we had made more than enough for 100 people (at least per the recipe that was used). I all can say is blame those that proceeded you :)… they must have had some big appetites and really chowed down to go through probably 60+ pounds of chili so fast.

[Jeremy]

If AuntieNae hasn’t taken care of this for you, you can PM me with the changes if they are minor. If the entire description has changed, it would be easier just to resubmit the event on the WGA site (Events -> Submit Event).

Sorry for the delay… hopefully someone volunteers (or is “nominated” :)) to handle event updates on the WGA site at the upcoming Board meeting…

[Jeremy]

So the MIGO sticker size is 4″x6″? Looks like they use green stock and print only in one color (black). The WGA logo could be modified to be monochrome but it wouldn’t look as pretty.

I am in the process of getting printing quotes for some other WGA items and could see what something like this would cost. My guess is the cheapest would be to have these printed as bumper stickers (3″x11″) and then have people chop them in half to get a 3″x5.5″ sticker.

[Jeremy]

@sandlanders wrote:

Jeremy or others, feel free to correct anything I have said here.

You’ve got it 100% correct. You need to have your geocaching.com profile link entered for the harvester to pick up your out of state logs. This isn’t obvious, and this is the first time this has been asked, so we will get this documented somewhere.

There are a couple reasons why matching is done based on the geocaching.com profile link (actually the unique ID associated with your geocaching.com account) instead of your geocaching.com username. First, people are prone to entering their username incorrectly (typos, wrong spacing, wrong capitalization), whereas the link must be entered correctly or the WGA website won’t accept it. Second, the queries that need to take place to determine if a log is from one of our members can be done more efficiently using the link. This is important when you consider we are doing this for each and every log entered on geocaching.com… sometimes over 100,000 a day.

[Author]

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