Hotspur.us

it’s hard to follow in the footsteps of greatness…but the southern MAGPI did a grand job at their 2nd Annual MEAT & Greet held at Cooksin Park. It was a little dicey at first, what with the host being not necessarily late (she and backup arrived before noon) but arriving after some of the guests. Fortunately those early cachers were patient!

PilotJ & Crew arrived with the grill, which was terribly exciting because otherwise it would have been the DELICIOUS SIDE DISHES & Greet which just doesn’t have the same cachet to it. And since there was MEAT to be cooked, they wasted no time in getting the food going. 

We had burgers & hot dogs flying off the grill while cachers were still showing up. Now that is a feat which shall not be equaled in a long time!  Which was awesome because hungry cachers are dangerous, at least in my experience. Who know they may go all zombie on you and gnaw your arm off….it could happen.

We mixed things up a little this year at the Ammo Can Toss – we had two divisions: Ladies & Dudes, which worked out quite well. Not that we lightened the ammo can or anything. It worked out quite well for the winner of the Ladies Division – her prize (thanks Colecops!) was greeted with enthusiasm generally not indicative of a banged up ammo can!

Sadly since no frozen t-shirts were available (an oversight that will most likely be remedied next year) we produced a new game (at least new to this group) called “How many things in the thing.”  And since everyone is probably thinking “What is she talking about?” I shall explain. The thing was a clear plastic container. The things were all sorts of goodies that could be used as swag. The object was to guess as close as possible the actual number of things in the thing. Lo and behold someone must be psychic because the winner guessed exactly 60 and exactly 60 was dead on!

After the food was gone and the grill packed up wvhunter, wvcoalcat, scoutingwv, Aquacache, Gentleman-Carpenter, Mega Pixie, Knight Who Says Ni, 89SC (he disappeared somewhere along the line which wasn’t much of a surprise to us) & I headed out to do some caching. Our first stop was Team Battle Cache Puzzle #3,23446345 (ok, so that’s an exaggeration) which involved listening to the coordinates in Morse Code. Uh yeah. Fortunately for the gang, wvcoalcat had forgone sleep the night before to provide us with coordinates! And we say his brother is OCD…

Americana – which KWSN & I had already done – turned out to take a bit longer than expected when wvcoalcat realized, upon climbing back up to the cars, that he didn’t have his cell phone. Guess that goes to show that you really can’t have enough velcro closures on your pockets.

And then there was the climb to Elk River Overlook (which had in fact been Knight Who Says Ni’s second cache ever & we did it that time by bushwhacking up from the other side of the hill).  We found the trail head and started up…UP….UP…the hillside was pretty much verticle & going up consisted of grabbing exposed roots and praying. Wvcoalcat made the find first & by that time Mega Pixie & Aquacache were very nearly there. That left knight Who Says Ni & myself still scrambling. I was pretty much content to stay where i was until KWSN noted that my name was not in the log book. In fact the sheet from November of 2007 was gone. WHAT?? WHAT??? As I started up the hill, Aquacache said “Stay down there” in what I presume was his attempt at sound advice due to the fact that I had not yet been given a complete release by my surgeon.  He really should have known better…

Eventually hunger won out and a few of us straggled off to have food at a local eatery where they served Buckets of Beer, much to my delight.

Pardon my lethargy, but lack of sleep has made me less of a prolific story teller today. Without further ado, I present to you (slightly out of order since they were taken with 3 cameras) sMAGPI’s 2nd Annual MEAT and Greet.

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