GCHAZV
July 3, 2004
Nashville, TN
Attended Logs: 129 ("236 people attended..." families under one name were common)
Committee Representative: RobertLipe
After hitting the goals of bringing people from far away for the original GeoWoodstock, Joe Armstrong knew the second needed to be near his home town where he could rally additional local support, so he chose a local park he worked with for years, Warner Park, as the location The original idea of attracting as many cachers as possible - and from as far away - remained strong, but the hosting team really amped it up for a day or even weekend of family fun. Though touted as "a very laid back event to meet and greet", this event innovated in the number of traditions that remain in GeoWoodstock today. This was the first event that really unified the attention of Garmin, Magellan, and Groundspeak.
Tennessee Farm Raised Catfish dinner was fried on location on demand by our own r0b that spent hours prepping, cheffing, cleaning, and even later, driving attendees. Every attendee was fed lunch (including condiments, drinks, etc.) at no cost to them.
A staffed first aid station was available. Good thing as we had one cacher bust open his arm falling in the nearby creek, earning a little lidocaine, six sutures, and a gauze wrap on the spot from GeoGyn before returning to the fun.
A poker run was available for the first time with 235 trade items at launch. Laptops were used on site to eliminate the need to enter coordinates by hand. The two prominent Garmin cables and the two Magellan cables in use in that era were all connected with USB/Serial adapters (there were no USB GPSes) to each laptop and each laptop could load up to 4 GPSes as quickly as users could connect their cables. The line moved very quickly.
Joe contacted GPS vendors and Groundspeak store for door prizes, including one GPS from Magellan, to be given away. Every attendee walked away a winner of something. This was the first event to really show the GPS vendors that geocaching was a sizable and growing market.
Multiple organized "power runs", showing it was possible to physically log 240 finds in a 24 hour period just over 100 in about twelve hours were hosted by locals. To prepare for this, this was also the first GeoWoodstock to work with placers to "fluff" their caches (replace logbooks, etc.) in advance and notify local law enforcement about increased suspicious traffic. About 10,000 geocaches were logged in the area that weekend.
Institutionalized the GeoWoodstock tradition of the group shot. The shot was taken by boosting ClayJar "cheerleader style" onto the roof of the pavilion. This also began the tradition of capturing a photo of those that had been to the previous GeoWoodstock.
The first where a T-shirt was available, though not from the event host. Geocacher CyBret offered a link to his own artwork via a CafePress store.
This event began the tradition of 'closing ceremony' speech delivered by the host. JoGPS stood in the back of his truck, thanked everyone for attending and the sponsors, and announced the location of the following GeoWoodstock - a tradition that remains today.
First GeoWoodstock with a Travel Bug checkin area.
First with an international contingent that made the trip from Germany specifically to meet this group.
