Today was the day for WWFM III flash mob event on Coronado Island in San Diego, California. Sonny and Sandy of PodCacher were the hosts of this event. They had seen my previous posts stating that I was going to be attending and contacted me to ask if I'd like to volunteer to help at the event. I was happy to help out.
The event started at 10:00 am but we needed to meet the rest of the team working the event at 9:30 near the first waypoint. I found the group and after a few introductions and trading some geocoin discoveries, I was assigned the role of "Official event still photography technicial expert" OK, so I made up the cool sounding title but, I was the photographer. There's not very many situations where you can meet someone for the first time, hand them a very expensive camera and wait for it to be returned half an hour later. Geocachers are generally a good group of people. So, my job was to take pictures. Lots of pictures. That's what I did.
The first waypoint was right in front of the ferry landing that services Coronado. The signal for everyone to converge on the waypoint was an orange bucket, carried by Sonny, being placed on the ground. As soon as it hit the ground, people started coming from all directions. Log sheets were passed around for everyone to sign. There was a travel bug box and a swag box for people to trade things.
Soon the whistles blew, announcing the time to move to the second waypoint. This was a nearby grassy area that provided nice seating for the group photo. The San Diego Bay and the downtown San Diego Skyline were the perfect backdrop for our memory. I'm sure this will be a great photo. The sun had eaten through the marine layer and it was an unexpected 75 degrees right on the water. Several comments were made cursing the decision to wear jeans rather than shorts.
Again, whistles blew and the group broke apart to head to the third and final waypoint. We were headed to a giant compass rose that decorates the entrance to the park. The sign in sheets were used to hold a raffle where some lucky cachers won FTF rights, a tee shirt, an ammo can filled with swag and an official WWFIII Flash mob geoocoin. (Yours truly never wins anything but I am the first to discover this really cool geocoin.)
At 10:15 the event was over. We all were supposed to leave the area via the different directions identified by the compass rose. I took team Hick@Heart back to the prep area to return the camera and chat with some cachers. QDMan recognized me and introduced himself. We had a laugh about the baseball I found that boasted his signature. It was nice to finally get to meet him.
I grabbed a handful of travel bugs to take up to Mount San Jacinto on the weekend of May 30th. I also took some time to log a few more geocoins. My favorites were; ea6bflyr's SPUTNIK Geocoin, Fatboy's tanktop, and a cacher from Australia had his Australian Pioneer geocoin.
Since The Wife was busy chasing The Girl, and I was taking award winning photos with the event camera, I gave my camera to The Boy. He took some good photos but it seems he had the zoom all the way out and so I don't have a photo showing the entire mob very well. You can view the official Flickr photo set here. The Boy did capture a close up of himself that is pretty funny so I'll put it here!
After the event we walked about a half mile down a small beach to grab a cache that someone said may contain a travel bug that wants to reach mountain peaks. That bug wasn't there but we enjoyed the walk and enjoyed finding the cache. One of the houses was for sale and for a cool 11 million dollars you could have your own piece of heaven right on the water in Coronado. 11 million is slightly out of my budget so I can only enjoy the view from the pictures The Boy took.
The temperatures were warm and The Girl was ready to relax so we had a gourmet meal at Burger King and then headed over to REI to drool on all the cool stuff that's on sale. The event was a blast and appeared to be a success. I believe the final tally of events participating in the World Wide Flash Mob is 167 events. They were scheduled to happen in 15 countries, including 45 US States and 11 Canadian Provinces. Be sure to check in with PodCacher to see details on all the events. Sandy said they would be very busy with hundreds of emails documenting them all. PodCacher plans to cover the details in a few posts. You'll definitely want to go check out the high quality photographs. If you go look at them it would be funny for a bunch of people to comment on the great job Hick@Heart did on the pictures!
Here's a bunch of pictures from today.
Downtown San Diego seen from the Coronado Bridge
Setting up the group shot. (Sandy reacts to The Boy taking pictures)
I'm sporting the demo flash mob geocoin
The event filmer films The Boy taking pictures
The Girl finds a flower
The Boy with the event coin
Fattboy shows off his threads
The San Diego Bay
Nice little stretch of beach. Perfect for a walk.
The Kiddies under a really cool tree.
Mean streets of Coronado
The Boy with USS Midway in the background
Nice little house right on the beach with a vanishing edge pool/waterfall.
A Perfect lawn with a flagpole from a ship.
Bugs I picked up to take to the mountain
10 comments:
Wow, that is awesome you got to participate in a Flash Mob with Sonny and Sandy. We listen to and talk about podcacher down here, and even discussed them today at our Flash Mob. Ours wasn't nearly as cool as y'all's sounded.
Someone around here was going to attempt a small Flash Mob event -- like 5-10 people worth -- but she got the event listing in too late. In the end, it's good as I didn't have the time to make it there today.
However, reading about this event, I really want to do one next year. Sounds like an absolute blast.
And not to show my camera geekyness, but the Canon 40D, eh? That's a pretty sweet camera. I have the predecessor- the 30D. How'd you like using it?
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Sonny and Sandy are very nice, they really put a lot of effort into the event.
The camera was nice. I don't know much about cameras and haven't seen the pictures. It was rather heavy and it was a pretty wide lens so not much zoom to it.
Nice job. It looks like you guys had fun. I missed ours. I was up all night visiting my old friend, Ralph. Saturday morning I didn't even get out of bed till 10. It was cold & rainy. I didn't have the guts to go out. Literally!
Very cool. I missed out on the one in Edmonton mainly because I didn't find out about it until event day. Oh well, next time!
The Atlanta one I attended wasn't even remotely that complicated. I guess that's just how they do it on the West Coast. :P
An awesome day for a flash mob in California. Not such a good day in GA. I skipped it. Shame on me.
Nice blog, Yes you did see us at WWFMIII, We had a good time and a few caches that day. I dont Geocache as much as I want to. Curious how you found my obscure blog? Anyway, I will visit yours more often and be sure to pass this one along. Later, Damoose & Squirrel, aka tatoshka.blogspot.com
Sonny and Sandy, great job. Amazing WWFMIII events in San Diego . And nicely put here in this blog. Pictures are particularly nice as you would imagine the San Diego landscape to be, when such large scale event is happening.
There are certainly a lot of details like that to take into consideration. That’s a great point to bring up. camara chat
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