G'day Mate, Welcome to Victoria!

Back in 2011 the GCGV (Geocaching Community of Greater Victoria) held the 1st and only GCGV Track Me Challenge. Everyone who wanted to participate brought a new trackable that we wanted to enter into a trackable race to an entry event, and all those trackables were sent to Australia where they would be picked up by geocachers over there at a starting event to begin the race. Similarly we did the same for our Australian friends back here in Canada.

Well back then Mrs. GO! Team entered her trackable "TB3QV2M - RED 3 Corner Pocket" (you can see the trackable page HERE). Well it came in dead last.. In fact it never even got started. It was received in Australia and put into the starting event, it was picked up by a cacher, and whoever picked it up didn't log they had it and placed it in a remote cache that no one visited in the entire year the race was on.
Finally after giving up on it and moving it to lost status on January 19, 2012, it was finally found in New South Wales and picked up by that cacher the very next day on January 20, 2012. However the Race was over and the trackable gained no points and therefore was in last place, and for that Mrs. GO! Team got a booby prize.  It was no prize to scoff at though, it was a signed copy of "The Joy of Geocaching" by Paul & Dana Gillin.  The trackable travelled a bit, but never did anything interesting.  All it did was travel from Melbourne to New Zealand over and over and over again.  Noticing this I decided that  I would put a note on it that I would like it come home.

It took a while for it to get in the right hands, and the right hands belonged to Australian cacher chrissy61. And the best part was that she was coming to Victoria BC on holiday! She contacted me and asked how to get it into my hands, and I told her I would hold an event in honor of her visiting our city and for returning that trackable to us!

A little bit of planning and some online event page writing later, we had an event set up and published!  I purchased a nice new Canada Fox Geocoin and got one of our wedding pathtags out to give to chrissy61, and had a nice thank you gift to give her. Now to just wait until the day!

The day of the event arrived and due to a shift swap that Mrs GO! Team made she was not be able to come with me, but really all that matters is the we have at the very least one of us there.  It would have been nice for her to receive her trackable herself, but again not entirely necessary.  For once I left home with tons of time to get to my venue, and arrived 30min early.  But my stomach got the better of me and I ended up going to a nearby Starbucks at the Robert Bateman Center.  This of course would be my downfall, as they were slow as molasses and caused me to be late to my own event... OK, OK, I caused myself to be late by going there, but you can't blame me for being a little bothered by it!  Once I had my coffee and treat in hand I busted my butt back across the street to find many of the attendees already there, but thankfully I had beat my guests of honor!
I took a little time introducing myself to everyone I didn't recognise, and it turned out we had more people from other locations joining us.  We had 2 cachers from California, and 3 visiting from the Mainland, so a big welcome to them!  Soon chrissy61 arrived and we finally met.  She ceremoniously returned our trackable, and gifted us with some Australian exclusives like Tim Tams.  I gave her the gifts that I mentioned earlier, and backed off so she could meet the others at the event and discover the various trackable that everyone brought with them.

After the event I was talking a bit more with chrissy61 and they asked about the Sharkz Store (Canada's first geocaching brick and mortar geocaching store).  Knowing how far from the event the store was I offered to be their chauffeur and take them there.  When we arrived chrissy61 was like a kid in a candy shop, flitting around the store checking out the various trackables, picking out a few things that she wanted to purchase to take home with her.  I was very happy to be the one to get her to the store so she could experience it for herself. 
Once she was all shopped out I took them to an one of my earthcaches nearby, and helped them verbally thought the questions so that they could log their vary first earthcache!

I had a great time hanging out with Chrissy and Bill, and we parted ways after going to Victoria's cache with the largest amount of favourite points "Sounds like Geocaching - GC10JDZ".  

Thank you chrissy61 for contacting me to let me know you had our trackable and that you were coming to town.  And thanks everyone that showed up for the event!
Stay tuned right here for more stories to come soon!