Ok I should start off by mentioning that I'm getting REALLY lazy with taking pictures. Usually I select some for the article page out of a big group, but this time all the pics you see here are almost all the ones I took total. I'll try and get my act together for Comic-con and PAX.
Anyway, this year's meetup was a bit different- instead of spending the weekend in the city in some hotel rooms, we hiked it out to a cabin in the woods. More on that in a second though. We were supposed to get to the Newgrounds office on Friday morning so we could all get shipped out to the cabin. This posed a problem for a lot of travellers though, since some (me included) wanted to arrive Thursday night. So I got us all a room for the night and we had a pre-meetup meetup of our own. We were scheduled to arrive at the office by 9am the next morning (waking up at 7), so naturally we decided to stay out till 5 and walk around for a while. Whoops.
No refrigerator in the room?
We'll make due
Our nightly adventures included a walk to the Philly Art Museum (tradition), and a race to the top of the steps. On our way back we stopped by the fountain in Logan Square and met some LARPers (I'm not gonna explain, just google it) who directed us to a 24/7 diner that was open down the street. Some of the late-comers that night hadn't eaten yet so we stopped in for some 4am fixins'.
Everyone piles in
Stopping at the diner
I'm not sure if that two hours of sleep we got even counted for anything, but better than nothing I guess. We all groggily gathered our stuff together and headed down to Dunkin Donuts for some breakfast. Then, it was off to the office to meet up with the rest of the crew travelling in. We hung around at the office for a few hours while we ordered some pizza and waited for a few last people to show up. When everyone was accounted for we loaded back up into cars and made the trek out to the woods. When we arrived at the cabin, I think we walked into something that surpassed all our expectations- this was a house built for partying. Three stories, five bedroom, three bath, deck/patio, grill, all stocked up with food and drinks for us. The staff (particularly Bob and Tim) did a great job of getting food and accomodations for everyone.
Just like at camp!
Looking down on the main living room area
It's hard to explain the rest as anything but a two-day party. Chilling and talking with everyone, grilling food, playing video games, watching movies, you name it. Sleep whenever you want, wake up whenever you want. On Saturday afternoon we were able to get some webcams setup and broadcast a feed back to the users on Newgrounds.
Out on the deck
Watching some awesome movies
During Saturday I ended up giving some flash mini-lessons to some of the mods, which was pretty fun. I also enjoyed talking to newcomer Rucklo/Viktor (and his friend Anna) about life in Sweden and how it differs from the US. It's funny how so many other countries (especially European) madate english lessons for students, yet our foreign language education is more of an afterthought unless someone decides to pursue it on their own.
Other newcomers I had a lot of fun hanging with were BlueHippo/Karl and Sardonic/Steve. You guys were the youngins of the group this year and reminded me of my first trip to the mod meets. You guys both have awesome flash talents and I hope to see you continue to develop them. Also a shoutout here to the other newcomer, JoS/Chris.. I just didn't get a chance to talk to you as much though. And after "almost" coming for two years previous, you're not a 100% newcomer :p
Food was never a concern, as Tim was always grilling up a stack of burgers/ hotdogs/ chicken for us to eat. I thought it would be cool to take a walk around the woods at night, but after seeing the "bear warning" signs in the house I figured it might not be such a good idea. Oh well, who needs to go outside when we've got 8 laptops and 3 x-boxes hooked up inside? (I'm not exaggerating)
The snack table
Tim grills some food
We stayed up pretty late on Saturday night/ Sunday morning, and some of us tried to get things tidied up a bit so it wasn't a total mess to clean up. I crashed not too long after and got a few hours of sleep before waking up and catching a ride back into town. Keeping in line with my good(?) luck at the airport, I made all of my flights on time (even with a connection on the way there). However, I ended up with delays on both trips. No real surprises though.
All in all I have to say that the cabin idea was fantastic- we got to do what we always do without the annoyances of figuring out sleeping locations, checking in and out of rooms, going out and looking for food, etc. I hope they keep with the cabin format for the years to come. Big thanks to Tom and the Newgrounds staff for making it happen!
Posted to: Adventures