WeekNIGHT Caching at Crystal Lake Park: Burnsville, MN

June 5th, 2008 in Apple Valley, Bars and Pubs, Burnsville, Geocaching, Restaurants, South Metro, Swimming

Last night I hosted my first WeekNIGHT Caching get together since May 10th, 2006 and suggested that everyone come down to the South Metro to do bflentje‘s cache Shrinky Dinks along the shores of Burnsville’s Crystal Lake Park.

I had found this cache with Kevin last week and while I didn’t enjoy myself all that much, I figured I would eliminate my displeasure by fucking with everyone else. While I had an idea of what this cache entailed before going for it, I was totally unprepared for the “adventure” so I at least gave everyone the warning that they should come stocked with gear that will help them do this cache. Two people came somewhat prepared and the rest did not. Two people weren’t going to go through with the find but I harped on one of them enough that they eventually did.

Afterwards I had suggested we go to Panino Brothers in Apple Valley for beer (it’s part of the WeekNIGHT Caching tradition for those of you that don’t know). There’s a nice selection on tap and the food is decent. There have been some complaints recently about slow service and Kim, who joined up with Chris and Laura there ahead of time, said she experienced just about everything people had been complaining about such as slow service which apparently hasn’t yet been resolved.

I arrived with Lucid and MN_Cavepeople and knowing that the service might be poky, ordered my beer at the bar. They had a PBR special last night — $2/glass. Woot! I did notice that even though I was ordering my beer at the bar, I still had to wait at one point while no one was directly manning the bar.

After most people left, we half talked, half forced, firstbass (that’s “first base”) into agreeing to do Sir_Zman’s Twin Cities Geocaching Podcast interview. Z had prepared some new and never before heard questions for firstbass and was pretty adamant that he would stick around and that his wife would definitely understand if he took a little longer getting home as long as he got the interview.

We moved over to the sitting area at Panino Brothers and Sir_Zman fired up his recording device and I used my camera to record the interview in its entirety, unedited, for everyone to see later. Sir_Zman’s podcast is family friendly and there was some discussion about how my site generally is not. He said he will be happy to link back to here so people can check out firstbass’ forced interview.

I originally planned on uploading this video to YouTube but it was over 16 minutes long and they only permit 10 minutes of video — they really need to raise that limit. So instead I uploaded it to blip.tv which has a much better interface, better video quality, and takes video that is much larger.

Be aware that this video does include less profanity that I’m used to writing but is still NSFW, has been taken in an area with poor acoustics for audio, and was done with my point and shoot camera. That said, I was fairly impressed with the quality of the video/audio but not necessarily my own added content ;) Enjoy:

Thanks to everyone who showed up tonight! I didn’t find any ticks although I wasn’t tromping around off the trail at all and also didn’t find any leeches — did anyone else ;-) I was disappointed to hear that Panino Brothers’ service was slow for Kim (it wasn’t crowded) but it was great to see everyone again and was especially awesome to watch firstbass squirm under the pressure of not only a mic but a camera pointed in his face.

See all the pictures from tonight on Flickr here (camera).