I was gonna say “Single Doper Holiday Party” up there in the subject line, but I didn’t wanna exclude any couples who might be interested. Anyway here goes…
I hate being alone during the holidays, and even though I’ll be going “home” for a week right after Thanksgiving, during the holidays I will either be scheduled to work or else be sitting at home on my fat German ass feeling sorry for myself because I’m not in a relationship at the moment. (That’s a sentence, by God!:D)
So here’s my idea: We pick a central location Airport and we all meet there on a certain day/night and we have ourselves a Blast at a bar near/at the airport and we get rooms at/near the airport hotel and we fly out again when it’s over. One night? The whole frickin’ weekend? Y’all decide and get back to me.
Expensive? Well, Hell yeah! But we’re worth it, right?
If not for Christmas, then how about New Year’s?
And before you say it, I know what an undertaking this is! (Hell, I thought getting 10 people together for GA/Dope was fantastic, and this is Nationwide!)
Let me know what you think, and where you think a good central location would be.
Crazy idea? You bet. But if I weren’t crazy why am I posting this?
New Years will probably be easier than Christmas for most people. And a place with an appropriate bar somewhat close to airport hotels needs to be identified.
I’m central to almost the entire US but there’s no real good places close to OKC’s airport. And I had to get rid of the house, now I’m in an apt. Hmmm… I’ll see what’s around.
First, folks should be aware that there is already being planned the Annual New York MegaDopeFest, which occurs over the MLK holiday in New York City. It’s usually pretty big and gets lots of folks from out of town, so you may be able to see your favorite doper(s) there.
Second, if you want to do something else, you’ll want either a place where lots of dopers live or a city that has a major airport hub – St. Louis, DFW/Love Field, something like that – to keep airfares low.
Preferably you’d have both – you’d be surprised what a huge PITA these things are to plan if you’re having more than a few people there. You can’t just tell 70 people to meet you in the bar at the Marriott on Friday night, whatever the Marriott tells you. Even in Vegas, we’d have been sunk if we didn’t have Bristlesage to do a ton of legwork.
I do like the idea but don’t know how practical it would be (or how my finances will be doing). Maybe, as an alternative, we could do a series of Dopefests around the country at the same time? Even if it’s just 2 or 3 people meeting up? Or maybe just all meet up on the IRC channel, if that doesn’t work out.
GMR is on the right track. We should all do a Simul-Dope[sup]®[/sup] and I may even know the person that has server bandwidth to do it. Imagine, live AV streaming from each of almost a dozen different national or global websites.
My true thoughts? Yeah, let’s all get together next year at Burning Man (did I type that?) … I mean, meet in a similar mass sort of way like the New York affair. I like their scradgedy of timing it around the off season’s shoulder. You get super-low fares to a lot of major hubs right after everyone’s finished singing “Auld Lang Syne.”
Let’s work on both ideas for a major blow-out next year. I’m down on this.
Whatever y’all wanna do is fine with me. I’m pretty flexible.
I agree with manhattan that these things are a bear to organize. Hell, just ask mouthbreather or anyone else who’s organized one of these meets successfully.
As stated in the OP, I hate being alone during the holidays and the fact that my birthday is on 12.31 makes it even more of a suck. So put your thinking caps on and let’s come up with something, whether it’s Simul-Dope or whatever, I wanna be with some friends for the holidays, dammit!
I’m all for it, if we do it near DC/Baltimore area!
Actually wouldn’t it be a lot less expensive if you had it away from the airport though? I mean hotels are usually the highest right around a big airport.
Ed, I would’ve thought the rates would be cheaper during the holidays? I was trying to keep it as simple as possible, but you may be right: I haven’t ever tried to book an airport hotel room during the holidays.
