One Gathering and Two Surprises!

The Monster Mash was such a blast! Thanks to Chuck & Molly, Chickabirdie, Teach & Preach, The Maplines, MommaFox & Bald Eagle and all of the volunteers who made this the best gathering we have ever seen! By the way - Dave the Letterboxing Ham looked brilliant in that apron while on grill duty! With about 350 attendees, the line for the event stamp lasted throughout the day. What a great time Sue and I had: meeting all of the enthusiastic newbies who we've corresponded with over the months, gossiping and getting reacquainted with old friends and especially enjoying the interest in our Dartmoor trip. At dinner, on our last night in London, we decided to wear our Baker's Dozen t shirts and pin or sew our Dartmoor 100 patches to the front of them. What a great idea! People stopped us during the gathering inquiring about our trip and looking at the 3 photo albums of pictures that Sewsobizzy brought up from VA. Cries of "Spannerman" are still ringing in my ears!!!

There were many states represented at the Mash. We exchanged with a couple that had flown in that morning from WI. Sue and I also met boxers from Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Massachussetts, Maine, Rhode Island and New Hampshire. We had several special things happen to us at the gather - one was Alafair and Patrick showing up for a brief visit. I finally got a chance to exchange with them both - I was too excited when I first met Alafair at the Louise Donovan gathering this summer and forgot to get her exchange.

The second surprise occurred while we were waiting in line for the second time for an impression of the event stamp for Andy Wilkes, our UK friend. He had emailed us earlier in the week, asking for an imprint and we could hardly say no after all he did for us on our trip. Standing in line this second time [we forgot to get it our initial time in line!], Sue and I started talking to a very pleasant woman in line behind us. When we introduced ourselves, she responded that she was Rae Record! For those of you that may not recognize the name, Rae is another of those letterboxing pioneers who started this game back in the late 1990's. I was so excited to meet her and quickly told her that that I had this Interview Series on our website, yada, yada. Before you could say "Mystery Letterbox," I had asked and she agreed to do an interview with us. Come to find out, Rae knew all about our series and even clarified a few of the points that others eluded to in their interviews! Rae also told us that the photo you've probably seen on the old letterboxing.org website of that very first gathering in Vermont in the late '90's was taken by her! We're honored that Rae has agreed to do this interview - look for it's debut some time this winter.