How many Head-Fi'ers were in attendance at this meet? If the number is greater than 6, I'll have to concede to having missed my first official South Florida Head-Fi meet. I will no longer be the undefeated reigning champion of all things headphone along the Aligotor Alley corridor! Being that I don't live there, this shouldn't be such a hard concession speech to make, but somehow I'm a bit saddened to have missed it.
The magic number of 6 is with reference to our first South Florida Head-Fi meet, held in December 2003 in Clearwater FL and hosted by the now inactive younger who appropriately dubbed himself as "Matt" when registering his Head-Fi account. I always thought that was creative.
http://www.head-fi.org/forums/showthread.php?t=54150
Talk about a blast from the past! On the first page, I asked for a moderator to move the thread. How cool.
In attendance were: Matt, Sewer Guy (Bill), gsferrari (Guru), agile_one (Gene), rsaavedra (Raul), and myself. Other than Gene and I (and occasionally Raul), everyone else seems to have dropped out of sight.
Waxing nostolgic, there are a couple of things that strike me about this thread. One is that the enthusiam level (for me anyway) was at an all time high since is was my first meet. In fact, I brought 2 very large boxes filled with as many sources, amps, and headphones as I could possibly fit and still be under the 70 pound weight limit for check in baggage. That's 70 pounds each! They were actually 69 and 66 as I recall. Neither of these boxes (and we're talking BIG boxes) had any handles, so I punched holes in the sides of them such that I could lift them off the ground for long enough to manage to prop them up on the airport push carts.
It was raining heavily in Miami when my flight arrived, and both boxes got soaked to the point of being soggy. Thankfully, none of the gear got damaged (at least not at that point) because everything was packed in inner boxes (i.e., there were many boxes within the big boxes). I actually missed my scheduled flight because of the time it took to pack everything prior to getting in the car like a sensible man would have to begin with. But that would have meant leaving most of the gear behind.
It's a great memory to now reflect back on. I never once (at that time) gave any serious consideration to leaving the sources and amps behind; having all of my stuff there really did "make" the meet and everyone was extremely kind and thankful for my efforts.
After a couple more meets, however, I had learned not to overpromise, and also that sources, amps, and airplanes do not mix well. One of my Shanling players got damaged at the meet that Sewer Guy hosted some time later due to getting tossed around by the baggage thugs. So that was that. I can still bring headphones because they fit in my carryon luggage.
Thankfully, our Florida group has now grown considerably and there is no longer a need for all of this gear anyway. In fact, during the past 3 or 4 meets, I've had a hard time getting around to listen to all of the gear that is there already!
The other thing that I noticed in this thread is that "back in the day" we spent a lot of time thanking each other, be it the host, the guy who brought lot of nice stuff, the guy who pointed out where the bathrooms were, or whatever. Of course there will always be a place for common courtesy, but it's nice that we all know each other well enough now to say, "It was really great seeing everyone again. Ok, now for impressions..." I think the awards ceremony can be distracting, especially for those who are looking in on the fun but were not able to attend.
Hopefully, I'll be able to catch the next one. This must be what it feels like when you lose your first fight (not that I've ever lost one, mind you... I'm still undefeated in that category).
