8 Candles for GEOCKY Event Cache

Calling all geocachers far and wide. GEOCKY is celebrating their eighth birthday and wants to share it with all of their fiends iver some warm pizza and what should be a cold winter day. Come on out even if you have never been to an event or participated in GEOCKY befor. This is a great place to start and to meet the other locals in the geocaching community.

A tradition of the GEOCKY birthday event is that the local cachers hide "presents", i.e. new caches to be published on the day of the event, for some after-event geocaching fun, so this is more than an event to GEOCKY. It is a get-together to do the things we love doing. Please bring a "present" if you can. :-P

Everyone is welcome, so please come & join us!

What is GEOCKY? GEOCKY, pronounced jockey, was formed to promote safe and responsible Geocaching in Kentucky.

And a brief history of the event...

• On November 17, 2001 a local Boy Scout troop hid Lexington's first two geocaches.
• In December of 2002 local cachers gathered together for the first time. A small group of people representing 7 local caching id's, 1 crazy guy from Nashville, and the scoutmaster who hid the first caches met at Bella Notte. At the time of Geocky's conception, there were about 22 caches in a 50-mile radius.
• December 2003 arrives for Geocky's first birthday. The party is held a Bella again. The group is larger and cachers from Cincinnati and St. Louis joined us. The cache count is now up to 86 for that same area.
• For birthday number two in 2004 we moved to Ryan's Steakhouse. This year visitors from Ohio and Tennessee, and some transplants from Texas joined the group. The evil guy from TN brought gold boxes for the GEOCKY members who hit milestones of 1000 caches. GEOCKY's second birthday sees the local cache total explode to 372.
• In 2005, Ryan's is the location of birthday number three. The group is a little smaller. Many of the original members have moved away or dropped out of caching. But it is still a fun event. The cache total for Central Kentucky is up to 469.
• Birthday number four in 2006 is held at Ryan's. The group is larger than past years. It was a great mix of old and new cachers. And as always, the great folks at Groundspeak donated a bunch of swag that was given away. The cache count in Central Kentucky grew to 623 in December of 2006.
• In 2007, GEOCKY;s 5th birthday is held at Cici's Pizza in Turfland Mall and see a number of locals plus one that returned from Massachusetts to visit old friends and another from Ohio. A good time had by all. The number of caches had exploded in the 60-mile radius to approximately 1238.
• The holiday season of 2008 went by in a rush and GEOCKY was nearly left out in the cold. An unofficial birthday was held on New Years Day at Common Grounds. There was a surge of attendees. Many locals and some from E-town, Ohio, and Indiana made an appearance. Though we had missed the actual birthday, the get-together reminded everyone of what we had missed, and we would do our best not to miss a birthday again. The number of caches continue to grow, and central KY has around 1485 active caches at that time.
• Year seven in 2009 saw the party move to Ramsey's on Harrodsburg Rd. New faces, old hands, and some from Louisvulle made their way to Ramsey's Even an Irish laddy from the geocaching past attended (and logged, surprisingly) to the shock of everyone there. The number of caches dipped a bit due to older caches growing longer in the tooth and many going away. The cache count in the area is around 1079.
• Here we are at birthday number 8 in 2010 and hopefully many more to come. As of the posting of this event, the central KY area (50-mile radius of downtown Lexington) has a count of 1481 caches.

Since that very first event hosted by the White Diamond Pirates, one of the standing GEOCKY traditions is for the local cachers to hide some new caches to be published on the day of the event. That way everyone will have some new Geocky birthday present caches to go out and log. So this would be a great chance for all the local cachers to go out and hide a few new ones.