Most of What Happens in Gettysburg, Stays in Gettysburg!

I told Ryan I was really excited about writing the blog entry for the chaser meet up and I wasn’t lying. It was such a laid back, easygoing get together. We all just hung out and it kind of felt (for me at least) that even though I was meeting some of these people for the first time, I’d known them forever…. Lets start at the beginning, Shall we?

McClellan's Tavern.

Megan and I had put together a little post-show event for all the chasers in Gettysburg. After the meet and greet, a bunch of us had all planned to go back to The Gettysburg Hotel where they had a nice little bar called McClellan’s Tavern. Laura offered to give us a ride back to the hotel since we had walked there earlier in the day. When Megan, Laura, and I arrived back at the hotel there were already some chaser friends sitting outside the bar in a little area that had some couches and table and chairs. Perfect for a little gathering.

We all sat in a circle and casually chatted about anything and everything. The more people started to arrive the more chairs we pulled over and the bigger the circle got. If I’m not mistaken, in total, there were 22 of us all just sitting around having some drinks and getting to know each other. And let the shenanigans begin!

I promised everyone that what happens in Gettysburg stays in Gettysburg. With that being said, I am going to try describing the shenanigans to the best of my abilities without being too incriminating.

As we all sat around chatting, one of the chasers took a small leave of absence but they (lets call them D) left behind a certain piece of apparel. There was some chatter about where D went and when D would be returning. I’m not sure how the conversation got from where it started to where it ended up but they say that pictures are worth a thousand words so I’ll just show you instead of telling.

borrowed from Ann. thanks! Chaser Gang?

retrieval

When D returned, it took a decent amount of time for the hanging apparel to be noticed, which of course had us all in fits of laughter. We dropped lots of hints and the following phrase was said, “I just want you to know, when you figure it out, I had nothing to do with it.” At one point the theme song to Jeopardy was being hummed all around and the only response to that was “I'm not very good at Jeopardy.” Putting it in the form of a question seemed to be the issue at hand. D was told “It’s not so much of ‘what’ as it is ‘where’” He was also given the category “Attire”. Eventually, Needless to say, they were found and an eruption of laughter ensued.

I wish I had a better picture. (If anyone does, send it my way!)

Just when we thought it couldn’t get any sillier, we were taken by surprise by what appeared to be a man involved in some reenactment shenanigans. He wanted us all to meet him at 1:00pm the following day at the church in the center. I swear he wasn’t invited to the meet up, at least I don’t recall sending him a facebook invite. I’m sure I would have remembered those side burns being on “the attending” list. He scampered off for a bit to find the bathroom and we thought we were done with him. We were wrong. He was back for more (and with an apparent attraction to Laura) I’m sure we had all stopped listening to him, but he finally “DIS-MISSED!” us and all was well.

(Forgive me if these topics of discussion are out of order) Many of us had encountered the questions at some point during the night of “How do I become a chaser?” Apparently people think it is quite the difficult task. Not true! We discussed that perhaps we should start making people fill out applications. At least that way when people asked how they could become chasers we’d have a concrete answer for them. I believe it was Laura who spouted out something along these lines, “I’m sorry, you’re not exactly what were looking for right now, but we’ll keep your application on file in case we should have any other openings.”  Apparently we’re becoming a very elite group. (I’m glad I’ve been “grandfathered” in. *phew*)

There were so many different conversations going on it’s hard to go into detail about so many of them.

As it got later, slowly the group started dwindling down. Once there was only a handful or so of us left the conversation started taking some crazy twists and turns. Discussion of a calendar was brought up. Mentioned with the calendar were: Mike on a Harley, “January should be beach volleyball”, and a single stalk of corn. I’ll give you a minute to just let your mind wander on that one………..

Welcome back, filters on again? we also discussed ghost hunting (Kary even left for a while to check out the ghost situation in the basement, sadly, there was no after life orbs present), Chaser games (which weren’t played because there was so much going on. Next time? My vote is for SNC jeopardy) crocheting, a specific genre of movie (that for some reason the conversation kept circling back to), and the amount of times we’ve committed certain felonies….

Me with Granny Smiths

At about 2:00 am, Megan and I decided we needed to go to bed. We had only gotten about 4 hours of sleep in the past 24 hours and we had a long drive ahead of us the next day. Naturally, on the way to the room, we found a basket of apples. They were right next to the elevator so I couldn't NOT take them up with us. I left them by the vending machine on the second floor, Megan told me "NO!" (always bringing me down), It's okay though, they weren't that fresh looking (and I'm not a huge fan of Granny Smiths.) The next day, before we checked out, I checked on the apples. THEY WERE GONE! I was looking forward to semi fresh fruit and fruit flies for breakfast. ew. So with a pretty uneventful ride home, I think that concludes this entry.

Oh yeah….if you ever get the wonderful experience of meeting Laura (you know, the Queen of France) in person, make sure to ask her how she likes her coffee ;)

P.S. Fellow chasers who were there: Feel free to e-mail things that you want to be added to this. To be honest, this was a hard one to write. I was partly asleep with eyes open during this. While most of the conversations I remember, the details are a bit fuzzy.

sncadventures@gmail.com -or- amandam.abate@gmail.com