vignette

So back in late 1992, early 1993 I had discovered alt.good.morning, a usenet newsgroup and I became friends with a bunch of people from all over. Our numbers grew and through a chat website we all become closer and then in late 1994 we decided to get together.

One of our group had access to a site in Arizona that was run like a summer camp and would prepare our three meals a day; having us sleep in bunk-bed cabins. We booked a week in late August that summer to go there.

We had people from various points of the US, Canada, and Europe who were all going to fly into Phoenix and then get a lift with or drive to our site two or three hours north.

I was one of the first ones to arrive and hooked up with an AGMer who lived in Phoenix, I stayed at his house as others trickled in, using his house as a gathering point. As the morning progressed and more people arrived it was an intense experience I don't think I have ever experienced since. If you've ever met someone face to face that you've only known on-line, imagine meeting twenty people at once that you've known on-line.

We made our way in three or four vehicles to the site where we were met by another 15 or 20 more group members who had driven directly there from wherever they lived in the US.

It was intoxicating to meet up with all of these people; we had shared a lot of ourselves through the group and through emails and chat sessions, so to actually meet and have real conversations was a gift.

So once we got to the camp (Sunday) we settled in, had supper, kept talking, continued to meet each other and then eventually, very very late, went into our cabins to sleep, only in our cabin few of us slept. Dawn arrived (Monday) and I hadn't slept. We spent the day doing various things and that night I didn't even try to go to sleep; I stayed up late talking with the people who stayed up late, and in the morning (Tuesday), when they went to sleep, really only a few minutes later, some early risers woke up, so I joined them. This pattern repeated the next day (Wednesday) so by dawn on Wednesday morning I had not slept since arriving at the camp, that was 74 hours.

Well, add another 12 to that and I went to sleep. The reason I went to sleep was because I would be one of the drivers that would see us going to The Grand Canyon the next morning; well, in the night. We had planned to leave at 1:00AM to get to The Pit for sunrise. So I slept from about 7PM until midnight so that I could be one of the drivers for us to get there.

I stayed awake for that length of time one other time in my life; perhaps that's a vignette I'll write a few years from now.