Blog posts

January 17, 2009
Obb's Sports Bar and Grill
Saint Paul

We've made it. Ten years ago, give or take a few days, we held the very first Cooler Crew Pre-Dig Gig at McGovern's. Tonight, we held the eleventh annual Pre-Dig Gig at Obb's. Over the course of the evening, somewhere between 150 and 200 people came through the doors.

Originally planned for Matty B's, the party was moved on the last minute to Obb's, who were more than accomodating. With the Pioneer Press publishing the first clue online and in the early Sunday edition of the newspaper, being downtown isn't really necessary anymore, since we all have the clue going in and don't need to go to the paper to get it.

As usual, Mom and Dad had the annual Cooler Crew buttons; there were plenty of them left over. If you didn't get one and still want one, contact me2. Lilman provided the evening's entertainment from his DJ booth, and there was even a little karaoke going on. For the last several years, Clue Master has orgainzed a park pick pool, and with a $155 total prize for the winner, this year was no exception.

One of the best parts of every pre-dig and every rehash bash, apart from catching up with old friends who we may not otherwise see during the year, is seeing all of the new faces in the crowd. Some of them are long-time lurkers on the boards coming for the first time to hang out. Others are folks who hear about the party and come on in. Despite where any of us comes from, or how we got here, we all share a passion for the hunt.

This year's pre-dig brought a special guest. Kat invited the Winter Carnival President and CEO, Beth Pinkney to the event. As it turns out, we've been relatively unknown to them, almost to the point of being a well-kept secret. Having been involved with getting access to the Carnival royal family in the past, and the difficulties associated with it, it was really good to see Carnival staff come out and mingle with the community that makes the Carnival the success that it is.

As many of you are aware, Clue Master is in the hospital, with surgery scheduled for Friday, 8/8/08 (hey, crazy eights. Gotta be a lucky day) to replace a heart valve.

For the $0.25 version of what's happened, last Wednesday he was in so much back pain he couldn't get out of bed. He went in to Woodwinds on Thursday where they did a full-body image set of him, and discovered something "fuzzy" in his bone marrow. Initially this was diagnosed as Leukemia, but the oncologist later corrected it saying that the rest of the symptoms weren't consistent with the GP's diagnosis; bone marrow tests would be required. After some more work, they determined he has a bacterial infection that's settled in his bone marrow, lungs, and heart.

The infection resulted from a previously undiagnosed prolapse heart valve, combined with dental work 6 months ago. The result is that the infection has eaten away at the valve to the point where he needs it replaced.

For updates, check out CM's family's web site. To send your well-wishes, check out the thread at AbleMinds. He's in there a lot from the hospital and responding to posts.

We are pleased to unveil to the general populace the new and improved Cooler Crew web site. There are some exciting new changes going on around these parts and we're glad you're a part of it.

The first thing you'll notice is the new look. After a decade of static web pages and a pseudo-content management system ares put together over the last few years, the site has implemented Drupal for managing the content. After spending a bit of time trying to work out a theme for it, the testers who provided feedback agreed that the "default" theme looks cool, so we're sticking with it.

One of the benefits of Drupal is that Coolerheads near and far will be able to submit their own news items to appear in the site. The Cooler Crew site has always depended on you to create the content you see here, and with the new software, that task is easier than ever to accomplish. Coming down the pipe, we're expecting to have an online photo gallery for you to submit your treasure hunt pictures to, as well as the ability to create your own blogs.

As always, the content of the site will be freely available. However, in order to create content, you'll have to sign up for an account on the site, but that's free and painless. And for those of you who have contributed material in the past, once you get signed up, we can attribute to you all that should be attributed to you, beyond just having a by-line in the story. Until then, well, let's just say we bring back an old name to be the nom-de-plume of everything not otherwise claimed, one Mr. Joe Medallion.

"Santa" Dave Young passed away last night in the presence of many of his Cooler Crew Friends.

Being as sleep is alluding me, I thought I could share some information and memories of our friend Dave Young over the past 10 years.

He was raised on a farm near Brewster, MN. We know he has a sister still living in that area along with aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews. He still owned farm land that he rented out. He spent most holidays with a niece back in Brewster and always bragged about her cooking.

He was married once. He never had children.

He was a ham radio operator and a licensed pilot. He loved the State fair, the medallion hunt, micro napping, working on computers, and any gathering that involved a good dinner and people he liked being with.

If you went anywhere with him, it wasn't long and he'd run into someone he knew. He had a very long list of friends.

Almost without fail, when you said goodbye at the end of a time together or on the phone, his last words were "have fun!". That was his philosophy and there wasn't much of anything he wouldn't try if it sounded like fun.

Every Christmas season, he would dress up as a traditional Santa and would hire out for parties - either private family gatherings or organizations. One time when his "jalopy" wasn't running, we picked Santa up and drove him out to Eden Prairie for a party and brought him back home afterwards. We stopped at a McDonald's or Burger King near his home. All he had left of his Santa suit was the red pants.

Two young African-American boys came up to him wanting to talk to Santa. He very graciously did so. I know those young boys will always believe.

But that wasn't the only time we witnessed Santa in action...

One year at the State Fair, we were walking around with Dave and a mother with a little girl came up to him. The mother said her little girl wanted to talk to Santa. He, of course, talked to that little girl and was so very much Santa. Not only will that little girl believe for the rest of her life, but that mother will too.

One of the first times we went to do Fitger's Bock Hunt in Duluth, there was a group of us that were going to drive up... Allison, Inks, me and Eags was to pick up DDY and then we would head up to Duluth early on a Saturday morning.

Eags had been to his place, knocked on the door, didn't get a response, had looked in his car and after another round of attempts came and met up with the rest of us. We decided to go back and try one last time before leaving. After banging on his door and looking into his car, we were about to give up, leave a note and go. Took one more look into his car and there he was micro napping amongst the "stuff" in his car. You've seen his car you know it would be easy to miss someone snoozing in among that "stuff".

At that Bock festival later that evening, Dave participated in a black forest torte eating contest....no hands. You can imagine that beard! He didn't win, but he did that every year after until Fitger's quit doing the bock hunt as part of their festival.

If anyone ever needed anything, all you had to do was ask and he'd be there. If it was something he had in his car, he knew exactly where in that "stuff" he would find it. It was amazing.

He also did electrical work. His friend Jon built a house in western Wisconsin a few years ago. Dave did the house wiring for him and his wife Cheryl. During that time, Dave had fallen on some hard financial times and his "jalopy" quit running for the last time. His friend not only paid for him to do the wiring, he bought him a different car. Very recently, Jon had a heart attack and died. He and Jon had been close friends for over 40 years. Dave was deeply saddened by the loss of that friend and had been spending time helping Jon's wife take care of some things.

So now Jon and Dave are together again.

There are so many memories...we are so lucky to have known him.