One special kind of event is a flash mob.  You may have heard of these, not in the realm of geocaching.  A flash mob is when a bunch of people descend on a public place and do something (usually silly) at the same time.  It could be sing a song, do a dance, cheer… and then gather up their stuff to vanish back into the crowd.  In geocaching flash mobs as events have rules and a procedure that should be followed.  First- sign the log, second do the activity, third eat a snack, and finally take a photo.  This all needs to happen in the space of 15 minutes.  Podcacher has hosted the World Wide Flash Mob for years.  For GeoWoodstock Sue & I (mostly Sue) put on a flash mob on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls.  By being a limited time they tend to be a fun break from caching.

Here’s the funny part… after you’ve been caching a while most folks don’t blend into the crowd that well.  You see a bunch of folks gathered together looking at their watches or GPS units and you know what’s going on.  Fortunately, most muggles are oblivious.  In my meager flash mob experience I have seen good ones and ones where the whole meaning was lost.  One I recall- the time came to mob and all that happened was the group moved in mass from the parking lot to a sign. Not much coming out of the crowd to the surprise of onlookers.  The best one was the most recent World Wide Flash Mob in which we all wandered through a mall talking on bananas… the looks we got showed me the potential of a well done flash mob.

Was ours at Niagara Falls well done?  I think we did a good job… until the end.  When you get a bunch of geocachers together we all tend to not want to go away.  Stories to tell, friendships to make… 15 minutes just isn’t enough time.  Besides that, the wedding veils, the “champagne” toast, the police asking us what we were doing, all lead to a memorable experience.  If I were to do it again, I’d just create a second location for everyone to gather away from the original ground zero… live and learn.