DumAss Special Interest Group (SIG)

I wanted to start our vacation tales by sharing the part of the Gathering that was the most fun for me -- the DumAss SIG.  What?!, you say?  Well, you all knew I was a dumb ass, now it is official!

But, seriously, here is how things went.  There was a "Closest to the Pin" event on Wednesday sponsored by the DumAss SIG.  If you know about golf -- and I don't -- you know this is a tournament that involves hitting a golf ball towards the flag (known as a pin) at a par hole.  The person with the closest distance to the pin is the winner.  I am sure Mike knew this.  I did not.  One thing neither of us knew was what this SIG was, and who was in it.

We showed up at the putting green a bit before 11 am and found that Dave Cole was running the event.  Dave is very active in the Naturist Society (TNS) and on his local beach, Black's Beach, in San Diego.  Dave is also a really fun guy.  Nearly everything he does involves smiles and good humor.  We knew we were in for a treat.

As the event got underway, Dave told us that the schedule had mistakenly featured the first event of the SIG before the inaugural meeting.  We decided that was okay, given that it is a DumAss SIG (which I'll refer to as DA).  Dave pulled out  some ping pong balls from a golf club bag and told us they were numbered. He also pulled out a small plastic bowling pin that would serve as the flag/pin.  He explained the challenge to those of us who were unfamiliar with the Closet to the Pin tournys.  We were all ready to start when he pulled out an itty bitty golf club set made for children.

Ok...  This would be interesting. For most adults (excluding myself) the best way to hit the ball was on their knees.  No one figured that out (#2 clue to us being at the right event).  In all there were about 10 of us playing.  The person who came closest to the pin won the entire golf set.  I was envious -- it was fun!

The following day was the Inaugural East Coast meeting of the SIG. I did not mention that the SIG first met at the West Coast gathering last year.  The west coast event was written up in N magazine in a such a non-descript way that there was no way to know what it was.  The east coast inaugural meeting ended up being one of the most attended events at the gathering.  Tons of people showed up just to find out what it was about.  The answer?  Just having fun!  There are lots of serious workshops at the gatherings that focus on health, body, and political issues.  Dave wanted to introduce a way for us to just be silly.  We had a great deal of fun at the meeting and many of us shared stories of our own personal DA incidents.

Friday held another fun event, sponsored by the DA SIG, the Dressing "Silly" contest.  We didn't have to dress up for the fun, we just had to arrive with our bodies.  The Silly contest was scheduled concurrent with a beer sampling (more on that in another post), so we were doing pretty well when 10 people showed up.  What would the costumes be?  Why, Silly String!  TNS had a case of silly string in 4 different colors. We were split into three groups of three, with one volunteer model for each group. The other two team members were charged with dressing the models.

Ironically, each team had one woman and each woman volunteered to be the model. I had no idea what to expect of this.  It ended up being so much fun!!!  My teammates did a fantastic job of creating my outfit (though we had some difficulty getting my dress to stay put on the right breast).  The spray felt kind of cool and was pretty easy to control.  Here I am before the judging:







After we were all dressed, the owners of Eastover, Ticki and Betsy, judged us. We were all winners and received a bottle of champagne.







When we disrobed, the silly string just slipped away. It didn't leave any goopy remains. That was pretty cool, too!

I took two things away from this fun part of the gathering: 1) I am now an official DumAss, 2) Silly string dress up could be a fun camp event.

Smiles!