Official Announcement: ICC Meet Second Weekend, December 4 (Sunday)

[Alps]

If at all possible, you should attend Laura's meet. She has more planned than I do, and it's on a Saturday instead of a Sunday. But enough people have indicated that Thanksgiving doesn't work for them (it doesn't for me) but are still interested that I thought I'd host a second weekend. To make it simple, it's the same time and location as Laura's meet, just on a different day.

ICC Meet - Second Weekend
Sunday, December 4
Time: 10:00 AM
Meeting place: Growlers of Gaithersburg Brewpub
227 East Diamond Ave  Gaithersburg, MD 20877

Yes, please note that the time is at 10 am, which is earlier than most meets. We're going to meet at the restaurant at 10am, drive the ICC, see a couple of vantage points from overpasses and maybe east of I-95, and then come back to Growler's for lunch. There won't be anything planned after lunch, given that it's a Sunday, so again, Laura's meet will be bigger and better.

Please RSVP at http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=196628847082685 if you're interested. The truly official Thanksgiving weekend ICC meet is at http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=124243221019234. I already have one person who wants to make both meets.

[froggie]

You happened to pick the other day that was open for me, so I'll probably be at both.

[Alps]

Reminder - there's one week to go before the "repeat" meet, so please RSVP on Facebook (or here/via email, if necessary)!

[froggie]

FYI, as noted in the other meet thread, Growler's doesn't open until 4pm on the weekends, so you'll have to find a different spot for lunch.

Also, some friends are throwing a "birthday brunch" for me at 11 on Sunday, so I won't be at the tour part, but I'll likely be able to stop off at the after-tour lunch.

[Dougtone]

Meet attendees may also have the opportunity of riding in Doug Kerr's new car, as this weekend will be the first road trip in the new CR-V.

[Alps]

I'm going to get a brain dump from Laura, but it looks like we might hit up that sandwich place that you did the first weekend. I don't mind this being a copycat event.

[oscar]

I'm going to get a brain dump from Laura, but it looks like we might hit up that sandwich place that you did the first weekend. I don't mind this being a copycat event.

That restaurant, Roy's Place, had a complex and hard-to-navigate menu, much of which I could barely read at all in restaurant lighting.  If we go with that, I suggest people go through the long online menu ahead of time, at http://roysplacerestaurant.com/  

Would Laura's original choice be open for lunch that Sunday?  Its website -- which also has a menu -- says it opens at 11:30am on weekends, though that wasn't true the holiday weekend when we did the earlier event, so we'd need to call ahead to confirm.  We might have to deal with crowds watching the Redskins-Jets game that starts at 1:00, but that could be an issue for other places too.

I'm a little under the weather right now, but if I can bounce back I'm interested in doing the repeat event.

[Alps]

Sorry I've been late in recapping, but in brief, thanks to the 7 other people who did show up to make the second weekend a success! Growlers gave us a good lunch and Laura's notes helped me put together a simple but satisfying tour of the ICC for all. It was good to see you all in 2011 and I look forward to more meets in 2012!

[oscar]

Here's a pair of group photos from the meet.  Both were taken with the ICC/US 29 interchange in the background (same place as the photos from the other ICC meet the previous weekend). 



From left to right in the above photo (same people in the next photo, but in different order) -- sorry for any wrong/missing names:
Steve Alpert, Lou Cosaro, Anthony Costanzo, Pete Jenior, Doug Kerr, Mike Pruett, Oscar Voss

[oscar]

Anthony Costanzo (looks like) and Steve Alpert. Guess Steve's incognito with those shades on.

Steve's accounted for.  His Yankees shirt (in the second photo) is the giveaway.

[hbelkins]

Yeah, that's Steve. Someone else in the shades. Wasn't looking very closely. 

[Hot Rod Hootenanny]

Pete Jenior there with the shades and beard?

[Alps]

Pete Jenior there with the shades and beard?

That be him. Sorry, just got here.

[Alps]

Here's a pair of group photos from the meet.  Both were taken with the ICC/US 29 interchange in the background (same place as the photos from the other ICC meet the previous weekend). 



From left to right in the above photo (same people in the next photo, but in different order) -- sorry for any wrong/missing names:
Steve Alpert, Lou Cosaro, Anthony Costanzo, Pete Jenior, Doug Kerr, Mike Pruett, Oscar Voss

Oscar, may I steal this (with attribution) for my late-2013 update for the late-2011 meet? (:

[oscar]

Oscar, may I steal this (with attribution) for my late-2013 update for the late-2011 meet? (:

Sure.  And thanks for helping me fill in the remaining blank.  Always good to have someone around with a less awful memory than mine.

[Duke87]

That first picture has a CD sleeve art kinda vibe to it, with the angled perspective, varied poses, and seemingly large variation in people's distances from the camera (the wide-angle lens probably amplifies this).

[oscar]

That first picture has a CD sleeve art kinda vibe to it, with the angled perspective, varied poses, and seemingly large variation in people's distances from the camera (the wide-angle lens probably amplifies this).

Yeah, that happened with the photo for the August 2010 Providence meet, only worse.  With the river behind the group, and a building behind the camera, wide-angle (24mm lens on a full-frame SLR) was the only option there.

As I noted at the meet, the other risk of wide-angle lenses (especially the 17mm lens I use mainly for bridge photography) is that they can make people in the middle of the photo look fat.  Not a coincidence that I was at one end of the group in both photos.

[hbelkins]

Haven't seen Pete in a few years and didn't recognize him with the beard. He could pass for Steve's brother.

[Dougtone]

I decided to upload some of the photos from last weekend's excursion onto the ICC (photos from the current or future ICC only).  There's also some photos from March thrown in for good measure.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dougtone/sets/72157626241306676/

[vtk]

Something that's got me a bit curious:

What and where is ICC?

Apparently it's nowhere near me, or I'd probably know it.  But the use of a local term on a national forum as if everybody knows it (or at least, perhaps, everyone who would be interested) annoys me.

PS if the answer is "inter-county connector" which I seem to remember hearing about years ago (but I thought it was somewhere south of me, not east) then that just supports my position that it's a local (and now I'll add vague) term that people on a national forum shouldn't be expected to know...

[J N Winkler]

ICC is the Interstate Commerce Commission.  These people were having a road meet at a random freeway to mourn the demise of the ICC.

[vtk]

Well that sort of explains it.  Still kind of annoying, but I can't really think of a less vague title than just "ICC Meet" besides expanding the acronym and making a really long thread title.  I guess the confusion was unavoidable.

[oscar]

ICC is the Interstate Commerce Commission.  These people were having a road meet at a random freeway to mourn the demise of the ICC.

Was the Interstate Commerce Commission.  I think it's been dead for long enough (since 1995) that "ICC" isn't often associated with the late commission, except maybe in truckers' tales of the bad old days.

More telling, nobody expressed any confusion about what the ICC meets were about (at least on this forum -- I don't know what was said on Facebook, in e-mails to Laura or Steve, etc.), until almost a week after both of them were over.

Something like "Maryland's ICC" might've been a good idea in retrospect, but no biggie.

[froggie]

I think the fact that the meet announcements identified meeting locations in Gaithersburg, MD made it pretty darn clear.

[vtk]

I think the fact that the meet announcements identified meeting locations in Gaithersburg, MD made it pretty darn clear.

If I had any extra cash whatsoever, and could go to a meet, I might have actually read the announcement and seen its location in advance of the meet itself, then decided it was too far to travel.  But I probably still wouldn't have read it, since I only periodically check the headlines of this board looking for meets near me and ICC doesn't sound like anything related to central Ohio.  After seeing multiple threads multiple times sporting this mysterious acronym, curiosity finally got the better of me.  I still (after skimming Wikipedia) don't see any connection between the Commission and Maryland, by the way.  I hope you'll excuse my ignorance; when I won my school's Citizenship Bee in 7th grade, the ICC had apparently been abolished two years prior.  A hypothetical young roadgeek from Gaithersburg might have missed out on this meet simply because ICC doesn't sound like anything local to him, either.