Did Julie's photos of our dinner at Sapporo's to the list come through for you? All I see is the photo of Cyndi and the Gecko Ranch booth. That was on her post after this one.
Just wondering,
E
Subj: [gecko]Daytona '03!
Date: 8/21/03 3:28:50 PM Pacific Daylight Time
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Julie Bergman)
Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Reply-to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Gecko List)
Hi Gexers,
I am finally starting to recover from the big weekend! Cyndi Diekmann and I flew out Wednesday to get settled in early. Quite a few folks were there when we arrived Wednesday night, including Jim Pether who had missed the last two Gecko Night talks because of arriving late for his flight. He said "I wanted to make sure I got here early this time!" Jim spoke at the Tortoise and Turtle talks as well as the Gecko Night talks (Tarentola gigas). Jim is best known for his work with Helmeted Geckos http://www.gekkota.org/html/geckonia.html who have just been renamed Tarentola (forget species name, who can keep up!
There was a huge power outage affecting millions of people including lots of folks who had planned to attend the show, including Jodi Aherns. We missed you, Lyle (car problems) and all the others who got caught up in that. Stacy drove down on a marathon from Ohio.
Before Gecko Night Friday we vendors set up our booths and then start shopping as soon as we can to get the cool geckos! I snagged a pair Rhacodactylus sarasinorum from Alan Repashy of Sandfire Dragon Ranch. Much to my delight I found her eggs in the shipping container when the
geckos arrived at my house this week! I also picked up some of Alan's new gecko foods which he spent a long time developing and are prepared by T-Rex. A big thumbs up as my leachies started eating his leachy food right away! I also got a Grande Terre leachy male for my lonely girl from Tim Tytle, and some very nice geckos from our own Neil Meister. Thank you Neil for transporting these lovely geckos all the way from Canada! Jerry Peebles also supplied me with some Pareodura picta for my xanthic project, thank you Jerry!
Rhacs were very popular at the show, especially R. ciliatus (Eyelash gex). Kurt and Melissa Lantz and I were some of the very few people at the show with Phelsuma, which, except for grandis, did not seem to sell well. Greg and Leann Christenson's new Day Gecko book debut at the show, congrats (!)will hopefully create a renewed interest in the genus. There were as usual a lot of leopards, none of which seemed to be any great difference from last year's crop. I did buy a couple of albinos from Kevin Dunn, which did not have any black spotting at all and had cool irregular patterns. Can't wait to breed them! Not enough geckos at the show IMHO, too many snakes. I know Wayne Hill, our Gecko Night benefactor, GGA lifetime member and show promoter, is working to get more gecko breeders in the show.
At the Gecko Night talks, Ron Tremper went first and spoke about the mutations that occured in his collection for the last 20-something odd years. Very cool indeed. Next was Roman Muniz, a young breeder working with Nephurus. Roman is very dedicated to his collection and had a lot of great info to share. After that Neil Meister subbed for Yuri Kaverkin's talk, and had a nice general talk that included some photos of the evolution of his collection. Very nice, I wish more breeders would include old photos in their talk so we can see the progression of things. I could not stay up for Jim Pether's talk (11:00pm), I heard good things about it though. Thank you to our master of ceremonies Neil Meister and Wayne Hill for generously suppling the room for us.
The Gecko Night Dinner at Sapporo went well and we all had a nice time. We sure did miss Jodi and Lyle at the dinner though! I am including a few photographs that show the view from my seat.
In my photos you can see Elizabeth Freer, Greg and Leann Christenson, Kurt Lantz, Neil and Dee Meister. There is also a photo of my booth in our little "gecko corner" of the show. Stacy and some other folks took some photos of our group after dinner too, please post these so we all can see them!
Thanks also to the GGA volunteers Dee Meister and Elizabeth Freer that ran the GGA booth in Lyle's absence.
See you next year!
Julie Bergman
http://www.geckoranch.com/
GGA lifetime member
