I love meeting other bloggers for the first time. It’s like you already know the person, have seen their photo yet have never met in person. So when they walk through the door, you can spot them [assuming their photo they posted wasn't a venture in Photoshopping] and give them a hug or handshake.

The recent meetup with Naked Jen and Troy Pattee was one of those events.

Naked Jen

I first knew about Jen a couple of years ago after Karl went to BlogHer and took photos. Yes, there were shots of Jen in all of her natural self. But her version of naked is not the same as the rest of the Interwebs. It’s all about being down to earth and being comfortable with yourself.

Month’s later, she’s on Karl’s radio show and I happen to be logged in. Imagine my surprise when I find out she lives here in Salt Lake. “Damn, we need to meet up” I thought to myself. Well, many [and I mean MANY] months later and several tweets attempting to set a date and time, we finally met up.

Jen’s overall vibe and aura was evident. I really felt a sense of meeting someone that is genuine and easy going. And she wasn’t rushed or anything, which is something I always crave in life.

Troy Pattee

I started following Troy on Twitter after seeing him in Jen’s twitter feed. After reading a few of Troy’s tweets, I admit to being extra curious what “MomItForward” was all about. This link helped, but it was nice to hear the real story in person. Turns out Troy is a marketing guy (the nice kind) that has helped build a positive social networking site.

They do this thing on Twitter once a week called “Girl’s Night Out” using the hashtag of #gno. While I admit to seeing tons of tweets and re-tweets and wondering “Boy, they sure tweet a lot”, reading more details on this show that they do giveaways each week and post questions concerning family matters. Pretty cool.

Chatting

Amidst all the “what do you do?” talk, we also found we like movies, with Jen reminding us how great Sundance is [I've been quite a few times over the years] and how many movies she goes to each year. (color me jealous)

It was an enjoyable 2 hours and I can’t wait until we meet up again. I promise to do my best to clear my schedule.

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Shannon, Marty, Reba and Shannon’s Dad

Back in April of this year [I'm not that far behind], we had a couple of visitors to our fine state of Utah. Shannon, who is more famously known as Bubblewench [Blog, Twitter] and her dad spent a few days in Park City to golf, ski and just hang out. Since Shannon knew my wife and I lived here in Utah, she gave me a heads up and we planned a meet up.

Jumping back to October 2009, I met Shannon at Avitaween. Shannon was nothing but a fun and cool person, not only fixing me some wonderful pasta, but also making me a couple of drinks before the costumed-festivities started. Both my wife and I connected with her and had a blast. So imagine my excitement when we had the chance to meet up with her again – without having to travel [BONUS!]

We met at Market Street Grill, which is a local restaurant that serves great food and drinks. We all ate so well and shared some great wine and awesome company. Shannon’s dad [who's name I cannot recall] was such a nice gentleman and I can see why Shannon is the great person she is.

If you have a chance to meet Shannon, please do. Make every effort to do so. She’s fun and full of energy and just good people. I know I’m looking forward to my next meet up with her [and her dad, too].

To read Shannon’s post [which was posted back in April], go here.

Crash landed – photo by renagerie

Avitaween is one of the premier annual blogging events [the other one I've been to is TequilaCon] and this was my first time attending.

As you can see from the first photos, my wife and I attended this event as penguins. Think “March Of The Penguins” with alcohol and other invaders.

“I don’t need a fish.. I need a drink” – photo by renagerie

“Beam Me Up, Mindy” – photo by renagerie

The party was a huge success, with Adam doing so much to put it all together. I can’t thank him enough for the great job and massive effort he went through. Also, there were so many cool people there – some of which I hadn’t met before. I’ve previously posted a photo of meeting Hilly for the first time, but I also got to meet Becky – hellohahanarf. Becky and I have been wanting to meet for some time. And we finally did.

Look at how happy we are now that we’ve met.. well, we’ve both had alcohol, too

And of course, I got to meet up with Dave from Blogography again. Always a pleasure to meet up with the King of the PRB.

King.. meet Penguin.

The Best of the Rest

Adam also had a wall of photos of people’s vacation photos with “reported sightings” This is the one I sent in of Reba and I at Rockefeller Center in NYC.

Who knew that the aliens had invaded NYC. Never seen that before

Click here to view the Alien Sighting photo set.

And for those that want to see all photos, here’s the entire Flickr photo stream for Avitaween ’09

Can’t wait for next year.

UPDATE

Always dapper and ready for a photo op in the studio

As Adam pointed out in the comments, there were studio photos that were taken during the Avitaween party. Here’s the link to the entire set of studio photos.

In-N-Out

One of my favorite burger joints ever since I can remember is In-N-Out Burger. I grew up in California where there are many locations. But up until recently, In-N-Out hadn’t graced the Beehive State. The closest current location is a four-hour drive in St. George. Since my daughter and I were so close to Phoenix while visiting the Grand Canyon, it would seem wrong to not make the under two-hour trek to enjoy a tasty treat.

Fries animal style, Double Double, grilled onions, cheeseburger

Fortunately, the Salt Lake area will be getting In-N-Out locations this winter. I will have to limit my visits to once a month to keep it real [and keep me from turning into a tub of double-double goo].

Blogger Meetup

Marty and Kevin

One of the bloggers that I’ve been reading for some time now is Kevin Spencer. He’s a British guy living in Phoenix and is not only a big fan of The Cure and Depeche Mode like myself, but he also takes some very stunning and incredible perspective photos.

As it turns out, he had never met another blogger in person. I was his first, um… blogingly speaking. We decided to meet up at a place called The Fish Market.

The Fish Market in Phoenix, AZ

The food was very good and so was the company. Not only did I learn a lot more about Kevin than I knew from his blog, we had a nice chat about all sorts of subjects. And as he found out, I’m quite the chattering fool when it comes to discussing my favorite subjects.

And my daughter Tiffany joined in the conversation as well, being extra patient with her dad and a fellow blogger.

Marty, Tiffany and Kevin

It was great to meet Kevin in person and be able to put a face with the name and the pictures.

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A Quick Giveaway

Ok, to celebrate back to school time, I’ve got a few SD cards laying around that I’m going to giveaway. To enter to win, all you need to do is leave a comment on this post and mention who was your first blogger that you met in person. If you’ve not met anyone yet, then tell me what blogger event you would like to attend someday.

As shown in the picture, there is an 8gb SD card, a 2gb SD card and a 1gb SD card. I will pick 3 random comments [from 3 different people, for those that leave more than one comment]. I will announce the winners next week.

Leaving Utah

We started the drive last Thursday night, but only went 2.5 hours before stopping at the Super 8 in Price UT for the night.

Passing through Moab on the way out of town was nice. It was my first time in Moab. Yes, seriously. I’m sure I’ll visit again soon.

Four Corners

I couldn’t pass up a trip heading towards New Mexico without visiting another place I’d never visited before. My wife and I decided that it was worth the extra hour to go out of our way to go to Four Corners. We didn’t stay long, but long enough to be in all four states at once.

Look at that pose

“Ribbit!

BeerHer

We didn’t make it to Santa Fe until 9pm at night, but once we checked into our room at the Sage Inn…

… we headed to the event known as BeerHer at the Santa Fe Brewing Company.

Before this event, I had only met one other blogger in person – Dave from Blogography [who would be at TequilaCon tomorrow night]. Now, I was about to meet many more bloggers in person for the first time.

Dawg and Poppy… being the cute couple they are

Wayne, Rachel and Karl (Ren was there, too, just not in any of my pics from BeerHer)

I’m not a beer person, so it was only a single pale ale for me before heading back to our room to get some much needed sleep after a long day of driving.

Santa Fe

Waking up Saturday morning, we got ready and headed to breakfast at Zia Diner with Wayne and Ren.

and enjoying a bloody mary to start the day…

Reba had to have her iced tea as well.

We spent some time walking around downtown Santa Fe and seeing the sites.

One of the oldest Shrines in the US

Even statues are doing the Wayne pose

Modern art has a place here, too… wait… what is that hanging from the red man?

Whoa! It’s no Dirk Diggler, but it’s artful

Gambling

Turns out there are a lot of Indian Reservations in New Mexico, which most have built casinos on, and close to the outskirts of town. Wayne and Reba wanted to go gamble. I tagged along to see if I could have fun and make a little bit of extra cash. Wayne offered to drive his convertible Mustang out to Buffalo Thunder Casino. I even have video proof:

CLICK PLAY ABOVE – Quicktime Plugin Required

For a YouTube version, click here

And here’s our exit

Wayne is anxious to gamble

After we gambled for a couple of hours [and all of us breaking even], we headed back into town to get ready for TequilaCon 09.

Mirror Mirror

TequilaCon 2009

This year the venue of choice was The Pink Adobe.

Walking upstairs to the room they put us in, I met a familiar face right away – Dave from Blogography. He was chatting it up with Brandon. I wonder what Dave is asking Brandon?

“Hey buddy, got an extra candy cigarette?”

I met up again with Karl from Secondhand Tryptophan. A great guy [and twice a guest blogger here on this blog]

Dustin from Cotters In My Tummy came out in a Tequila suit, which was a complete surprise to most of us.

Diana from Geeky Tai Tai was there, getting caught on camera by Wayne.

At the end, the planning committee got their place in the spotlight. Thanks to everything they did to make this happen.

After an awesome TequilaCon came to a close, some of us stumbled went over to the Catamount Bar a few blocks down the road and continued the party.

My wife quickly made friends – everyone liked partying with her

Heading Back To Utah

After all of the fun we had, it was time to head home.

Making the long drive home

See, I told you I would visit Moab again soon

Linkage

I think I may be the last person that went to TequilaCon to submit a post. Being last has the advantage of being able to link to all of the TC posts. If that’s too much for you, here’s the TequilaCon 09 Flickr photo pool where you can see photos taken by everyone.

• Geeky TaiTai – complete w/ video scandal
• Blogography
• Cotters In My Tummy
• / \
• Libragirl
• Bellaventa
• Dawg
• Poppy
• Sarah
• Renagerie
• Iron Fist

That’s all I could find by the time this got posted. I’m sure we are all linked and will be linked at some point. If you are a blogger and you want to meet up with others, I highly recommend something like TequilaCon. It’s a way to connect with others and a nice excuse to get plowed at the same time.