COLONPALOOZA 6 UPDATE

Ahoy everyone -

Wanted to give you all an update on CP6 and reach out for some input:

Kick-off party:

Thursday night, November 6th at a WAY COOL venue steps from the hotel. This is a great opportunity to finally meet the folks you have chatted with here on CSN and sites like My CRC Connections and Colon Club or catch-up with folks you haven't seen since CP5.


Wine Country Tour:

Friday - November 7th

We will leave between 09:00 and 10:00 on Friday morning - less weekend traffic at these spots on a Friday. We plan to stop at 4 or 5 wineries in Sonoma (including Francis Ford Coppola's Rosso & Bianco Winery, Iron Horse Winery, Rodney Strong Vinyards, and a couple others) and end at the Viansa Winery for a late lunch - personal experience, the winery is absolutely gorgeous and the food is fantastic! The wineries ship to most states so you don't need to worry about trying to carry any purchases home on the plane. These wineries all have websites so check them out! We should be back to the hotel around 5:30 or 6:00

It will be an all day affair. The Sonoma wine country is about an hour's drive from the hotel. A bus will pick us up and drop us off at the hotel. We can either take a small tour bus or a large tour bus. Cost for the bus transportation will be about $50 per person. We plan to reach out to the wineries and see if we can negotiate a gratis or discounted tasting flight at each - but it will help negotiations if we have a fairly accurate head-count.

We also are making some inquiries to see if it's possible to get some donated wines to sample on the bus and to give away as prizes for a few games we have cooked up to make our trip more enjoyable. This isn't going to be like your 5th grade schoolbus field trip!


Alcatraz:

Saturday - November 8th

The rate is $26.50 per person which includes the ferry ride and the tour. It's all set up for a boat departure between 10:30 and 11:30. It will be about a three hour tour... a three hour tour (hopefully the boat we take over won't end-up on Gilligan's island!) We are presently confirmed for 30 people.

We really need an accurate head count for both the Alcatraz and wine country tour by September 10th. After September 10th we won't be able to guarantee that folks will be able to get in. We need the head count so we can lock-in tickets to Alcatraz, figure out how big a bus we need, negotiate deals with wineries, and figure out how many prizes we'll need to have for the trip.

You can confirm and ask any questions by dropping us a note here on CSN, posting a reply to this post, or sending an e-mail to " colonpalooza6@yahoo.com ".

Some of you may not be familiar with ColonPalooza... Check out the website at: www.colonpalooza.com There is a tab there specifically for CP6.

Hope to see you there!

SpongeBob & usakat