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Shelbyville Illinois, July 31th to August 2nd 2015

I am trying to talk my wife into going next year already, I think the picture are helping. The 9 hour drive is going to be tough to get her to bite onto though. Looks like all that attended had a good time.

At 530 miles we had a 9.5 hour drive there and over 10 hours back. Even during the drive back the whole family was excited to attend next year.

The comradery you will experience during the gathering and friendships that you will establish are well worth the drive.

Shelbyville is a nice lake with less traffic than I expected. The area lodging is nice and reasonably priced. So many people waved at us as we drove by. The whole town was welcoming to us.
 
Living in a house for 5 days with @JCampbell 's crew and @OperationROL 's crew is like a family vacation every year for us. While the @JCampbell and @007 crews appreciate the thanks posted above for our efforts, there is no doubt that @OperationROL and @OperationROL's Wife put so much time, planning and special touches into this event it would not be "Shelbyville" without them.

Even though its repeating others sentiments, I'd like to say thank you again to all the new people who come and become part of the family. It take a lot to commit a vacation, time and travel based on just reading about this event. It seems like every new boat and every new person adds to the whole of this gathering. The time passes so fast, it's hard to get to talk with everyone in an event this size. If I could spend a day with all of you, I would. Shelbyville is my extended boating family. Glad to see so many old friends and add new ones this weekend. Lots of new stories and experiences to add to our history this weekend. There will be a 2015 annual video created in the coming weeks when everyone has time to sort thought their vacation pictures and videos and pic out their favorites.

It's a high quality problem when you cannot fit all the boats in a double raft up in one pano shot! Sorry for anyone I missed!
Double Raft Pano.JPG
 
From all of us watching this gathering remotely we sure are envious of the gathering you all put on! When this first started @Moira asked me..."Really...you want to go on vacation with people you met on the internet!?" Now we try and drive back to IL from NC when we can (flew in once, drove back last year). Such an amazing group of people with fantastic camaraderie! The [USERGROUP=3]@Administrative[/USERGROUP] team here are working on a way to set up user groups for gathering communications to make coordinating these meetings easier....hope we can come up with something! But short of that @OperationROL has said it all very well....but needs one more pat on the back for coordinating such a huge and well run event....and on top of that thanks for his help with Jetboaters.net!

Keep the photos coming!!! Praying that my companies user conference doesn't land near this next year!!!!
 
Like so many others have said , this gathering was beyond what I every expect !!!! As this was out first year ! We had so much fun and met so many people it was hard to keep everyone straight w boat names , hashtags and real names lol! As hard as we tried we were not able to meet everyone so we went ahead and booked cabin 6 for 2016 ;)

I wanted to give a shout out to everyone that does so much to make this group gathering what it is and spoiled us over the weekend ! My wife (Erin) and I would like to help out more next year in any way we can !

On a side note let the cleaning begin on this beautiful day ! image.jpg
 
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If anyone got a chance to meet Rich aka @mariahz302 you would immediately know what a wild and crazy guy he is ! After that being said I am going to hope this picture I snapped that he applys sunscreen in the very critical areas next time ! Lol
 

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Had a little run-in with the water patrol early Sunday afternoon. They were giving me the eyeball as we were getting the kids set up to tube, staging out of the elbow of cove #5. They came over & waved me down.

Dammit! What the &$@# am I doing wrong?!?

We were "busted" for practicing safe boating practices! They gave us some swag for the kids. Great way to end the weekend.

image.jpg
 
well...morgan and i made it home after a short flight. i want to first thank @jcyamaharider and @sx210owner for telling us how much fun the shelbyville gathering is when they visited us in the northwest last fall. both morgan and i agreed that the experience exceeded all of our expectations and are making a return trip next summer. literally, we came into town knowing two people and left three days later with making dozens of friends.

i expected to have three days of non-stop surfing, but instead we were treated to so much more. hearing the stories of each of you i had the pleasure of talking with brought the beauty of this forum to light. ( yes, @Boat Crazy i'm talking about you) i look forward to meeting more of you next year that i unfortunately didn't have the opportunity to talk to over the last few days.

@OperationROL ....you guys put on a hell of an event. you and the original crew should be very proud of what you've created. thanks again everyone.
@bobbie - Thanks for the complement. We are glad you made the trip out!
 
If anyone got a chance to meet Rich aka @mariahz302 you would immediately know what a wild and crazy guy he is ! After that being said I am going to hope this picture I snapped that he applys sunscreen in the very critical areas next time ! Lol


@mariahz302 I have an ohio state ball cap you can borrow next year....
 
Shelbyville withdrawal is a real thing. I'm sitting out on my swim deck on Pewaukee Lake with my wife and kids as I type this , yet somehow I'm lonely. No one to tie up to, no new faces to finally put with screen names, no new cool toys to try out.


But enough with the sad stuff. Man, did we have fun! As a newbie, I really did feel like I pretty much knew everyone already, and the warm welcome everyone gave me was so great. And not just me, but my entire crew felt right at home. I'm definitely glad that my crew had such a great time, because it gives all of them a glimpse into why I love the forum so much. It's the people!

I double all the thanks that everyone has given about the event, and want to give a special thank you to @buckbuck and his crew for taking my friend Adrian and I out surfing. You guys are excellent teachers of the sport and gave us all the confidence in the world; enough that we both did way better than I would have expected for our first try.

Even though I didn't get to officially meet everyone there, I feel like I know everyone who attended. That's how friendly the event is. One piece of advice I can give any potential newbies next year, is try and get there early, and stay as long as possible. Two days on the water is just not enough.
 
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Breaking news.....we are shopping for a dodge ram. we are bringing two teenagers and a 2014 212x to shelbyville 2016. no one will ever take the longest haul away from us!
 
Wow that is awesome !!!!@bobbie !!!
 
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Breaking news.....we are shopping for a dodge ram. we are bringing two teenagers and a 2014 212x to shelbyville 2016. no one will ever take the longest haul away from us!
Pics or it didn't happen.
 
Breaking news.....we are shopping for a dodge ram. we are bringing two teenagers and a 2014 212x to shelbyville 2016. no one will ever take the longest haul away from us!
Was it the pictures or your comments that made them want to be here next year? either way, Thats awesome! See you there.
 
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I am trying to talk my wife into going next year already, I think the picture are helping. The 9 hour drive is going to be tough to get her to bite onto though. Looks like all that attended had a good time.
I'm working on doing the same thing with my wife and I'm getting the same resistance. We haven't discussed vacation plans for next summer yet, but rest assured that Shelbyville is gonna be on the table.
 
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