My color is starting to return, I'm confident it'll make a full recovery. Challenge accepted
My original post was intended to improve future pickup points for future competitions so we don't end up with people with a bad taste, and we'll continue to have participation going forward. It wasn't meant to fault anyone specifically, just a situation we can improve or avoid.
I'm down for a side color up contest, even if it's just for bragging rights or maybe a "title" tag for the username. Or toss in some cash for a payout for the winner of that category, like in the past.
No way in hell Jose intended for any advantage in the contest for himself. He's a great reefer and has a good rep with the community. He was unable to stay on Saturday but had he been able to be there to oversee the comp frags I don't think we'd be having these complaints. We also need to appreciate the fact he drove to LOA 2x for pickup and back to Ali's for drop offs. Same goes to Emac, thank you both.
Maybe going forward we can secure a secondary backup for overseeing check-in pickups for frag totals and provide a temperature controlled climate for the comp frags (within reason). So everyone starts with a solid/even base frag. I believe that's where some stress came from, maybe they got a little too cold? Not enough to kill them, but lose some color. Like shipping would have done in most cases from my experience. Ali didn't have any skin in the game, he just let us all use his store for a pickup location. LOA cut a deal for a bulk purchase but still had to chop all the frags, mount and heal them. At the end of the day we got a nice coral that we need to put some work into.
I'm all for the contest going forward. I don't see the need for anyone to bow out. I'd wager 99-100% of us don't care about the pay out as much as just engaging and seeing who does better and trying to find why to improve our own systems. Also the key is stability until the beginning of next year, a lot can happen in that time.