Mensa Writings

Come to the Dayton RG

©2003 Beth Weiss

From my vast experience of attending RGs for one year, I’m going to try and convince you to come to the Dayton RG in April. You can come for any of the high points of an RG: the food, the hotel, the games, the programs, the socializing, the dance….

You may have read that Dayton bills its RG as having “Dayton-style Hospitality”—but you may not know what that means.  Dayton’s reputation for great food is widespread.  I recently heard a Chicago area Mensan say “You’re from Dayton.  They do Hospitality better than anyone.”  Hospitality includes full home-cooked meals (Friday night dinner, 3 meals on Saturday, brunch on Sunday).  Hospitality also includes constant munchies in the Hospitality room.  Those munchie foods generally include chips, dips, veggies, meats, cheeses, homemade cookies and chocolates, ice cream bars, hot dogs...  And all that is available 24 hours a day.  If you missed lunch because you were doing something else, you can grab a hot dog snack a bit later.  (Or if you ate lunch, but need an extra meal slipped in there, it’s available.)   It’s important to know that calories consumed at an RG do not count.

Now, since you’re local, you can always choose to stay at home and drive to the hotel each day.  But as long as I’m convincing you, I’m going to go whole-hog.  DON’T DO THAT!   Call the DoubleTree and reserve your room.  You want to stay at the hotel.  There are a million zillion reasons to stay at the hotel, but the most important is that the RG doesn’t keep 9 to 5 hours.  It keeps 24 hours a day hours—and that means that no matter when you go home, you’re apt to miss something.  Remember, Hospitality is open 24 hours a day—and so is the Games Room.  The hotel has an indoor pool and a hot tub as well as an exercise room.  There will be extended pool/hot tub hours for the RG, so if you need a little soak after some late evening socializing—or as a place to do your late hour socializing, it’ll be there.

RG games are both organized and unorganized, ordinary and extraordinary.   The planned games include tournaments—euchre, double deck-cancellation hearts (more on that in a future article), Create-A-Game, and a Guess the Game Contest, as well as whatever else our gamesmeister has planned.   You’ll see people playing Scrabble, various rail games, True Greed, Encore, Wizard, and just about anything else that the gamesmeister owns or someone thinks to bring.  It is always polite to ask if you can join in or kibitz.  And if someone asks someone near you to play, ask if you can play, too.  We’re a friendly group.

A lot of the programs this year are about various aspects of rocks and mining.  There will also be Water Aerobics, Name That Tune, and the “16 Tons” singing.  Who knows what else our speaker chair will have planned?   

And finally, there’s the socializing.  People sit around and talk at RGs.  But what makes that more interesting that “standard” sitting around and talking is that these are all Mensans (or guests of Mensans) and those conversations can and do go off in a million different directions.   And these conversations take place at all hours—over meals, before meals, after meals, during snacks (I said Dayton does a great job with Hospitality, didn’t I?).  There will be plenty of people to talk with—and you’re sure to find topics of mutual interest.

And what about the dance?  I’m not the DJ and I haven’t spoken to him so I can’t make any promises.  But if last year is any indication, if you’re into late 70s/early/mid 80s (and Prince) music, you will love what is played at the dance.  And he takes requests.  He keeps playing music until the dancers quit dancing.  None of this “end the dance at 1:00 am” stuff in Dayton.  Dayton doesn’t do that.  Dayton keeps going until no one wants to dance anymore.  So if you’re one of those people who loves to dance and thinks the music always stops too soon, the Dayton RG is where you will want to be that Saturday night.

 So those are the reasons I can think of to go to the Dayton RG.   Dance until dawn, eat until you don’t want to eat any more, lounge in the pool, chat with new and old friends, play Hearts until you’re too tired to hold the cards anymore.  Have I convinced you?  Hope to see you there!