AKA 40th Annual Convention Recap
by Jim Gasior

Well, the 2002 AKA convention in St Louis is history and for those of you who couldn’t make it, you missed a great time. St. Louis should be sincerely thanked for all of their efforts and tremendous work. Luckily we had a good WAKO representation but more on that later.

There was a group of us (Gary, Norm, Susan, Gerhard and myself)
who piled into Gary’s van on Friday morning. Out of the five of us, four were “morning
people” so we got an early start. They were decent enough to let me catch up on my beauty sleep on the way down... Since I was in one piece when they woke me in St. Louis, I assume that there were no problems on the road.

The hotel was the same one the club used the last time they had a convention. It was very nice. Gary, Gerhard and I shared a room. It’s a good thing that I got extra sleep going down. I needed all of it with Gary’s snoring. I’ve heard worse but the boy is good. He can go from complete silence to a noise that shakes the bed and then back to silence all within a couple of minutes.

Anyway, we met up with John Pinkowski, Ernie, and their spouses, and John Metzger and his son Jed. Darlene was already organizing WAKO’s fish room sale. We all took orders from “Mistress Darlene.” I knew we were all in trouble when I saw her dressed in black leather carrying a whip. However as in three prior conventions, she did an excellent job.

Friday afternoon into early Sat. morning was spent trying to get about 2 dozen pairs of fish registered. You may ask why it took about 13 hours — one word — computers. That would be my only complaint about the convention. Registration really sucked and, once again, as in many other shows, computer problems were to blame. It’s amazing that our club can accomplish in a few hours what it takes other clubs with computers to do in 4 times the time. I hate the damn things and if anyone in our club suggest we ever use one, you’ll automatically be elected permanent WAKO president as punishment. (lookout Marty!). In regard to the
seminars — kind of a good news, bad news situation. The club members and I missed most of them due to running the fish sale room and judging. The good news is that Liz Hutchings authorized all the judges to get video of all the seminars. I’ll be getting one for free which then becomes part of our library and available to all WAKO members.

Although I was only marginally involved in the fish sale, as I said Darlene and WAKO did a great job. We also had help from John Driscoll and Brad Higgins, WAKO/CKA members who hopefully will get back heavily into fish. It looked like there were about 1000 pairs of fish in the sale with over 95% of them being sold in the first few hours. Darlene ran it well with everyone having an opportunity to buy at least a couple pairs of fish that they just had to have.

The fish display at the convention had about 300 plus entries. The native class was the nicest I’ve ever seen. The Rivulus group was also bigger than normal. Wotjech would have died and gone to heaven with all the dull gray, black and brown Rivulus available. Actually they had some really pretty ones — the nicest of course were Norm and Susan's but I’m not biased.

WAKO did good in the award category bringing home at least 8 trophies. The bad news is that WAKO did not win the “Affiliated Club” award. The members attending the convention made a great effort, but we needed some help from the rest of you. Michigan won it...but those guys are almost as cool as we are so that’s okay!

The Saturday night talk and banquet were above average. Look to Charles and Sue Harrison’s website to see pictures of the event. For once I was at a table that was picked first to eat. I guess our club looked the hungriest! The talk was on Nothos. Even after a long day and on a full stomach, I was able to stay awake so you know that it was a good one. I just wish I could breed those fish — they’re so pretty. What was kind of cool is that there was a black wedding in the next room that had a great jazz band playing so the slides had a musical accompaniment.

Sunday’s auction started on time. This is probably due to the efforts of Jim and Liz Hutchings who organized the show breadkdown. Both have always done an incredible job at every convention every year. All of our club members bought more fish then they originally intended so some young pairs should be available at our November WAKO show. Undoubtedly the most exciting part of the auction was watching John Metzger’s pair of A. mimbon sell for $244, the most expensive pair of fish auctioned that day! We need to start showing this boy some respect — or at least his fish.

As stated, a great time was had by all. Although many WAKO members were present, we sincerely missed those of you who couldn’t make it. Hopefully we can share some of our offspring(fish, that is) with all of you.

Gary, thanks again for the van and doing all the driving...but your snoring still sucks.