Washington Apple Pi has a long history. While it was first formally called "Washington Apple Pi" in late 1978, the organization, in its pre-organized existance, started in 1977, after some early computer pioneers got together in living rooms, garages, and dining rooms to explore the marvelous Apple II and teach each other how to install memory, get the machine to print on a dot matrix printer, and play tic-tac-toe.
Over the years, Washington Apple Pi grew to thousands of members, with SIGs (Special Interest Groups) focused on art, photography, women (men could come, too), programming (several different languages), UNIX, network administration, and local SIGs located in the Delmarva (Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, DC) region.
Washington Apple Pi West (not really part of Washington Apple Pi) is the farthest offshoot of Washington Apple Pi, located in the upper left hand corner of the United States. This hardy band of Macintosh, iPad, iPhone, Apple Watch, and HomePod users (sorry, no Apple II computers) brave the long winter nights, cougars, black bears, elk, deer, and Sasquatch to probe the wonders of the modern world, in between Internet outages brought on by wind, rain, and more wind and rain. Sometime earthquakes, but mostly wind and rain.
A Washington Apple Pi West meeting held on the shores of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, the strait named after a possibly fictitious Greek navigator on a Spanish ship exploring the west coast of North America. In the background, beyond the fuzzy outline of a supertanker, you absolutely cannot see Mt. Baker, a massive mountain considered the most dangerous volcano in North America, even when it isn't obscured by wind and rain. Photo by Lawrence I. Charters. Click on photo for a larger image.
A Washington Apple Pi West meeting held near New Dungeness Light. Members decided to swim out to the lighthouse, roughly a mile away, to test if the Apple Watch really was water resistant, but the chilly saltwater (38ºF) quickly convinced them to just take Apple's word for it. Off to the left is Victoria, British Columbia, obscured by wind and rain. That's a 12 mile swim, and there were no takers. Photo by Lawrence I. Charters. Click on photo for a larger image.
In preparation for The Great Washington Shakeout, Pi West members travelled to the Dungeness River Restoration area. Given that the Shakeout is intended to prepare residents for a massive earthquake and tsunami, this sign was somewhat off-putting, and everyone moved to a restaurant miles away and several hundred feet higher. Photo by Lykara I. Ryder. Click on photo for a larger image.