EXTRA! EXTRA! SPECIAL REPORT!

We interrupt this regularly scheduled Travel Blog to bring you important news about

your car insurance…no wait, about my trip to GEN CON. It was August 14-17 in Indianapolis, Indiana. It was my second GEN CON and the first in Indy.

Five of us loaded up in a borrowed Chevy Avalanche and headed out at 5pm on Thursday afternoon. We arrived after 8 hours on the road (we lost an hour) at 2am. After relatively no sleep the first night, we arose at 7 am to make our first scheduled event by 9am. We checked in at registration (even though we were already registered) to get maps and catalogs of the events, not to mention our goody bags. Then it was off to another hotel (the Omni) to our first gaming event, Aces & Eights. We had a short 3 block walk (luckily it didn’t rain all weekend) and got started. None of us had ever played it so we were all newbies. One of the judges was sick so our group got combined with another for a total of about 14 people having an old west shootout. It was one of the highlights of the con. I’ll never forget my immortal teenage dentist being shot in the thigh the second round and crippled and fighting my way down main street being dragged by a guy with a musket. I couldn’t walk, run, or hop so I was the target for all seven of our opponents. I must’ve been shot at 40-50 times that game session and would never be hit again. At the end of the match (we lost btw) only me and another guy lived on my side and our worthy opponents chose to let me live because I must be immortal. Three of the five of us went and bought the rule books for the game as soon as we left. Then it was on the the convention hall to pour over the hundreds of booths. One crappy lunch at the convention hall later and we were on our way to our second event, SPANC the cardgame. It was a Steve Jackson game and had Phil Foglio artwork on the cards (which is why I signed up to play it in the first place) but is no longer being made. At the end of our game (which I won) they told us it was being reprinted sometime soon. I also caught a glimpse of the Munchkin boardgame coming soon which interests me. In the convention hall I would see the guest of honor of the convention, Peter Mayhew (Chewbacca). I was thrilled but not enough to pay $20 for his autograph. So I snapped a picture and moved on. Jerid had the most exciting moment of the convention when, later when he went outside to smoke, had the privilege of bumming a cigarette off of Peter. And I didn’t even know Wookiees smoked.

We would spend the rest of the afternoon on the first day perusing the wares of all the vendors and spending a bunch of money (well I did anyway) including a copy of ‘The Last Night on Earth’ zombie game. I got to meet a couple of the actors in the game and we played it that night in the hotel room. It was fun also. That night, we got to play the zombie game and watch Michael Phelps win medal number 7 by 1/100 of a second over that Serbian guy. Amazing. And all around patriotic moment of the trip.

We would stay up late that night also with Keith giggling like a school girl and playing pranks on the first to fall asleep. (Jerid, you should see the pictures)

The next day, amazingly, I was the first to rise at around 7am and we were off for our final day of the convention. We had to be back before Sunday morning for several of the guys. We only had one event scheduled that day at around 1pm I think. It was D&D 4^th edition. Little did we know it would be such a hassle to get the game going but finally we did and had fun doing it. Then we were off to head home after buying a bunch more stuff ( I got mad crazy on Starship Troopers minis) and eating. I got home around 230am Sunday morning I think. Here’s a list of the games I bought while there:

Aces & Eights Hardcover rule book

Aces & Eights NPC book

Red Star roleplaying game book d20 (discontinued)

Pulp City Heroes and Villians starter packs

Starship Troopers RPG and Miniatures game books plus almost every mini for the game.

Dice.

Last Night on Earth boardgame

Frag the card game PVP edition

A t-shirt with an Andrew Bawidamann design

Other stuff.

I’ve basically got enough RPG stuff to last for a couple of years.

The guys had so much fun on this trip I think we’re going to take a MAN-cation every year now.

I’ll keep you updated on where we go next year.

As for how my list is going: #937 Learn the Books of the Bible in Order: I’ve got down the New Testament, the Old Testament is giving me trouble…I’ll keep at it.

#694 Go to GEN CON again --- completed!

R.I.P. Gary Gygax

March 4, 2008

A Denver at Leisure

Train's Great Western Adventure Travel Blog Part III-Denver at Leisure

Day 3 –Denver Area at Leisure 6/27/08 Total milage to this point: 1309miles

I awoke early, before my alarm and Emma, at around 6 a.m. to get the whole family ready to go to Scott’s work at FEMA. Scott had invited us to tour his office the night before. Luckily we were spending the night here again so I didn’t have to pack the car this morning. That was probably one of the best things about that day.

We drove over to the Federal complex where we underwent the expected, post 9/11 rigamarole to get on the premises. The security guard asked to see our driver’s licenses and asked us to roll the windows down. I rolled down the back window without thinking and caught the shade in the door. I would have to pull out my knife later to operate on the door when Parker freaked out because I hadn’t listed it as a weapon when the guard asked if I had any weapons in the car.

We finally got to Scott’s building which was really just a big bunker underground and toured his facility. Another checkpoint and metal detector later, we were wandering through the halls of FEMA region VIII which looked a whole lot like C.T.U.

I fully expected Jack Bauer to walk past us and I met their equivalent of Chloe.

I yelled at her, “I need real time satellite imaging over my location downloaded to my palm pilot STAT!” She really didn’t seem to get my brand of humor.

We chatted with Scott and his co-workers where Emma was a big hit and left around 9 a.m. to begin our day in earnest and go get some breakfast at a place Scott recommended, Davies’ Chuckwagon Diner. It looked like one of those diners from the 50’s but served a steak and eggs breakfast for $4.75. It was great. At our booth we planned our day and decided to hit Buffalo Bill’s grave first in Golden, CO which was not far away.

A good hour of driving and stopping later, we stopped momentarily at a park to take in the view and put sunscreen on Emma as it was still pushing 90 degrees today. Two deer were feeding less than 15 feet from us while we took care of our business not caring how much noise we made. We snapped some photos and continued up the mountain to Lookout Point where we saw Buffalo Bill’s grave and gift shop. I hope there isn’t a gift shop near my grave. There was also a museum which only Parker wanted to go through for the low price of $1.00. We were too busy sweating. Someone even collapsed in the parking lot probably from heat exhaustion. They aren’t used to heat up there.

We used the facilities and Parker got a canteen as a souvenir and we took the Lariat Loop scenic road for the view and drove scenic highway 72 up to Estes Park stopping the whole way to take pictures. It was scenic but that caused me to spend the better part of the day driving 25-30 m.p.h. When we got to Rocky Mountain National Park we bought an annual national park pass for $80 and drove straight up the highest mountain in the park. It took forever, but we finally reached the Alpine Visitor’s center and the wind must’ve been blowing 30 m.p.h. We bundled up Emma and attempted to walk the 200 yards to the summit but Jen and Emma had to turn back half way up. It was just getting too cold and she wasn’t properly dressed. We were at 12,000 feet so the temperature had fallen way down. Parker and I descended from the summit to enter the gift shop, bought a Christmas ornament and magnet and snapped a few more photos before heading down the mountain. We saw plenty of Elk and melting snow on the way down. Still no moose.

We drove back via Boulder, CO because we needed to meet Scott and Carmen for supper and we’d already spent most of the day driving. (We ate our lunch at a picnic table entering Roosevelt National Forest btw where we fed the Chipmunks Pringles) Before we got all the way back to Denver, I decided I wanted to see Red Rocks which Jen did not…at first. Later, she would admit it was a pretty neat place. When we arrived, a concert was about to kick off for a band called “widespread panic” so there were literally thousands of cars there and it looked like a modern Woodstock with all the tie-dye shirts and dopeheads. (We did smell a peculiar aroma) We wound up driving through the open areas of the park which was probably for the best because we still had to get to Denver to meet up for supper. We punched in the address into the GPS for Maggiano’s which was recommended by Scott and arrived at 8:45 p.m. We felt a bit underdressed but went in anyways and had a family style dinner with Lasagna, Chicken Parmesan, and Chicken Marsala. It was very filling and very good. We left at around 10:30 pm and got back to the hotel room and packed until midnight, for tomorrow we headed off to Rapid City, SD.

Emma's Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.

P.S. This blog fulfills the requirements for #525 and for #914 day, I will attempt 937. Learn the Books of the Bible in order. The next post should tell you if I was successful.