Metaplanar Babel

Well, I’m back. We had a great time in Austin - I really enjoyed being in a large-ish city again, after being in western Virginia for hrm.. like 8 years now, I guess. Also nice to see a real roleplaying game/anime/comic shop. Overall, Austin wasn’t really what I expected (a good thing, I think), being much more liberal and less cowboy than the usual Texan stereotype. I enjoyed the hot weather (it’s still only in the 50s to 60s here, boo), the company was great (cruinh’s cat is too cute for words), and much fun was had by all.

Thanks to cruinh, I got to experience the beginning of Jade Empire, Katamari Damacy, and a few other games (edit: including the ever-so-fun Ninja Burger, which I forgot to mention originally, as cruinh so kindly pointed out ). We also played a couple rounds of Rise of Nations, Tekken 5, and Soul Calibur II. We watched a few movies, had dinner with Patterson and the Jazzcat, spent some time on 6th street downtime (street of clubs, oi), and saw the world’s largest urban bat colony. Alas, we missed the Austin Air Guitar Finals, because they ended up not actually starting until about 11pm on Saturday night, and we had to fly out semi-early Sunday.

Jon also ran a mini-Earthdawn game; we got to play for a few hours with ~12th circle characters, which was fun (and fairly eye-opening as to how incredibly powerful magic and journeymen eventually become). I’m hoping we’ll actually try to keep running something with the three of us, using some form of VoIP and Fantasy Grounds. I really think it could work, though Jon had this wild idea to design some sort of virtual living room so there would be visual representations of the players and stuff, which I kinda think might be overkill. Ultimately, the roleplaying game experience can be narrowed down to the voice of those involved and dice if the system uses it, so I think all the other stuff is just overcomplication and distraction. That’s just me though.

Anyway, we had an awesome time and were very glad cruinh was willing to put up with us. I have some more to say, but it’s mostly ranting about various travel problems we hit, so I’ll understand if you don’t actually want to read it.

I actually wrote a long rant on the flight down to Austin, but I think I’ll just sum up here: basically, Dulles airport sucks. They’re doing a ton of construction, the whole place is torn up and dirty and confusing. To top that, we were stuck between 3 children on the flight down, one of which was sick, and another of which had a cry like a stuck air siren that makes my head ache just remembering it. Jon and I are not kid people; we don’t deal well with them, especially not for prolonged periods of time in very close quarters. Fortunately, the Austin airport, while small, was very clean and nice.

On our way back, we had a very nice flight, though it was a little bumpy at times. No loud kids, no annoying people around us. It was nice and quiet. Then we get back to Dulles. We’re dropped off at this ground concourse that doesn’t even really have gates at all - the planes just pull up to a building, put the stairs down, and out we go. We had to take a bus to the terminal that seemed to be a mile or more away. The bus was nicer than the usual method of transportation between concourses (which are these bizarro ex-military-transport looking things that they cram people into like sardines, only with less room to breathe). When we finally got to the main terminal, we had to wind through a number of only semi-well marked hallways to get back to the main areas. Amazingly, we found the food court (which is pretty much completely hidden from normal passengers). Then we had to wander around trying to figure out how to actually get out to the parking shuttles, because we ended up between the high-trafficked ends. Then we had to pack like sardines in a bus to go back to the parking lot, behind this couple who brought their baby in a very large stroller onto the bus and pretty much blocked the entire aisle. They were nice enough though, so I can’t really complain overmuch about them.

Once we got back to our car, we should have been home free, right? Oh no. Not hardly. See, Dulles has parking shuttles go through an open lane around the payment kiosks, but for some stupid reason, they go through the one of the far left, then have to cut across 6 lanes of traffic so they can turn right onto the road into the airport. Naturally, everyone else is going left to get back to the highway. Perfect! Naturally, there isn’t a light at this intersection, or even a 3-way stop. You just have to sit there until traffic is clear both ways (which takes a while during the Sunday evening rush). Then you have to hope that you can get into the correct lane through some form of divination, because the signs telling you which lane goes where are actually past where the lanes diverge. And God help you if you want to go back to I66 West, because that sign isn’t even visible until you’ve gone completely past the exit. Even more amusingly, when you finally get most of the way into D.C. to pick up I66 East (because you mistakenly assume that where there is a 66 east, there should also be a 66 west), you can’t even GO west. You have to drive some more into D.C., find a good sidestreet, and hope like hell that you eventually find a west exit. Anyway, we finally found our way back home, though it took us a good hour longer than it should have. Fun for all~