Yeah. I know this has been a long time coming. Still, things have been busy. The last few weeks, I have worked enough hours that they literally had to cut entire shifts off me - which I then had errands, chores, and other sundry crap to do instead of write.
Frustrating.
Still, I figured I'd best get this written now, because I am about to take another trip, this time to Bellevue, WA for the Grand Opening of Dragon's Lair Comics & Fantasy® Bellevue.
I'm pretty stoked. Gonna stay with my brother and his fiance and help usher in the first Dragon's Lair Comics & Fantasy® franchise!
But since I'm planning on writing about that fairly extensively and even taking a camera with me on the trip (*gasp!*), I'd had to be an entire trip behind on writing.
(I do seem to be taking a lot of trips lately, don't I?)
The Trenchcoat Mafia goes on Vacation: Part II: The Knights in Slightly Tarnished Armor Enter the Basement!
Before I continue on with the tale of the trip, a few random thoughts I've had on the subject of vacation. I never really understood the purpose of vacation as a kid, except in the abstract, because we really didn't go on many (and the one time we went, I got horribly sick. I've been scared of Houston ever since!)
Really? The purpose of a vacation should be clear to everyone, even in the abstract: escape from your real life and go visit a fantasy life for a little while. Go see people. See places. Do things you don't normally get to do, even if it's just laze around the house in your underwear and scratch yourself while you watch way too much television and eat like a college fratboy.
The truth is, no one really wants to hear about someone else's vacation unless it's in a coffee table book, a travelogue with pretty pictures or comes complete with gratuitous and salacious gossip. I'm much the same: why do I want to see slideshows of places I can't go to or of people I've never met?
I also believe vacations are journeys - miniature walkabouts, side quests and tangential experiences in life that usually provide pivotal insight, restoration, or even a goal to reach in everyday life. If I work this long and save this way, I can go to this place.
It's those journeys, revelations and insights that I think are what fascinate us about travel stories - what was learned, experienced, gained? (Or, if you're a RP'er - what was your XP and loot?)
So that's why I'm boring you with vacation entries; because it was quite a journey.
I chronicled the journey from Autin, TX to Dayton, OH. Ben and I had made it to Dayton in one peice, albeit tired, sore, hungry and in desperate need of a shower.
The last few minutes of the drive were like something out of a movie: great traffic, beautiful lighthing and a sky that cannot be described; so many colors of blue and gray backlit by the sun, mottled by cotton-puff clouds that looked like they had been carved out of boiling foam and hung in the sky at the absolute perfect angle for casual artistry.
Despite being tired and sore and smelling like I'd been in a car for hours, I swear I could hear the hopeful soundtrack playing in the background as we drove over the bridge from Kentucky into Ohio and from Cincinnati into Dayton.
Ben was practically bouncing in his chair as he drove. I thought he was gonna make a mad dash for the bathroom. Even though he was quivering like a kid waiting to attack Christmas presents, he still kept up his running commentary on Dayton, pointing out landmarks and historical houses and various places we might or might no go.
We pulled up outside Ben and Bri's house, and I was once again struck by something: there was snow. Piles of the stuff. All over the place. It was wet and cold and the novelty had certainly worn off by the time we climbed from the car.
The house was a neat little old house, looking like it was probably built in the 1940's - Ben and Bri had painted it charming blues and reds and left it looking all together cheerful and quite like it belonged on a street full of such houses - which it was.
Oddly enough, this is the kind of place Ben has lived a lot; he's from a small town in Texas called Marble Falls and is country boy at heart. Though he's emerged as an idealist and something of a mystic, he's grown up with a family life and circumstances that fits the American Dream like a glove. In a lot of ways, he's still living it.
Now, don't get me wrong when I say that. It's fantastic. Every time I get to step into his world for a little while, I emerge the better for it. Cleaner, wiser, seeing the world as a brighter and better place than I did before. I always walk away from time in Ben's world with a feeling of hope and optimism.
Why?
Because his life is like it is. Because I know there are people for whom every day is not a financial struggle or who live well; who live simply and with joy in the small things. People who know how to take pride in how their house or yard looks.
For me? That's something I could never get joy out of. I never did find the joy in fixing up my house - just the very idea of it makes me ache all over. I'm not mechanically or artistically inclined, at least not that direction. I can fix almost anything, given time and research. But to paint a house? To renovate a house, as they've done?
I would hate it. It would make me miserable.
The very idea of a Homeowner's Assocation fills me with fear and rage.
Yet, it probably wouldn't bother Ben nearly as much as it bothers me - if at all.
Visiting Ben's world reminds me of all the things I love about my own life, as well as reminding me that just because someone lives in a neighborhood where what your yard looks like matters doesn't mean that there isn't joy to be found there and that such aspects of life aren't just horrid obligations sucking the fun out of life - as they would be to me.
We got out of the car and I staggered around a bit, getting feeling back in my legs and dealing with the fact that there was hole in my boot. I'd discovered it in Nashville, TN and though I'd duct taped it, melting snow was still seeping in and freezing the side of my foot.
Ben got out of the car and made that mad dash I was talking about. Not to the bathroom, but to his wife, whom he hadn't seen in weeks, while he'd been in Autin job searching - she was waiting for him in the doorway. Leaving me, the born-and-bred Texan who knows nothing about snow, to somehow navigate the two entire steps up the walkway to his front porch. (Yes. His house has a covered front porch, and it is awesome.)
So what do I do?
I fall flat on my face. In the snow. My cell phone flew out of my shirt pocket (and though I didn't know it at the time), so did my iPod. WIth as much dignity as I could salvage, I picked myself up, wiped my phone off on my ragged pants, and stumbled, slipped and sort of skated the rest of the way to his porch and into the warmth of his house.
The first thing his wife says to me? "Take off your pants." In her defense, she also told me to take off my boots, because was a bit wet from my faceplant.
Not as awkward as you'd think, if you know Bri. She's a great balance to Ben, who's brain is always running away without the rest of him, leaving him racing to catch up with it before it gets into too much mischief without the rest of him there to enjoy it, too. Bri is very grounded, rooted, and practical.
Greetings could wait. I was dripping on her floor.
Have I mentioned I don't travel well? I don't. It took me awhile to get settled in, including finding a good place from which I could write/be online/do work.
Yeah. My vacation had a bit of work associated with it, but my job is such that I don't currently have a trained backup person, meaning even when I go out of town on vacation, there are still things - some of them daily - that I needed to be doing. The Dragon's Lair Comics & Fantasy® Dispatch, for example. Or site updates. Or the GAMA 2010 Power Retailer Awards Submission.
Still, compared to normal, that was a light workload that I didn't really need to sweat about. I was able to get online, call a few folk and let them know Ben and I had made it in safe and step outside for a smoke.
Smoking on someone's classic front porch is actually pretty freakin' cool.
It was freezing outside, but I was warm enough - Ben had given me a nice pair of leather gloves and a pair of warm houseshoes, so smoking outside was no hardship.
We had a pleasant dinner (home cooked!) and went to bed; it was colder - much colder - than I was used to, but I slept like the dead. Sleeping in was wonderful. I woke up stiff and sore and frozen, but I figured a long, hot shower would cure that.
Normally, I would have been right.
However, Ben and Bri's house, having been built back in the day, didn't have what you would call an ample supply of hot water, so there was no long, hot shower. Instead, I frantically showered as quickly as I could before the hot water in their shower ran out.
If there was one thing I would have changed about that vacation, it was their shower. (Though, I get the feeling they would have changed it out, too!)
None the less, Ben had a solution for his frozen Texan; lots of wonderful hot tea - Ben is a Tea Snob and has lots and lots of absolutely fantastic teas - and a hot, home-cooked breakfast of bacon, eggs, and toast definitely set the right tone for the day.
Then Ben dropped it on me. The News. The awesome, excellent, fantastic new that I would get to sit in with his gaming group.
That's right. My first full day in Dayton? I was going to get to role-play. Not only that, I was going to get to play with a system I hadn't gotten to use before - Paizo's Pathfinder. Pathfinder has been out for awhile and is basically a revision of the old D20 system from D&D 3.5. It's been advertised as D&D 3.75.
Yeah. I was excited. I rarely get to game in person anymore - and though my online gaming group is pretty much awesome, I've missed having a real tabletop game.
Unfortunately for me, I had several hours between the morning and gaming. How was I supposed to wait all day to game? I've been a gamer since my age could be measured in single digits - gaming is one of those things that I'll go out of my way to get to do, burning money, gas, time and energy with wild, reckless abandon for.
(Why yes. Yes, I am a geek. Thanks for noticing.)
So Ben decided to distract me with a museum. I was suffering from Epic Writer's Clog and his friend Angela (from his gaming group, now known forever in my brain now as the Dayton Irregulars) was at loose ends.
You know how most folk collect things? Coins, games, cards, cars, stamps, seashells, etc? So does Ben. However, Ben collects people the way I collect pens. But Ben is very selective about the kind of people he collects - he only collects interesting and fascinating and odd/off-the-wall/out of ambit and lost in the in-between that sits in the middle of completely nucking futs and boring, mundane members of a semi-productive society.
This is not to say Ben doesn't interact with/like/befriend people all across the spectrum - because he does. But there are some of us who gravitate into his sphere of influence in some strange sociological analogue of quantum physics - it doesn't make sense, unless you just decide that it does and work backwards from there.
Angela is one of those people.
Softly spoken, quietly sparkly, subtly intelligent, unobtrusively sophisticated, gently sarcastic and utterly awesome. She's a fantastic artist and a gifted hostess (who treated us to amazing Earl Grey tea in awesome teacups) and managed to not only put up with Ben and I for several hours without backup or shiny distraction, going gamely along with whatever approximation of a plan we concocted.
And if you know the two of us well at all, you should now feel great sympathy and respect for this brave woman.
I like museums. I don't get to go very often anymore, so when I do get to go, it's a special treat - and the Dayton Art Institute was a lot of fun. I got to see some amazing bits of art, wander, talk art, philosophy and pretty much be an academic for a few hours, which is something I don't get to indulge in much these days.
We saw some amazing examples of glass blowing (which I want to someday learn) and got to see some fantastic oriental weapons and armor from the Edo period and I got to explain to Angela the reason katana swords are shaped like they are and how they worked in actual combat. (Not the way you'd think, given their media popularity.)
After, we once again bravely braved the slush and ice and cold and headed out to the Ohio Coffe Co., where in I had weak hot chocolate (though, in their defense, they make coffee, not cocoa) and one of the best chocolate chip cookies I have had in a while.
This started a trend of amazing cookies on this trip.
Now, you have to understand that my drinking coffee is a new thing that began just before I left for Dayton and will, in fact, be the subject of another long post no one will want to read. But it was not the coffee - or even the amazing cookie - that made the Ohio Coffee Co. stick out in my brain for all time.
It was a geek coffee shop. It was full of Star Wars posters, including a Boba Fett cardboard stand-up (I know there's a name for such things, but I do not recall it as of the time of my writing this.) They had Sisko and Picard action figures on their counter and a wide variety of other pictures and paraphenalia and definitely declared them a caffiene den suitable for habitation by geeks.
Once Ben had his coffee fix and I had consumed cookies (there are many reasons I am a fat man. Chocolate chip cookies are some of those reasons), we took Angela back her to place where we would prepare for gaming.
Did I mention Ben was wearing his kilt the entire day? I should mention that, because it was awesome.
I then met Angela's other half - Bryan. Bryan, like his girl, is insanely creative and is very detail oriented, which makes him an excellent GM. He gave me the specs to create a high level character (this game has been going on for years) and talked me through a bit of Pathfinder. Since Pathfinder is basically a revision of a system I already know, so I was able to rather quickly create a character - I recycled a name and created a half-elf Sorcerer/Fighter with a lot of emphasis on the bow.
Professional Geek Moment: (If this were a textbook, this whole section would be in a shaded box on the side of the page. So ignore it if you don't care about gaming or my opinion gaming.) Okay, so I didn't think I would like Pathfinder, because of some of the issues I have with D&D 3.5. (Broken, power gaming, etc.) However, Pathfinder fixes the problems I had with skill in 3.5 and made every class balanced and worth playing, even the much abused fighter. I got a huge kick out of the Sorcerer's optional powers and the Fighter's feat progression. The game play was pretty much a streamlined version of 3.5 and many of the house rules my gaming groups have used for years to balance things out were included.
Since these guys eat pizza, and tomato-sauce is good way to ruin any day, much less a vacation day of gaming, Ben and I ran through a Wendy's to get me sweet tea and bacon-cheeseburger goodness. Once my unhealthy repast was acquired, we drove out to the Place of Gaming.
Which is a basement.
A basement in a house owned by parents.
In more than twenty years of gaming, this was the first time I had ever gamed in a basement. Let alone a Parentally-owned basement. But this basement has been converted into sort of a geek-cave. It's not bachelor enough to be a true man-cave, but it is certainly a geek cave, complete with a large TV, good internet, a gaming computer, couches, bean-bags, bathroom, beer fridge, unused exercise equipment doubling a dirty clothes storage and a fold-out gaming table.
In short? The kind of plcae I wish I'd had to game at when I was a kid.
The Dayton Irregulars are a motley crew with a wide age range, though most of them went to school together and gamed in high school. I was easily the oldest (and fattest) one there, but neither was a real surprise to me.
The game was fun. Angela's lesbian tiefling hit on my poor and the group was experiencing the fun of becoming accidental crusaders through a steampunk maze of clockwork cockroaches, parasitic demi-metals, classic video-game traps and puzzles and mysterious beasties who really, really wanted to kill us in creative and unusual ways. Some of them even used rifles.
The end result?
I had a blast.
I left laughing and grinning and excited about the idea that I was going to get to go again that next week and a bit sad that I wouldn't be able to game with them every week.
After a nice smoke and cup of tea wherein Ben and I (once again) had the kind of discussion we can't have with many other folk, sharing thoughts most people roll their eyes at, I went to bed.
And slept.
More in part III (because this post has been FAR longer than I thought it would be!)
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