2008 Spring/Summer Tour - Day 114

We went out and ran some errands this morning, and then I was dropped off at the University of Utah campus where I officially descended into the realm of "geekdom" by attending the Gathering of Strangers board game convention. I suppose as conventions go, it wasn't really all that geeky... nobody was wearing Darth Vader costumes or anything like that. And it wasn't really much of a "convention"; just a couple hundred people playing a bunch of games, really. Eurogames and the like have become a hobby of mine over the past year, which is why I was interested to check this event out when I saw it advertised recently. I've also been developing a game of my own called Jesters, which I was hoping to pitch to a publisher who was expected to be there, but as it turns out, he's not supposed to be there until tomorrow. Oh well... it was fun to hang out and check out some new games and I met a lot of nice people there.

While I was at the U of U, as they call it, Roseann and the girls did some shopping together and then went back to the RV park for naps. Roseann drove out later to a Jiffy Lube to ask about getting an oil change (it's not always apparent whether their bays will fit our vehicle), and on her way out of the parking lot there she noticed that the edge of the curb had a terrible dip in it. Now, with a 24 foot long vehicle, a dip like that at the bottom of the ramp coming out of the average plaza parking lot can mean some major scraping. She stopped the bus and was about to back up and take a different exit, but a car was behind her with some nasty lady honking and yelling for her to go. In retrospect, she probably should have gotten out and explained that the lady needed to go around her or back up and go elsewhere, but in the moment she was feeling pressured and went ahead down through the dip and it ended up breaking off the end piece of our black/grey tank. Luckily, it was empty, and the valves were not knocked open, so no mess... Roseann was able to reattach it somewhat, but we'll need to replace the piece before using that again (which means more trips to the RV park bathroom... good thing we're parked right near it).

My show tonight at the RV park was definitely my favorite one yet of the ones I've done here... There were only about a dozen kids and adults, but it was a very fun-loving group and we had a lot of laughs. I'm taking the opportunity of these low-key shows to do some new material as well as go over some songs I haven't played in the last year or two that I might want to reintroduce at some point.

After the show, we hung out in the bus and had some dinner and then went to bed.

Playing a game of Pillars of the Earth with some other geeks, er, I mean, folks...




A Chibi picture of Becca and Evee by Mary Lau...