drahkar

Hurrah for press!

d_tibbs@hotmail.com — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 16:36:53 GMT

http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/12905.html

Flying!!!

d_tibbs@hotmail.com — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 14:37:59 GMT

So…

Last time I was in China, my grandfather passed away, and I had to fly back early to get to the funeral. Delta was my airline, but I was on codeshares run by Korean Air. Delta had nothing to get me back on time, so I booked a new round-trip on China Air (not to be confused with Air China…) from Hong Kong to Seattle and back with a big break in between. Delta said that wouldn’t be a problem, they’d put my return HK-Seattle flight off a couple months, but that I would need to have a death certificate with me when I checked in to avoid the $200 re-booking fee.

So this trip I took China Air out here, and then today got to the airport and went to check in at the Korean Air counter. The lady there told me that I wasn’t booked onto the flight, that I only had a reservation (note that emails from Delta that I have say differently), and that I would need to pay $200 for a booking. So I told her that I had been told something totally different by Delta. She argued with me for 10ish minutes, then called her manager, and she argued with me for a while. Then the manager called the Delta Hong Kong office, and didn’t get any confirmation to let me get on the plane (after she was on hold for a while). We argue a bit more, then the counter agent says I should call Delta US. I do, and while I’m on hold they close check-in for the flight : ( I get through to a Delta operator, who is AWESOME, probably the best customer service experience I’ve had. Ever. She goes through, listens to what I say, says that there is a very specific note on my reservation backing me up, that the Korean Air agents should be able to see. So the Delta operator asks to talk to the lady at the counter. And proceeds to yell at her for about 10 minutes about what how screwed up she’s made everything, and about how she isn’t doing things right, and about how I should be let onto the plane even though the flight is full. She’s loud enough I can hear some of what she says coming from my phone. The lady at the counter keeps telling her no, that she won’t acknowledge my ticket, so the Delta lady asks to talk to me, tells me that she’s made sure that my ticket is actually booked, but that the lady at the counter is being a total dick (that’s what she said, yes) and doesn’t want to take care of anything. While she is telling me this, the lady at the counter packs up her stuff and leaves. So I hand the phone to a different Korean Air rep, who also refuses to do anything, no matter what the Delta lady tries. Finally I get the phone back and she is *frustrated* and tells me exactly what she thinks of the Korean Air customer service (she wasn’t complimentary). She then goes through and rebooks my flight, as, by this time, my original flight was already done boarding. She did up a whole new ticket, took off any of the issues of the last ticket, and got one of my legs as first class.

Sadly, the ticket kinda sucks, but she assured me that it was the fastest way should could figure out to get me home, and after her 30 minutes of fighting like crazy for me, I believe it. So, instead of leaving here at noon, I leave here at midnight. Instead of flying Hong Kong – Seoul – LA – Seattle, I am now flying Hong Kong – Seoul – New York(!) – Seattle, and instead of arriving at 10:15 pm Wednesday, I now arrive at 8:20 pm Thursday.

But, hey. I get a lot more frequent flyer miles! Like, an extra 6,750 ; )

This is so going to suck...

Unfinished Book Meme (Stolen from Shteevie)

d_tibbs@hotmail.com — Fri, 02 May 2008 21:48:59 GMT

What we have here is the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded. Bold the ones you've read, underline the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish.

I bold+underlined books that I've read parts/all for school, and also read the whole thing outside of school. Also, as I homeschooled, some are hard to separate as "read for school" vs. "read outside of school".

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - sitting on my shelf, looking at me, telling me to read more...
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince - Read it like 15 times, one of my all-time favs
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid - For fun in English, for school in Latin
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

Overall, I think I am decently well-read... now why is it that I can't spell worth a damn?

Las Vegas

d_tibbs@hotmail.com — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 01:23:15 GMT

So I've just had two people pull out from being able to go down to Las Vegas next week to demo games for two days at my booth at the GAMA trade show, and I need to replace them.

So... Anyone free to go down to Las Vegas on Monday, stay for Tuesday and Wednesday, and fly back Wednesday night? If so, let me know! I've got hotel rooms all booked, and I'll take care of the plane tickets as soon as you let me know that you can make it!

All you need to do is show some game retail store owners how to play some board games that will be at the booth, and have fun with it!

Give me a call (817-992-8037), text message, or email (dan@bucephalus.biz) if you'd like to come along!

Chaining boosts...

d_tibbs@hotmail.com — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 11:50:15 GMT

70 emails sent, 120 emails deleted, 3 POs generated, 2 invoices generated, 3 new art projects assigned, lots of getting ready for this weekend done, a bunch of other things finished or started...

...and on cup #13 of Earl Grey, and a second 6-hour power down the hatch.

Tomorrow is full of meetings, so looking for adrenalynn to keep me going until latish tomorrow night, when sleep will be most welcome.

All-nighters are more fun when there are other people around ;)

*huge hugs*

More news like this, please...

d_tibbs@hotmail.com — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 16:08:00 GMT

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) -- A dolphin swam up to two distressed whales that appeared headed for death in a beach stranding in New Zealand and guided them to safety, witnesses said Wednesday.

The actions of the bottlenose dolphin -- named Moko by residents who said it spends much of its time swimming playfully with humans at the beach -- amazed would-be rescuers and an expert who said they were evidence of the species' friendly nature.

The two pygmy sperm whales, a mother and her calf, were found stranded on Mahia Beach, about 500 kilometers (300 miles) northeast of the capital of Wellington, on Monday morning, said Conservation Department worker Malcolm Smith.

Rescuers worked for more than one hour to get the whales back into the water, only to see them strand themselves four times on a sandbar slightly out to sea. It looked likely the whales would have to be euthanized to prevent them suffering a prolonged death, Smith said.

"They kept getting disorientated and stranding again," said Smith, who was among the rescuers. "They obviously couldn't find their way back past (the sandbar) to the sea."

Along came Moko, who approached the whales and led them 200 meters (yards) along the beach and through a channel out to the open sea.

"Moko just came flying through the water and pushed in between us and the whales," Juanita Symes, another rescuer, told The Associated Press. "She got them to head toward the hill, where the channel is. It was an amazing experience. The best day of my life."

"It was looking like it was going to be a bad outcome for the whales ... then Moko just came along and fixed it. They had arched their backs and were calling to one another, but as soon as the dolphin turned up they submerged into the water and followed her."

After the rescue, Moko returned to the beach and joined in games with local residents.

Dear Jake,

d_tibbs@hotmail.com — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 02:33:30 GMT

I miss you.

Your friend,

Daniel

fridays are always easier.

d_tibbs@hotmail.com — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 18:03:36 GMT

*smile

A New House

d_tibbs@hotmail.com — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 19:04:40 GMT

Well, for my once a year update, I just bought a house, and will be moving in at the end of July. My new address is 701 N 86th St. The house is on the corner of 86th and Fremont, 1 block north of 85th, 2 blocks west of Aurora.

As per usual, everyone is welcome to stop on by any time.

To think we could have him...

d_tibbs@hotmail.com — Fri, 04 Aug 2006 15:03:17 GMT

Instead we have Mushroom Cloud Rice.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/hardtalk/5244666.stm

This in an interview with the French Foreign Minister on BBC. He strikes me as one of the most intelligent people in politics today. His goal comes across clearly as the well-being of people, not the political goals of his country.

It is long, about 20 minutes, but well worth watching for a good interview about the reality of war and peace between the West and the Muslim worlds.

Once again, still alive

d_tibbs@hotmail.com — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 09:43:36 GMT

I guess I'll just toss a post up once a year or so saying that.

Booooooored at the moment, waiting to go to the airport in about a half hour to fly from Hong Kong to Taipei after spending all day typing work stuff and looking out over the amazing city of HK.

Pretty much all of last month was spent traveling, and most of August will be as well. I miss Amy a lot, as I have not seen her in 3 weeks, and won't for another week.

So, yah, still alive. Working more than playing, bu happy, very.

See you again in a year LJ (well, I'll reply to any random comments, as usual, but likely nothing else).

-Dan

Yes...

d_tibbs@hotmail.com — Tue, 24 May 2005 04:55:11 GMT

...I am still alive ;)

LotR this Sat at the Cinerama

d_tibbs@hotmail.com — Fri, 11 Feb 2005 01:56:38 GMT

This Saturday the 12th the Cinerama is running a showing of all three
extended versions of Lord of the Rings. Several people whom I have already
purchased tickets for can no longer make it to the showings. They are $35
each. The doors open at 10 am, the first movie starts at 11 am, and there
are two 1 hour breaks, one each between each movie, which finishes
everything up by about 11 pm that night. I will be waiting in line either
late Friday night or very, very early Sat morning. If anyone is interested
in showing up, I have 4 tickets unspoken for. Drop me an email or call me at
817-992-8037.

After the movies, we plan to do drinks ;)

Polls...

d_tibbs@hotmail.com — Tue, 21 Dec 2004 08:34:48 GMT

You scored as Chaotic Good. A Chaotic Good person is someone who has little intrinsic respect for laws or authority, seeing them as insufficient to sustain what's right. These people work according to their own moral compass which, while good, is not necessarily always aligned with that of society. Despite their chaotic tendancies, these people are good at heart.

</td>

Chaotic Good

85%

True Neutral

80%

Lawful Good

65%

Neutral Good

60%

Neutral Evil

50%

Lawful Evil

30%

Lawful Neutral

25%

Chaotic Neutral

10%

Chaotic Evil

What is your Alignment?
created with QuizFarm.com

Cool and all that. Sounds about right to me.

Your Crazy Insane LJ christmas party! by Lucas14
Username
Location
Age
The Bartender	damndirtycrane
The Crazy drunk dancer	hawaii_boy
free striper	ninjanuity
Drank a whole Keg of beer	luciddellusions
gives away free sex	thejared
Designated Driver	bijili
boring Nerd who breaks out of their shell	scifigal
dies of alcohol poisining	hattrickflyer
vomited all over mama's new rug	tfmtfm

Quiz created with MemeGen!

*LOL* I don't really like these, but I HAD to post this from some of the answers in it! Good stuff, to say the least!

Jung Explorer Test
Actualized type: ENFJ
(who you are)

ENFJ - "Persuader". Outstanding leader of groups. Can be aggressive at helping others to be the best that they can be. 2.5% of total population.

Preferred type: ENFJ
(who you prefer to be)

ENFJ - "Persuader". Outstanding leader of groups. Can be aggressive at helping others to be the best that they can be. 2.5% of total population.

Attraction type: INFP

(who you are attracted to)

INFP - "Questor". High capacity for caring. Emotional face to the world. High sense of honor derived from internal values. 4.4% of total population.

Take Jung Explorer Test
personality tests by similarminds.com

I always find these to be fairly correct and nicely put. I would have to say I agree.

Feel free to look if you'd like. hattrickflyer, hawaii_boy, thejared, & scifigal might find it a bit amusing, and perhaps appropriate.

Home again, home again

d_tibbs@hotmail.com — Tue, 21 Dec 2004 08:23:59 GMT

Well, I am finally back in the wonderful Pacific Northwest. I have been here for 2 weeks, though I have been damned busy for all of that time. I finally had time today to through and read all the friend posts from the last 3 weeks. I've made some of the comments that I want to make, but I've got some long posts to make before too long. As soon as I can take the time to do them, I will.

Life update time ;)

I am at my fathers in Anacortes now. I got back from Europe on the 30th of Nov, was in Federal Way for 1 night, then went to GenCon SoCal in LA. I was there until 2 weeks ago exactly (Monday the 6th) with a bunch of good friends and a lot of gamers. It was quite nice.

For work for the last 4 months I have been working on Anachronism, a new card game that is partnered with the History Channel and is basically warriors from the past getting into an arena and beating the crap out of each other. I love it. I like working with history, I like working with the people I'm working with, and I like being in charge of things ;) All of this feels good. I am currently the Production & Line Development Manager, which basically I make sure that there is a product made for the Marketing guys to sell.

I am (likely) going to be back in Seatle permenantly as of Jan 4th. I'll be moving into a house with Dan Carew and Jeff Malcom, two good friends who I've known for some time. We've got a nice big 2500 sq ft house that will fit the 3 of us and as many gamers as feel like showing up. So, yah, it'll be fun times.

The first week back in Seattle I spent working on the Tibbles and Toku eBay store. Mike and Nissa L and I got a bunch of auctions posted, a bunch of L5R and Magic sorted, etc. So far that seems to be going quite well. I look forward to how well it continues to go.

The last year and a half have been crazy. I have been around the US, around Europe, I've lived everywhere and nowhere at the same time, I've changed (a lot), and I'm no longer the same person that many of you know. I look forward to getting to know y'all all over again. I really want to just settle down for a while and just live a simple, stable life for a year or two (or longer, we'll see), but I still have this gnawing wanderlust, so we'll see how that takes to the whole settling down in one place thing.

I've got a couple of other work projects, and some projects just for the fun of it. Overall, I think that it'll be a great couple of next months.

My cell number is 817-992-8037. My email is still d_tibbs@hotmail.com. Feel free to drop me a line if you want to hang out sometime.

Life is smiling.

So very true...

d_tibbs@hotmail.com — Sat, 27 Nov 2004 21:47:26 GMT


card games are love
brought to you by the isLove Generator

It knows. I am such a dork.

Internet Day

d_tibbs@hotmail.com — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 14:08:45 GMT

I guess today is Internet Day.

I have been sitting in front of this here computer in downtown Rome for about the last 4 hours, just reading lots of friends LJ entries, pricing out plane tickets for my travels when I get home (oxymoronic, isn't it) and just in general using the computer, typing, etc, to relax and feel closer to a whole bunch of friends that I miss a hell of a lot.

I think in a bit I will go walk up the Palatine hill and try to feel inspired by the workmanship of 2000 years ago. It usually works. We'll see if today is any different.

d_tibbs@hotmail.com — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 14:05:23 GMT

Pulled from various ppls LJs. I saw some good questions that would have made me think (and did, in fact) so I figured I'd post this up as well.

This is the problem with LJ, we all think we are so close, and we know nothing about each other. I'm going to rectify it. I want you to ask me something you think you should know about me, something that should be obvious, but you have no idea about. Ask away.

Mother

d_tibbs@hotmail.com — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 11:19:16 GMT

I really only seem to post here when really good/bad things happen to me. I guess I just like to use this as a way to vent some of my energy/frustration out of me and onto the rest of you. So, thanks, for taking some time out of your day to hear my highs/lows.

So far I have just plain not had time or energy to post much about my very long sojourn to Europe, but basically I have now been here for over 2 months, I have gone through a lot of different towns, stayed with a lot of very different, very wonderful people who I can now call friends. It has been a good time overall, and I really do like to travel, but now I really do want to come home. I am tired. Especially after last night.

My last two trip segments are Rome and Germany. I was going to go to Amsterdam with Jared and Carter, but we never quite made it up there and my mother decided to come over to Europe after all (she was planning on coming to France for a few weeks originally, but could not make it). My grandmother has never seen Rome, though she has been all over most of the rest of Europe, and my (not so) little brother James decided to come along as well. So I was to have my mother, brother, and grandmother come join me in Rome for 7 days. Sounds good. I really have not had a chance to spend much time with any of them in about 6 years, and I do miss them. In fact, I do not think I have been in the same place as any of them for more than 1 day at a time in the last 6 years, and no more then 2-3 times each year. My grandmother is getting pretty old, and my mother brought along a wheelchair for her, and my brother got his plane ticket paid for so that he could push her around and make sure that she could get to wherever we were going without much trouble.

So I showed up here from Germany last Thursday morning and met them at the airport when the got in. We took a cab downtown to a nice little hotel just outside of the Roman Forum (really old place with really old things that I really like). We spend the next 4 days touring around Rome, seeing St. Peters, the Pantheon, Trevi Fountain, etc. Grandma can get around ok with the wheelchair, and things go fairly well. My brother goes out and finds a nice little Irish Pub that he can get Guiness at, and he hangs out there in the evenings while I usually spend the evenings wandering around Rome.

Last night (Sunday) I head out to said Irish Pub to spend some time with my brother. It was about 5:30, James had just gotten there, and we both spend the next 5 hours or so drinking Guiness, playing pool, and just chatting about whatever. It was a really nice time and I learned a lot about my brother and his life. I already knew the physical details (live-in GF with daughter, construction worker, lives in my dad's old house, etc) but I had not really ever had a chance to talk to him about it all. He seems quite happy with his life, but he is terribly missing his GF and her daughter. I am impressed at the depth of his dedication and love for her. She is a very lucky lady.

I took off a bit earlier then he did and headed back for the hotel and fell asleep. I woke up to him crying (missing GF and her daughter horribly, remember?) and to my mother telling him to be quite (she was in a different room, but had decided to come in to comfort/get him to stop crying). She was not helping and her "shush"ing him was starting to go far past comforting into commands, as if his crying was embarassing her. So I sat up and said "Holly, please leave, you are not helping." (we have always called our mother by her name). She tells me to shut up. I say no, that she needs to leave. She tells me to go back to sleep. I repeat once more that she needs to leave and go back to her room. She tells me that I am an asshole.

I decided to wait and see what happens. Holly has stopped with her shushing and just sits there for mabey a minute and a half. Then she says (in her best commanding voice) "If you don't stop crying, I am going to call a doctor." I think and say "What the fuck?" I then tell her to get out, that she has no idea what she is doing, and that she is not helping things at all. She responds by telling me that I am a mean, angry, ungratful person that she does not want as a son. I tell her that this is not about me, it is about James, and that if she wants to discuss me that we can do that tomorrow, but tonight James is the only concern. She continues to rail on me, telling me that she does not want me in her life, and she slaps me across the face while my brother continues to cry. I continue to tell her to get out, which she finally does, but not before making a few more choice comments on her feelings to me. It was a little longer then this shows, but I cannot remember it perfectly. Those were the major events, and they might have been in a slightly different order.

My mother and I have always had a fairly good relationship, and while we have clashed, it has very rarely degenerated into any kind of name-calling (I think I can remember 2 other times in my life) and she has never said any of the things that she said last night. To say that it hurt like hell is an understatement. I am not sure why she said what she said, and I do not know what I did to bring it on. When she left, my brother just said "Thank you". I would do it again if I had it to do over again. My mother can be a mean lady when she wants to.

This morning we were going to go on a bus tour to Pompei, the small town south of Rome that was covered in ash in 73 AD by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. I was there 9 years ago, and I loved it. I was very much looking forward to going there again. Instead, I got up this morning and booked a flight to go back to Germany ASAP. My mother expects me to get over this and be back to the same place that we were before. I won't. I will not be talking to her unless necessary until she decides to offer me an apology. I do not think my mother has ever apologized to me for her actions. I am having a fairly hard time of this, because I do not know if she will apologize ever. I do not want to forever lose my mother, as I love her, but I will not walk away from the words that she threw at me last night.

I have to stay here one more night, as the earliest flight to Germany that I could get leaves tomorrow morning at 8:30 am. I am not sure what I will be doing tonight. I guess I will just wait and see how my day rolls out. I know that I want to see some more sights before I leave Rome, but I am not sure if I am emotionally up to it. I have not had a chance to let the tears that I am holding back fall, but I am sure it is only a matter of time.

d_tibbs@hotmail.com — Tue, 26 Oct 2004 03:18:07 GMT

1. Unitarian Universalism (100%)
2. Liberal Quakers (91%)
3. Theravada Buddhism (86%)
4. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (86%)
5. Mahayana Buddhism (84%)
6. Neo-Pagan (77%)
7. Secular Humanism (70%)
8. New Age (69%)
9. Taoism (68%)
10. Bahá'í Faith (65%)
11. Hinduism (60%)
12. Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (59%)
13. New Thought (50%)
14. Jainism (50%)
15. Nontheist (48%)
16. Orthodox Quaker (47%)
17. Sikhism (47%)
18. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (41%)
19. Scientology (41%)
20. Reform Judaism (39%)
21. Jehovah's Witness (32%)
22. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (28%)
23. Seventh Day Adventist (22%)
24. Orthodox Judaism (13%)
25. Eastern Orthodox (6%)
26. Islam (6%)
27. Roman Catholic (6%)

I feel like waxing philosophical and such...

d_tibbs@hotmail.com — Wed, 22 Sep 2004 23:50:12 GMT

I will do this, as I have the time. Probably before I finish my Euro trip. Post away, or not, as you feel.

Leave a comment if you want to know what I really think of you, and I'll reply and tell you. No lies, all honesty. [You have been warned.]

Then post this in your journal so I can find out what you think of me.

Birthday

d_tibbs@hotmail.com — Wed, 22 Sep 2004 21:21:00 GMT

Oh yah, and today is my birthday.

A nice, calm, relaxing birthday. Very good, actually. I spent most of the day on the train and had a wonderful home-cooked french meal for dinner. It was great!

25 I am now, yessss... ;)

My European Trip...

d_tibbs@hotmail.com — Wed, 22 Sep 2004 21:18:56 GMT

The 1st leg of the journey… Delta Airlines

Wednesday, September 15th
I didn’t stay up to late the night before, and I slept in until about noon. I had a bunch of errands to run, but I couldn’t run them until Danny got up and could drive me around. Danny shows up at about 1:30 and we head downtown to Front Porch Classics, where I have a meeting at 2 about some board games that I had reviewed for them with Blue-Haired Shteevie. I realized that I needed to send them an invoice half way down there, so I make one up on my laptop and we cruise around downtown until we find an unprotected wireless network that I can grab some net access from. It takes about 2 minutes.

After an hour long meeting, we go to the bank, the post office, and back to Jeremy’s house, all the while talking to Julia at Kinkos about getting business cards made that evening. Then it’s lunch with Ian to talk about game industry stuff, and a couple of games of L5R.

My bag of clothes, which was supposed to be taken back from GenCon by a friend, were left in the hotel room, so the hotel said they were shipping them back. Well, we couldn’t get in touch with the hotel after 3 days of trying to find out a tracking number, and the clothes never showed up, so I had very few clothes to take with me to Europe. Danny and I head downtown to the Old Navy store so I can get some clothes, which I choose all on my own with no help from anyone (which is very, very rare, and in the past has resulted in some fairly hideous results). Hopefully I didn’t do too badly.

Julia, being the sweet and wonderful thing that she is, drops off the business cards at Jeremy’s house, and we head back to finish watching Angel season 4 and so that I can pack, which I send the rest of the night doing. I don’t bother sleeping, and I get everything packed up no problem. In fact, it all fit just about perfectly, which was damned cool.

Thursday, September 16th
My flight leaves at 8:30 am, so I wake Danny up at 6:45 and we are gone by 7 am. We get to the airport at about 7:30, and I find out that you can’t register at the little computer stands for an international flight, so it’s off to wait in line at the normal counter. I get through to the lady at the desk at 7:53. She chastises me for showing up so late for an international flight and tells me that she does not think I’ll make it through the security line in time. I start in the security line at 8:05, and she was right, it is VERY long. However, it moves surprisingly fast and I’m through it at 8:18. So I run to the terminal, which is all the way at the end of one of concourses. I make it to the plane at 8:24 and I get on to a nearly empty plane going to Atlanta, Georgia, with a full 3 seats all to myself.

The flight is supposed to be from Seattle, to Atlanta, to Stuttgard (Germany), and takes off at 8:30 am and lands at 9 am, which, with a 9 hour time difference, is a 15 ½ hour trip, 2 hours of which are spent in the Atlanta airport. Well, we fly down to Atlanta no problem, and when we get there we are told to fly a holding pattern and wait. Well, after flying in a circle for 45 minutes, we are told that the airport is closed due to flooded runways. We are nearly out of fuel, so we fly up to Nashville, Tennessee and land to refuel. 3 ½ hours later, we leave Nashville heading to Atlanta. By the time we land in Atlanta, they have been open for 2 hours and my connecting flight to Stuttgard is long gone.

In Atlanta (where it is still raining, windy, and very stormy) I am told that I am on standby on a flight to Paris that leaves at 8:30 pm and that I have a flight from Paris to Stuttgard the next morning that gets me to Stuttgard at 11:50 am, so about 3 hours later then my original trip. That seems fine to me, assuming I can get a seat on the plane to Paris.

Now, I don’t have a phone number for Timo, the fellow who is picking me up, because he didn’t give me one. So I call Shteevie and ask him to log into my email account and email Timo to let him know the new plan.

I get on the Paris flight without much trouble, and then sit in the plane at the airport for an hour and a half. Finally we take off and I am told that we have to go out of our way to avoid the storm, so it will be a longer flight than usual. At this point I have not really slept, as they had some movies that I wanted to see on the Seattle-Atlanta flight, and they have some new movies that I want to see on this flight, and my book is getting better and better. In spite of all that, I managed to sleep for about an hour.

Friday, September 17th
We land in Paris at 11:55 am. This, obviously, means I’ve missed my connecting flight to Stuttgard. So I talk to the desk and find out through some choppy English that I rebooked on a flight leaving at 3:30 and getting to Stuttgard at 4:50. This, along with getting to the gate, takes 2 hours. So I get to the gate, hang out for 45 minutes, and board. This flight is uneventful.

I finally make it to Stuttgard 8 hours late and go to get my luggage… half of which is there. My bag of clothes arrives, but my box of cards does not. So I go out to the front of the airport, not expecting anyone to be there, let alone anyone I know, and figuring I’ll by learning the Euro train system very abruptly, as I have not been able to tell Timo anything about my delayed flights, beyond the 11:50 arrival time.

Lucky for me, as soon as I walk out of the baggage claim area, I see Salmon Barakat, this year’s L5R World Champion and the guy who eliminated me from the GenCon tournament in the top 32. I find out that basically he and his girlfriend have been waiting at the airport 8 hours for me. At this point I am loving the German L5R players.

We drive from the airport to Karlsruhe where Salmon lives and where the 7 Virtues L5R tournament will take place the next day. What is normally a 45 minute drive takes 2 hours because of bad traffic. We pull into the local game store at a little after 8 pm. I finally feel like I have arrived in Germany.

Soon... The 2nd leg of the journey… Karlsruhe, Germany

Kansas

d_tibbs@hotmail.com — Sun, 29 Aug 2004 23:14:38 GMT

I got started off a day late, as I needed more time then I thought to get ready, so I decided to get dropped off about 20 north of the Oklahoma/Kansas border instead of the Texas/Oklahoma border. I got started at 11 am and rode north until 6:30. I had about 2 hours of breaks in there, mostly trying to fix various equipment problems and getting my saddlepack to stop rubbing against my back tire. So, in 5 1/2 hours of riding, I made it 80 miles through Kansas, which was great. I was tired at the end of it, but not dead exhausted. Oh, and when I got into Great Bend at 6:30, the sign at the bank said it was exactly 100 degrees.

I camped out at the side of the road a bit north of Great Bend. The first day, my saddlepack (the thing that is on the back of the bike to hold my stuff) got a hole in it from rubbing against my back tire. This also caused two of my shirts to get holes in them, as they were on the inside of the pack where it was rubbing against the tire. After a nice long night's sleep, I got up at 6, repacked everything a bit better, and stopped by a close store for some ductape to do some repair work. By 8, I was back on the road, riding north. I rode from 8 am until 5:30. I took 1 1/2 hours of breaks. So, in 8 hours of riding, I made it 40 miles... hmmmm... Day 1: 14.5 miles per hour, Day 2: 5 miles per hour.

Day 2 was horrible. Apparently, my plan of riding north on the great plains had one very significant flaw. The wind. Sometime during the night a 30 mph southwardly wind had risen up, and it blowed all day. I never realized just how much of a problem riding against the wind would be. It's basically the same as riding directly up a hill, except you never get the advantage of a hill, which is the going downhill part. Unless, of course, you turn around and ride the other direction.

That night I found a decent place to sleep by the side of the road, and this night, I was exhausted. Riding against the wind all day was quite a chore. Day 3 started at 6 am and a look at my map to see about going west for a while before going north again, to avoid the wind. Basically, my options were to go north for about 50 miles... another day of riding, or to go south about 40 miles... back to Great Bend. I decided that south was probably my best option. So I rode back the way I'd came. This time, the 40 miles, with the wind at my back instead of at my front, took 2 hours. What a difference the wind makes.

In Great Bend, which I got to at 9:30 am, I went to a convenience store and got some juice and talked to the lady at the counter (most everyone asked the pink-haired, bright yellow-shirted bike rider what the hell I was doing ;) about my trip. The trucker who was also hanging out at the counter chimed in to let me know that if I wanted to avoid the wind, all I had to do was wait a month or ride west until I hit the Rockies.

Great. So, I did some math and it was fairly obvious that there was no way in hell I was making it to Seattle in time for my airline flight to Europe. My options at this point were to either go west over the hardest section of the Rockies and then go north through California and Oregon. Not very flat regions. Or, I could go north against the wind, which was supposed to extend all the way up to Canada. So, fuck it. I'll come back when I have more time and hopefully when the wind is going the opposite direction.

So I rode back all the distance that I'd ridden on days 1 & 2 on day 3 and got picked up. I started at 7:30 and finished at 7:30, with about two hours of breaks. Riding with the wind was great. 120 miles in 10 hours.

So, I'll be flying back to Seattle, either next week or the week after, depending on how my plans pan out. We'll see. I'm rather frustrated right now. I know that I could have made the trip in time if the wind had been on my side. I really had wanted to do this bike trip. The days that I was out there were fun and good. Having hours alone where I couldn't do anything but thing were interesting. Math. I found myself mainly doing math. Lots of schedules, timetables, percentages, etc. I think the fact that I found that fun probably is more indicative of my insanity then the usual indications that come from stretches of solitude (such as talking to oneself, imaginary people, etc).

I know quitting was the right plan, but it still feels frustrating. It was very relaxing, and having 3-4 weeks instead of just 3 days sounds very nice. Perhaps I'll go backpacking for a few days when I get back to Seattle. Anyone up for a bit of camping? 2-3 days, perhaps? Sometime in the next couple of weeks? I have not yet purchased my plane tickets, so I can plan around whatever.

Well, that's about it. I'll be back to Seattle sometime soon. Thanks all! *HUGS*

Stuff I am taking on my bike trip...

d_tibbs@hotmail.com — Tue, 17 Aug 2004 15:26:31 GMT

Anything I'm missing?...

1 Bike (Trek Mountain Bike)
1 Back Bike Rack
1 Saddlebag
2 Frame Water Bottle Holders
1 Bike Adjustment Tool
1 Bike Repair Kit
2 Extra Inner-Tubes
1 Slimetube
1 Tube Chamois Butt'r
1 Saddle Pack
1 Backpack
1 ThermaRest Sleep Pad
1 Sleeping Bag
1 Bivi Sack
1 Propane Stove
3 Propane Cannisters
2 Pots
1 Cup
1 Set Plastic-Ware
1 Folding Knife
2 Water Bottles
3 Biking Shirts
2 Biking Shorts
1 Pair Biking Gloves
1 Rain Jacket
4 Pairs Socks
1 Pair Running Shoes
4 Pairs Underware
1 Towel
4 Tubes Sunscreen
1 Tube Biodegradable Soap
1 First Aid Kit
4 Small Box Matches
Various food-stuffs (enough for 1 week, restocking along the way)

I think this is everything... ;)