NDK Weekend 08 P1
Well, we have returned from the con, and after a couple days of recuperating I think I'm finally ready to give a summary of events as they happened. As others will most likely are and will continue to do so. But this is how things happened from my perspective.
So we'll start off with the night before we leave. Thursday. I spent most of it packing and stressing over if I have everything or not. I, as usual, ended up packing too much stuff but better to be safe than sorry. I also spent the night trying out Spore. It's an interesting game, not really what everyone was expecting but for what it is, it is entertaining. I managed to create this little warlike civilization of spiky bug things and take them all the way into space before the night was over. I then crashed for a few hours and come about 0730, took Kyle to school and said goodbye to my parents.
I was back home by 0800 and then took all my stuff out to the car. I then took Six out to get washed and was planning on stopping by the bank but they were closed till nine. So I ended up hanging out on /a/ till then. After stopping by the bank, I headed back home to double check I had everything then set off to pick everyone else up.
When I got to Mantopia, Bentley and Gordon appeared to be ready and waiting for me, so we loaded up Six. Made sure we had what we needed (I grabbed a couple of my DVDs from downstairs), and then set off on our first false start. Now why do I say false start? Well, I don't consider us being officially on the road until I fill the tank at the gas station and head out of the valley with the intention of not stopping.
Well, while we were leaving the house, the subject of breakfast was brought up. We generally agreed on one of two places, Paradise Bakery, or the Jvdge Cafe. We figured that since this was a rare occasion, we should all head to the Judge Cafe downtown. As normally we wouldn't get the chance to go there, let alone together. The place I must say, is quite good, Gord and I had the Oatmeal which was only really lacking a slight amount of cream to take it from great to sublime. While Bentley had the Biscuits and Gravy which were apparently made with real and proper sausage gravy. I can't say for certain though as our communal eating habits that so punctuated the weekend had not yet asserted themselves.
We were done with the cafe at about 11, so we stopped by one of the conoco's downtown that was apparently frequented by Old Mexican Hat Guy who Gordon claims to have seen on the train. I did not chose to dispute him on this as his train antics are more seasoned than my own.
After feeding Six we officially set out on our quest for that mythical land called Denver, the Mile High City. Apparently they'll give out neat city nicknames for just about anything now a days. Anyway, our drive started uneventfully and the car was mostly filled with us talking about whatever came to our minds. Before long we were arriving in Evanston, much to my surprise.
We decided to make a pit stop to stretch our legs and wander about. I had a bug in my ear about picking up a bottle of Hennessy and maybe some other stuff. Well, the selection at the place left to be desired so I said fuck it, and we went on our way.
The trip up was mostly uneventful, and even though we had some clouds and the occasional sneeze of rain, things weren't too bad.
It was about 2 or so that we stopped in a joint called Taco John's for lunch. This was mostly brought about by a large green sign that seemed at once to challenge and offend me all at the same time. So I decided on some tacos. While the fare wasn't quite what I was expecting, it was decent, with some surprising flavor in their salsas.
With our fill eaten, we continued in our trek. This time around the storm clouds started to assert themselves a bit more but it wasn't until after Cheyenne that things started to become ugly.
The rain was starting to really come down and clog the roads. We were stuck behind and around trucks for most of the time, which on one hand was good because we could react quickly enough driving at the slower speeds. The bad was that their backwash would regularly cover the car so it was hard to see, even with the wipers going full bore.
We finally managed to make it into Denver and things were going okay and I was starting to zone up a bit. Then about 1 mile away from our offramp we almost died. There appeared to be a temporal convergence of stupid from nearly everyone around us except the guy directly in front of us. It started about four cars ahead of us with a moving truck who slammed on his breaks. This caused a truck to swerve and cut the guy ahead of us off almost causing an accident. Things weren't looking good but fortunately I managed to hit my breaks and the guy directly behind me swerved to my left. In the span of about 2 seconds the entire freeway had gone from moving at a pace of around 60 MPH to zero. We started to move again, but some asshole in a white suburban (or something) was feeling it necessary to be going about 70 MPH. He laid into his horn as he was coming up behind me and all I could think while I pressed the gas was that I was going to be having yet another accident while at NDK and that I certainly wouldn't be driving anymore. He ended up swerving around us to my right, then cut the guy in front of us off and continued swerving in and out of the lanes pissing people off and almost running one guy off the road.
Needless to say after that asshattery, I was wide awake, angry, and probably white knuckle all the way to the hotel.
-J-
Note: I'll try to finish the rest of this later.
So we'll start off with the night before we leave. Thursday. I spent most of it packing and stressing over if I have everything or not. I, as usual, ended up packing too much stuff but better to be safe than sorry. I also spent the night trying out Spore. It's an interesting game, not really what everyone was expecting but for what it is, it is entertaining. I managed to create this little warlike civilization of spiky bug things and take them all the way into space before the night was over. I then crashed for a few hours and come about 0730, took Kyle to school and said goodbye to my parents.
I was back home by 0800 and then took all my stuff out to the car. I then took Six out to get washed and was planning on stopping by the bank but they were closed till nine. So I ended up hanging out on /a/ till then. After stopping by the bank, I headed back home to double check I had everything then set off to pick everyone else up.
When I got to Mantopia, Bentley and Gordon appeared to be ready and waiting for me, so we loaded up Six. Made sure we had what we needed (I grabbed a couple of my DVDs from downstairs), and then set off on our first false start. Now why do I say false start? Well, I don't consider us being officially on the road until I fill the tank at the gas station and head out of the valley with the intention of not stopping.
Well, while we were leaving the house, the subject of breakfast was brought up. We generally agreed on one of two places, Paradise Bakery, or the Jvdge Cafe. We figured that since this was a rare occasion, we should all head to the Judge Cafe downtown. As normally we wouldn't get the chance to go there, let alone together. The place I must say, is quite good, Gord and I had the Oatmeal which was only really lacking a slight amount of cream to take it from great to sublime. While Bentley had the Biscuits and Gravy which were apparently made with real and proper sausage gravy. I can't say for certain though as our communal eating habits that so punctuated the weekend had not yet asserted themselves.
We were done with the cafe at about 11, so we stopped by one of the conoco's downtown that was apparently frequented by Old Mexican Hat Guy who Gordon claims to have seen on the train. I did not chose to dispute him on this as his train antics are more seasoned than my own.
After feeding Six we officially set out on our quest for that mythical land called Denver, the Mile High City. Apparently they'll give out neat city nicknames for just about anything now a days. Anyway, our drive started uneventfully and the car was mostly filled with us talking about whatever came to our minds. Before long we were arriving in Evanston, much to my surprise.
We decided to make a pit stop to stretch our legs and wander about. I had a bug in my ear about picking up a bottle of Hennessy and maybe some other stuff. Well, the selection at the place left to be desired so I said fuck it, and we went on our way.
The trip up was mostly uneventful, and even though we had some clouds and the occasional sneeze of rain, things weren't too bad.
It was about 2 or so that we stopped in a joint called Taco John's for lunch. This was mostly brought about by a large green sign that seemed at once to challenge and offend me all at the same time. So I decided on some tacos. While the fare wasn't quite what I was expecting, it was decent, with some surprising flavor in their salsas.
With our fill eaten, we continued in our trek. This time around the storm clouds started to assert themselves a bit more but it wasn't until after Cheyenne that things started to become ugly.
The rain was starting to really come down and clog the roads. We were stuck behind and around trucks for most of the time, which on one hand was good because we could react quickly enough driving at the slower speeds. The bad was that their backwash would regularly cover the car so it was hard to see, even with the wipers going full bore.
We finally managed to make it into Denver and things were going okay and I was starting to zone up a bit. Then about 1 mile away from our offramp we almost died. There appeared to be a temporal convergence of stupid from nearly everyone around us except the guy directly in front of us. It started about four cars ahead of us with a moving truck who slammed on his breaks. This caused a truck to swerve and cut the guy ahead of us off almost causing an accident. Things weren't looking good but fortunately I managed to hit my breaks and the guy directly behind me swerved to my left. In the span of about 2 seconds the entire freeway had gone from moving at a pace of around 60 MPH to zero. We started to move again, but some asshole in a white suburban (or something) was feeling it necessary to be going about 70 MPH. He laid into his horn as he was coming up behind me and all I could think while I pressed the gas was that I was going to be having yet another accident while at NDK and that I certainly wouldn't be driving anymore. He ended up swerving around us to my right, then cut the guy in front of us off and continued swerving in and out of the lanes pissing people off and almost running one guy off the road.
Needless to say after that asshattery, I was wide awake, angry, and probably white knuckle all the way to the hotel.
-J-
Note: I'll try to finish the rest of this later.