After returning to the hotel with our purchases, Lisa and I stopped to have one of the sodas we bought and rest our feet. I checked messages and saw on Facebook that Kevin Roche and Andy Trembley were back in their hotel room as of only an hour earlier. I called Kevin and asked if they would like to meet for lunch, and they agreed, so we collected ( Read more... )

Today was our final full day in Helsinki. We had no big tourist attractions left to visit. Lisa wanted to do some shopping, and she also was looking for us to track down a transportation oddity that she wanted to see.

( Riding the Paternoster )

I can access the executive lounge at the Hilton, which has free wi-fi. I'm not up to spending large sums for the connection in the room. I may spring for connectivity in the convention centre a couple of times; I'm not sure. And of course it depends on whether the service even lets me do so, since the mobile phone I got yesterday won't let me use a ( Read more... )

The special Trains Issue of The Drink Tank is out, including my story, "The Day I (Almost) Wrecked a Train."

A couple things that have come up since I submitted the story:

• There's a word missing in the last paragraph of the second column of page 19. It should read, "We didn't have to move the tram very far...." That one is my fault, not Chris'.
• ( Read more... )

Having decided to leave the main tourist areas of Tokyo and instead look at the oddball stuff, we set off this morning about 10:30 to look for the Arakawa Tram Line.

( Natter about trains and trams )

Having been warned that Tokyo Tower is probably not worth the time, cost, and aggravation, we're considering other things of a more obscure nature to do today, such as riding the Arakawa Streetcar Line, Tokyo's sole remaining tram line. So I guess the danger of giant monsters attacking Tokyo or mystic storms zapping the tower and turning us into ( Read more... )