Another travel day, another six-thirty wake-up call. Pack such few things as have strayed from their bag in the past two days, gird up in the Coat of Doom, and zip on down to the train station, about half an hour's drive away in Saint Paul.
Left over from last night's revels was Michael, Naawakwe on the MUD, an Irish/Ojibway musician and lab monitor in his local community college. The fourth member of our party, a coder for the MUD pseudonymed Faeryll, had had the good sense to go home that night. John/Zandar opted for bed -- I rather wish I could have!
It was so early that none of us even thought to call Amtrak about estimated arrival times until we were halfway to the station. So, naturally, that meant it had to be half an hour late. But that did give me time to snap a few pictures more:
This one's for Eva -- it's the Amtrak station in Saint Paul.
My gracious hosts, Dani and Chris, who put up with my insanity:
John wasn't at the station, or I'd've caught him. Here's Michael, my fellow houseguest:
The train finally arrived, and I stumbled aboard in the freezing air, towing my bag behind me. This wasn't an overnight leg, and upgrading to a sleeper car, even for so short a haul, would be a hundred thirty-eight dollar proposition -- so coach for me! My main problem with coach was that my laptop only had four-ish hours of battery life at a go, and electrical outlets were almost impossible to find in Coach. I had some ideas, though...
The Empire Builder follows the course of the Mississippi for much of its length, crossing it a few times before settling definitively on its eastern side for the trip into Chicago. It crosses several other rivers of note, too, but let's pretend this is a crossing of the Mississippi. I guarantee that if this isn't it, it looks pretty much like this anyway. Four of my trains would cross the Big Muddy; this was the third, and fourth would be the next day when the California Zephyr crossed from Illinois into Iowa.
A fiber optic line, carrying immense amounts of Internet traffic, bounded alongside the tracks -- something I've noticed being done all around the country, as railroad rights-of-way are convenient. I find symmetry in this, really: both convey commerce from one place to another, and the fiber optic lines only take the place of the old copper telegraph lines, strung longer ago than that, when the railroad rights of way weren't just convenient, they were a pearl necklace of communication and civilization across the West.
The train was scheduled to be an hour and a half late into Chicago. My cell phone would have signal in the Twin Cities, but not really anywhere else along the route, including Chicago, so I informed Jhary of my lateness. He promised to keep tabs on my progress via the web site, and I settled in for the duration.
The trip went peacefully enough, and I was engrossed in cranking out journal updates, although I did take time to look out the window when the conductor announced that there was a great chance of seeing bald eagles between Red Wing and La Crosse -- I spotted three, myself, and a pair of swans later on. When my iBook's battery ran out, I went to the only power outlet available to a coach passenger that wasn't in a bathroom -- in the sightseeing car, whose great windows take up all of the walls and fully half the ceiling to show as much of the scenery as possible. As the iBook would charge faster if I weren't using it, I sat where I could keep an eye on it and curled up with Bimbos of the Death Sun one of the books I'd picked up at Uncle Hugo's in Saint Paul. It was a murder mystery, combined with the fish out of water story of several people at their first science fiction con, and I found it utterly amusing light reading -- and light was what I wanted when lounge babble surrounded me on all sides, and it behooved me to keep half an eye on the laptop.
Unfortunately, the train had dropped back to merely being a half-hour late when we pulled into Union Station, having made up a sizable proportion of its deficit between Milwaukee and Chicago. When I arrived back at the station, which I was getting to know rather well, nobody was waiting for me -- I figured Jhary was still operating on the datum that said I'd be arriving at six, and didn't panic. Kadlin had proposed getting together for dinner again, so I gave her a ring at home.
Excellent! She was going to bring a car. Tiffany would probably be dropping Katie off at Midway, leaving Jhary to come by bus, and a car would be infinitely preferable to lugging bags up and down the L stairs. Kadlin would, apparently, be there about six as well, which made things just about perfect. I pulled out the Pratchett novel, and set to reading.
A man asked what book I was reading.
I looked up, smiled politely, and told him, "It's by Terry Pratchett." It was then left to me to explain that he was funny, not sad or scary, and my friends would be along to collect me shortly. By the end of those few sentences, the fellow was about two feet away from me on the twenty foot long, nearly deserted bench, the suitcase with my (incidental) clothes and (essential) iBook within arm's reach of either of us. The backpack, with the books and Palm, was on the opposite side of me from him.
I'm... I'm sure he was only striking up conversation, or at worst trying to make a pass at me, but They Pay Me to Be Paranoid, so I gave him another winning, polite smile, and confessed it was time to look for my ride again; a handy excuse to zip around the station looking for Jhary, who for all I knew had some in some oddball entrance and was loitering near the trains anyway.
At least, that's what I told myself. But when the Spidey Sense tingles, best to toddle off. After another circuit naturally failed to find Jhary, I opted to lock the bags and heavy coat in a suitcase locker before returning to the spacious waiting room of the Great Hall -- no need to look like a pigeon.
Predictably, the fellow was gone when I got back to the waiting room, whatever his reason had been.
Jhary arrived soon after that -- with the car and Tiffany! Apparently Tiffany had asked him to navigate she and Katie to the airport, as they were late for the plane already and didn't want to run the risk of getting lost and missing it. Well, er, now we had two cars, as soon as Kadlin arrived, but no real worries.
A few minutes later, just as I was about to make a sweep of the station looking for Kadlin, she arrived! Time to fetch the things from the locker and have a bracing debate about where to have dinner.
They were all three top-filled with ideas, suggestions, and good restaurant names, but none had a real opinion: I had to nudge a cuisine, then pick a restaurant name at random, giving us Pegasus, a Greek restaurant in nearby Greektown.
Actually, it turned out to be a pretty great idea. None of us were particularly proficient at Greek food, with the possible exception of Kadlin, so we picked two different prix fixe sampler dinners, each for two people, and called it settled.
The waiter came out with appetizers first: a roasted eggplant and garlic goo that was emphatically not baba ganouj (it was a little more coarse-grained, I'll give you that), a fish roe and cream cheese (I think) goo, bread for both of these, and...
This took presentation! The waiter came out with two cast iron skillets, a shotglass of liquor, and a match. In the skillets were slabs of some mozzarella or Monterey Jack-like cheese: white and not terribly sharp. He poured the liquor on the skillets, and lit them on fire! The required "Oopa!" offered less heartiness than was strictly required, but he did all right. Besides... it was on fire.
Okay, I'm easily impressed by fire. I admit this.
Then there came spanakopita (spinach pie in phyllo dough), moussaka, something they'd dubbed 'Greek lasagna' of tubular noodles baked with what was apparently scrambled egg and other things, a few bits of gyro meat, lemon-broiled chicken, flavoured rice, and curiously spiced potato.
We ate well. Oh, and then there was baklava for dessert. Burp.
After yet another series of fond farewells, because I probably wouldn't see Kadlin again this trip, we headed back to Jhary and Tiffany's, where I unpacked just enough for one more night, and read some mail.
Oho! Alan Schwartz would be able to have breakfast with me before I went! Huzzah! Alan and I went back almost nine years -- we played an online game set in the Dune universe together from opening until closing. When it faltered from old hardware, Mike and I procured an obsolete Sparc that was still leagues ahead of what he'd been using -- that machine had, in its own turn, passed on, but Mike and I still hold backup shell accounts there, and it's where I keep offline mirrors of the websites I maintain. Currently, he's an Associate Professor of Cognitive Psychology at the University of Illinois here in Chicago, although he of course plans to return to California as soon as he can.
I finallized plans and a meeting place, despite the best efforts of his mail server not to let me send to him. Then, e-mail hunger sated, I logged into RetroMUD.
Uh oh. Several longtime mudders, most of whom I knew by reputation if nothing else, had just had just been heavily smited by the wizards for cheating: in Retro parlance, they'd been force reincarnated with a 30% experience tax (made to re-create their characters with 70% of the force they had had before) and had had all their equipment destroyed. Most of them weren't really at fault, at least not for anything worse than not reporting a fish when they smelled one...
There was a particular monster, a powerful one. The game's authors had set him up so that you couldn't cast spells, including healing or teleportation spells in his presence. You were supposed to attack by main strength alone, although arrows and other ranged weaponry from other rows were acceptable (and recommended).
One player had found a way to teleport this monster from his room, and to another unrelated room, using a loophole in some other code relating to the handling of potions. He told one other fellow about it in detail, and between them they related to their party that they had 'a totally safe way' to kill the critter in question. The two primary instigators even convinced themselves that an administrator of the game had said something in an official capacity at some indefinite time in the past that said this was all perfectly fine.
The party against the monster had had two former coders of the game and several highbies. Hell, my Twin Cities hosts, Isaac and Glasya, were there, and Jhary and Hellcatt had nearly been along, also. The admins, who hadn't sanctioned anything of the sort, made it a point to be visible and noticeable when the raid began, in case anyone thought this was fishy enough to report.
Nobody reported it, the monster was taken to a private little killing field where, without the precautions coded into the room he lived in, he was a poof and promptly fell over.
As soon as he was dead, Talien, one of the administrators (chief coders) grabbed up the whole party and threw them into the reincarnation room. They'd had their chance to consider this might be fishy, more than a chance, and hadn't taken it.
Naturally, with hundreds of hours of work summarily flushed, half of the affected party logged off in various states of upset and stunned disgust. The other half simply set to loud whining about how unfair the whole state of affairs was.
Whatever. I've not actively played that game in years and the whole maneuver stunk like last week's diapers. I said as much -- although I maintain that Talien overreacted and shoulda let everyone but the two prime movers at least store their equipment first, at the very least.
Jhary, Tiffany, and I were all mildly stunned by this, although we all agreed, with perfect hindsight, that it didn't look kosher. I took the opportunity to phone home on the calling card; Mike agreed with that assessment, and took several opportunities to say how much he missed me, and how many hours were left until I was in his arms again. All together now: "Awwwwww..."
Ah, well. I'm only sorry some of my hosts were suckered into this and paid the price as a result.
Somewhere in all this, Kadlin called and indicated a desire to have lunch tomorrow, so I took down her work number.
Making sure everything was set for me to head home tomorrow, and after being stunned by everything that'd happened online, we went to bed. Tiffany had class, Jhary would drive her, and I? I had breakfast, some sightseeing, lunch, and oh yeah, the train home.
| Previous: | Home | Next: |
|---|---|---|
| March 24 | March 26 | |
| A Late Delivery from Starspire | Homeward Bound |