The Road Trip Part 3. Animals and Archimedes

As seen on TV

So I rolled into Eureka at a pretty reasonable time. The town was alright. I was hoping it'd be full of geniuses and wacky hijinks but it turns out the actual Eureka is pretty normal. There's a coastline nearby and some pretty neat woods. But all in all, Eureka turned out to just be the largest Californian city north of San Francisco.

I guess I was just really expecting a bunch of nerds or something.

This seems so safe.

Oh, wait. There we go.


North Coast Role Playing. A store that looked like something between a dive-bar and a regular bar. Well, far be it from me to not give it a shot. I get to ramp up my grass-roots indie-gamer-cred. Oldschool!

Anyway, I went inside and it was actually pretty sweet. (Look! text-links!)

The place actually specialized in tabletop RPGs rather than the Tabletop section being secondary to comics/board-games/card-games.

Not Pictured: My dignity.

BE WARNED. I AM GOING TO TALK ABOUT NERDY RPG STUFF NOW. I will not begrudge you if you just move on to the non-threatening image of a cheeseburger where I see an Emu. 

I managed to find some pretty sweet stuff while I was there, too. I decided that I was going to pick up a few non-standard RPG systems that I don't often see in stores.


I picked up a copy of Burning Wheel, which is the base system that the Mouse Guard RPG uses. Basically it's a system where the Roleplaying aspect of the game is emphasized over the tactics elements. You can probably find a few interesting articles about that, but I think the most telling is the PA Report article about Mouse Guard here.

The other game I picked up was PARANOIA, an RPG system that's a little on the weirder side. Basically it's a black-humor distopia game where players gleefully attempt to sabotage and execute their friends in order to please Friend Computer. It's sort of the RPG equivalent of Mau with more disintegrations.

Also, as per my tradition, I grabbed a set of dice. I always make it a point to buy a set whenever I go to a new gaming/comic store. So yeah. That happened.

I'm not kidding about
the Nascar

I spent the night just outside of Eureka and grabbed pizza with a friend from the internet.

I hit the road later, and eventually ran into a cool little diner off the edge of the road. Seems like the thing to do when you're on a road-trip, right? Go to diners with truckers where people watch Nascar? is that culturally insensitive? We'll find out next time I get my ass kicked. This felt pretty Americana.

Yep.

Then I went outside and there was an Emu.

I didn't ask.



ONWARD! TO PORTLAND!

~Jon Ying

The Road Trip Part 2. Exeunt San Francisco

It's a bird! It's a plane!

Alright, Blog Post deux. Let's see what we've got.

I made my exit from San Francisco, but before I left I made sure to eat something.

I went to this little place called El Farolito Taqueria on Mission, where I got a delicious Carne Asada Super Taco. It was quite good and also they had Fanta in those cool glass bottles which is something I approve of.

Not pictured: Me dribbling
chocolate all over myself
because apparently I'm
6 years old. 

Next I went to this neat little BiRite Creamery for dessert. They let me sample a bunch of weirdass flavors including brown sugar. I ended up settling on Dark Chocolate because I was in that kind of mood. I wandered around San Francisco for another hour or so. They have a lot of really steep hills all over the place which makes driving feel remarkably precarious.

Next time I'll definitely stick tot he cable cars.

Like bullseyeing Womp Rats
back home

 Then I drove through a tree.  Which was kind of cool. You could see the little scrape-marks on the inside of the trunk where other, fatter cars didn't fold in their windows. I sort of wonder about families who try this thing on their Generic American Road Trips and end up scraping a bunch of paint off of their Humvee's sides. I can just see my dad going. "LET'S DO IT."

and then listening to a slow, mirthful *screeeaaaape*

Tree Lunch

I had gotten a sandwich from the little town before who recommended that I move on to greater civilization rather than stick around. I've seen enough horror movies not to disregard their advice and promptly drove the next hour to a proper town.

IS SEEING? BELIEVING?

 Then I saw this weirdass place. I almost passed it by with barely a raised eyebrow and then I thought: "Hey, I'm on a Road-Trip, what else am I gonna do if not stop at ridiculous roadside attractions with too many question marks???" 

Turns out It was closed though so I couldn't get to experience the mysterious majesty of Confusion Hill. I don't know if Seeing is Believing, but I'm pretty sure not-seeing is a pretty good starter for non-believing. The rest of the place looked like some kind of elaborate trap set up by the Riddler, so I ended up continuing on.

This is a cat.

Then I saw a cat.




Next stop: the biggest city north of San Francisco. A little town called Eureka!

~Jon Ying Out.

The Road Trip Part 1. En Medias Res

Freeway Lunch.

So, long story short: I'm on a road trip.

Well, I guess that's not really the whole story, hell, it's not even a story really. It's more of a statement of fact with a story behind it. But yeah, I'm on a road trip now. Off into the wild known.

Anyway, I had initially thought about creating a whole 'nother blog that I can ramble on about my grand adventures but I came to the, somewhat disconcerting, realization that I already had a number of completely serviceable blogs that I've abandoned over the years. Hell, I don't even know how long ago it was that I posted on this one.

Actually, this is the internet, let me check...

...

Holy crap, the last time I posted something on this blog was almost exactly one year ago. That's bonkers.

Oh man, and I liked that idea. Urban Fantasy CSI meets Harry Potter... I should probably pick that up again eventually.

Anyway, I've actually been on a road-trip for a few days already, showcasing my natural punctuality in informing people about things, so I guess I'll lay it out here. And in keeping with the descending nature of blog posts, I'm gonna do it Memento style,

Mom and Dad, that was a movie reference and it means I'm doing it "in reverse chronological order," or "Backwards."

THE RECAP


I'm currently sitting in a hotel near San Francisco Airport with a busted heating unit and a bunch of wind and airplanes fighting eachother outside. It's really cold out here in San Francisco despite the summer, and there's probably a completely reasonable meteorological explanation for why that is but I'm not googling that right now. Instead I am going to finish reading this Dresden Files book and take a nice hot shower before waking up and getting my complimentary breakfast.

There were no fewer than three
Trendy Repurposed Abandoned
Movie Theaters on that street.

I spent the day doing nothing in particular, wandering around San Francisco, I took one of those Cable-Cars mostly to say that I did and I ended up just crossing the street and taking another one right back the way I came since I had no idea where I was going. I walked up and down Mission Street a fair ways, pawing through a bunch of pawn shops and thrift stores looking for nothing in particular. After seeing a bunch of random brick-a-brack I eventually came away with a Harmonica which I have named Santiago.

The photobomb guy was also cool.

---

The day before was mostly characterized by driving for six or seven hours on freeways, almost running out of gas due to truly fantastic planning skills and then going to see my friends at a bar. Turns out it was Ladies Night at the bar and that is only about half as exciting as it sounds because I was in San Francisco and they really mean Ladies Night. Suffice to say there was a lot of flannel in attendance.

Which was, incidentally a whole mess of fun. I met a pair of really fascinating students at Berkeley, and had an interesting discussion about luminescent mice and virology. Plus, I got to watch my friend-and-former-suitemate-in-MacCracken Catherine get her game on a bunch of lovely young ladies and I would be remiss if I did not admire her skills. In fact, I could, with little hyperbole, describe my feelings as "awe."

My other two, less distracted, companions were Sarah and Ben. Sarah I had only known very briefly in school (Most of it characterized by a very trendy discussion of how Chuck Palahniuk is pretty cool for making Fight Club.) and I was glad to have an opportunity to have a more substantial interaction with her.

Not Freeway Lunch.

Ben meanwhile was a philosophy student in my year who I had somehow managed to never meet. (Bubble colleges be damned) and it turns out I really missed out on that score. He's pretty damn cool. The conversation can mostly be characterized by how exactly the Robot Apocalypse will happen.

---

So yeah, all in all I've been on the road for three days and I think I'm doing pretty good. I'm gonna go finish this Dresden Files book now, I'll hit the road tomorrow and update in the very near future.

~Jon Ying out.