The Ramblings of Rev. Karl

Work has been keeping me too busy to keep up with the blogging, which is good for work but sad for the LJ. Last month we had a lovely trip to the Pacific Northwest including Oak Harbor, Victoria, and Seattle. While I haven't had time to do a proper write up I did get our pictures uploaded which you can enjoy here.

For the gamers, this weekend is the Congress of Gamers in Rockville. I'll be there for at least part of it.

I will be at Fires of Venus on Friday only.

radiant_one posted pictures here.

A brief recap of my lovely weekend in the Virgin Islands with radiant_one. Her brother let us stay in his condo and borrow the car, making the vacation affordable. Google map here

( weekend in paradise details under the cut )

Last weekend I got to go see the new Coraline movie and thought it was most excellent. I loved the book and thought the movie successfully captured the spirit and was wonderfully creepy. I didn't mind the changes from the book and would recommend both :-)

Yesterday I saw Avenue Q at the Warner theater which is there until the 15th - it was also most excellent. I'd heard most of the music but never seen the play, I laughed my ass off. Among the humor I think there is a lesson there to enjoy life as it comes and that not everything has to be perfect - also, invest in porn.

This weekend I'll be on St. Thomas, busy sitting on a beach in the sun, drinking rum. Enjoy your snow :-)

P.S. LJ valentine's can be found at valentines_09, hope everyone has a happy Valentine's Day.

So last weekend we went off to Philadelphia to get in touch with our historical roots.

Our pictures are here.

( Details about the trip are under the cut )

My last full day here. Originally I was planning on going back to the Spiel, but my shopping is done and I don't feel like spending the day fighting to get into games. I decide to take the Aachen recommendation and am glad I did.

( Aachen and a short trip into Belgium )

Today is our field trip to Amsterdam - the whole crew is going, 8 of us all together, piled into the van.

( Bicycles, Canals, and Prostitutes, Oh My )

"In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can't build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery and death." - Anne Frank

The games I got to play:

( The games )

Finally it’s time for the main event, Spiel, commonly just called “Essen” here in the states – the largest gaming event in the world, nearly 150,000 people – that’s 5 times the size of DragonCon or GenCon. The convention center itself is also suitably huge, 110,000 sq. meters of exhibit space (about the size of the DC and Baltimore convention centers combined). It is really a trade show rather than a convention – all of the exhibit space is taken up by vendor booths, most of which have tables for them to run demos of their games.

( More games than you can imagine )

My first full day in Germany I am much refreshed and ready to go exploring. I go get back on the train (which is late) and head south. Passing through the mostly industrial landscape it's not very different from much of the northeast or midwest parts of the U.S. - overall Germany strikes me as much more similar to the U.S. than say, England. I think because it feels like a newish country - almost all the construction in this area is post-WWII, the medieval landscape has been erased with just the occasional building surviving - anything older than 100 years is given the "historic landmark" treatment much like it is in the U.S. Of course one of those buildings is the Cologne Cathedral. This trip is weird in how little preparation I've done for it, I don't have any guidebooks, or a definite plan of what to see - but I figure I can't go wrong by getting off at Köln and looking for the big frickin' cathedral.

( Cologne and Koblenz )

First things first, pictures are all at http://pics.livejournal.com/kmusser/gallery/00040f1s I'm going to try to fix the ones that came out too dark to see.

Anyway, our journey begins Monday morning with a drive out to Philadelphia and then a flight to O'Hare. I get a surprise visit with zammis in the airport, who finds me during my layover while she's waiting for her flight to Seattle. Yay for Zammis time. Anyway, soon it is time for the very long trip over the pond. I think Lufthansa has the smallest seats I've ever encounted. I did not get much sleep and arrived in Düsseldorf a very sleepy camper.

( First day in Essen - Zollverein )

Home safe and sound, reports later, now sleep.

So as amazing as it is, I've had enough with the games. So tomorrow is Amsterdam. What should I do with Sunday? Have already hit Koln and a bit into Mosel wine country, though I could go back. Possibilities include trying to go up to the coast, maybe Luxumbourg (that might be too far), Aachen, any other major cities in northeastern Germany, Netherlands, or maybe Belgium.

Internet cafes have proven scarce, so you'll probably have to wait until I'm back for updates. I've been being tourist yesterday and today, tomorrow the games begin.

The trip to Chicago was quite successful. A huge thank you to zammis and radiant_one for all their work.

( Full details under the cut )

While I was sorry to miss fluxinflutter's birthday shenanigans (Happy birthday!) gaming on Saturday meant I finally got to play Agricola which has been the hot game for the last couple of years (and currently rated the 2nd best game on BGG, just behind Puerto Rico) - and no, it's still not available in the U.S, but it should be later this year.

Agricola is part of a recent flurry of board games that involves placing workers to collect various resources in order to build stuff that's worth victory points (e.g. Caylus, Cuba, Stone Age, Leonardo da Vinci, etc.) - the primary differences are A) there are many more types of resources and different ways to get VPs which results in having a zillion options each turn and B) each player gets a hand of a few characters and improvements that only they can play/build. The individualized hands are randomly drawn from a large pool of cards so there is a lot of variety possible in what you get.

Because your hand will change every game, what your best strategy is will always be different giving this game a much higher replay value than most of its ilk. Downsides are its length, easily twice as long as most similar games, and the array of choices can be bewildering, especially to a new player, making the game somewhat prone to analysis paralysis. That said I really enjoyed it and would happily play again - I'm not sure if I'll actually pick up a copy as the people most likely to be willing to play it with me already have it on order :-)

In other gaming news, I'm going to Essen!

For those that don't know - Essen, Germany plays host to the worlds largest game fair every fall (Oct 23-26 this year). It's easily an order of magnitude larger than any gaming event in the U.S. It's also generally where new games are showcased and first available to buy. It's been on the list of things to do at least once in my lifetime for awhile now. I'll be going with a group of folks from the Games Club of Maryland which is making it more affordable than it would otherwise be, so yay. I will be willing to take shopping orders within reason :-)

This is it, our last day in Hawaii. Still we have almost a full day as the flight isn't until 10:30 at night. So we decide to take a drive to the other side of the island and see all the stuff we didn't think we'd have time for. Our route takes us over to Hilo (still sunny for the record, I think it's a myth that it rains there all the time) and then up the Hamakua Coast.

The coast is quite lovely, lots of little valleys, lush vegetation, incredible smoothies. We do a short detour to go see Akaka Falls which are pretty impressive. The road along the coast ends at the dramatic Waipi'o Valley - what used to be one of the most densely populated places in the islands. The walls of the valley are roughly 2,000 feet high. There is a somewhat notorious road that makes the descent, but not having all that much time we decide not to chance it and content ourselves with the view from the overlook. We also stop in the nearby town of Honoka'a for lunch, which is good, and for desert - more malasadas! - these ones are even better than yesterdays. Yum.

From there it's pretty much a straight drive across the north end of the island back to Kona - this stretch goes mostly through ranchland, especially past Waimea it would be hard to tell you're not in the middle of Montana or Wyoming. We zip through here and actually get back to Kona a little earlier than expected - we take the opportunity to visit the Kaloko fish pond where the traditional wall creating the fish pond has been mostly restored. There are a bunch of Hawaiian stilts here, though sadly our pictures of them don't come out well. We take a brief hike to find some pools supposedly once used as baths - we find some pools, but they don't look like much - there were some man-made structures in the distance but we cut the hike short as the park was closing soon.

On into downtown Kona for dinner at a sushi/tapas place which is quite good - plus they have $2 mai tais, so who's going to complain? We enjoy our drinks and watch the sunset. Finally it's time to head home. The KON-OAK-LAX-MDW-BWI flight home is very long, but thankfully uneventful. Was a good trip :-)

We don't have all that much left on our to do list, but one of them is to visit the green sand beach that is fairly close. Since we have time we decide to take the long way (or as our host who gives us directions calls it, the safari) - this involves taking a 4WD road south from Na'alehu to the coast and then following the coastline to the beach, roughly 10 miles (our route is on the annotated map). First we stop at a bakery in town and fortify ourselves with malasadas, yum, then we're on our way. We soon find the term "road" is used generously, still the track is clear enough to follow and the Jeep proves up to the task and I get to show off my L33T 4WD driving skills. It really does feel like going on safari as we're surrounding by either vegetation or lava. As we finally get close to the shore the way becomes less clear with lots of side tracks and the vegetation is thicker, but we manage not to get lost. Following the coast is easier despite many tracks to choose from as the terrain opens up and the coastline is visible most of the way - plus we're driving over dirt rather than lava. We also see more traffic as we get closer to the beach - more than I expected for an area so far from any real roads. We approach Mahana Bay on the side away from the beach, it's quite a stunning view. There is apparently a small cove on this side where you can see chunks of olivine, but the trail on this side looks sketchy, and Zammis' foot still hurts from yesterday - we go around to the other side where the beach is. Papakolea beach is indeed green, or at least an olive drab. The climb down to the beach itself isn't nearly as scary as it looks, there are steps cut into the rock. We go down and have lunch on the beach. Not especially good beach for swimming, the water is cold and the drop off is very quick, but the view is outstanding. After lunch we have a few more miles of 4WD to go to reach South point again and sweet, sweet pavement. Along this portion we have a great views and Zammis even catches a whale breaching! We spend a little more time at South Point, just because we liked it so much. We decide to call the day done early and head back to the house, have the luxury of afternoon naps and have dinner in.

Today we devoted to snorkelling. Our hosts tell us of a hidden beach that requires a bit of a hike in, but we're likely to have to ourselves. This is Honomalino Bay, the public access trail is a bit of an adventure, going over lots of lava, and past a Hawaiian sacred site with an alter set up. The beach is there though and suitably lovely. Not ideal for snorkeling though, the surfs a little rough, making it tricky to get in the water with gear - and one of our masks loses it's strap so we only have one. I'm intimidated, but Zammis perseveres and makes it out into the bay and looks at fishies. We have our picnic lunch, and then decide to hike out and try another site that might be friendlier to us snorkeling newbies. Somewhere in there Zammis hurts her foot too, so maybe less with the hiking.

We head back to the Place of Refuge, the adjacent Honaunau Bay is supposedly good for snorkeling and this proves to be a better site for us. The Ocean is much calmer here, so getting in and out isn't too hard. Still we have only one mask, plus a boogie board with a window in it. The mask leaks like a sieve for me which is not so good - Zammis is able to make better use of it and I content myself with paddling out on the boogie board. I do get to see some brightly colored fishies, and lots of coral, but it's hard to see much without a proper mask. Zammis took some shots with a disposable underwater camera which we're still waiting to get developed, will see if any of those came out and I'll add them to the pictures when I get them.

We have dinner out for a change, checking out the southernmost restaurant in the U.S., Hana Hou in nearby Na'alehu, and have some very yummy chicken.

Today it's time to fly. The weather kindly clears for us (the past few days had been a little "voggy"). We drive over to Hilo, which contrary to its reputation proves to be sunny. We booked a helicopter tour with Blue Hawaiian. Neither of us has even been on a helicopter before so there was a little trepidation, not to worry though - I was amazed at how smooth the ride was - and even the pilot is squeeing about how clear the weather is which we take to be a good sign. The views were pretty amazing, we took a lot of pictures here, but the pictures don't really compare as you can't see the lava making its move. The pilot was good, doing several circles so that everyone could get good views as well as narrating about the crazy hold outs living in the subdivision that the lava is flowing through. There area has long been cut off by lava flows, but there are apparently still 3 residents willing to do the hike in - with the current flow they can't even do that, so I'm not sure what they're going to do. Anyway we also get a great view of the Pu'u 'O'o crater which was just billowing out smoke. To round out the tour the pilot also shows off some waterfalls NW of Hilo before we head back to the airport.

We have a very yummy lunch in Hilo. Zammis gets to get her fill of schlock shopping in at Hilo Hatties. Then it's off to explore Puna, the southeastern end of the island, calling us are the Ahalanui hot springs, heated by a underground lava flow. We take a dip which is quite relaxing. Afterwards we just drive around for a bit, the area is very pretty with alternating rain forest areas and lava flows - drive to the end of the paved road just because. We also explore some caves that serve as natural steam rooms - some even set up with benches inside, though the entrances look a little narrow for us to fit through. From there it's back home to our Hobbit House.

As a P.S. - It's interesting looking at what the eruption has done since we left, apparently the lava flow we saw made a rush for the sea March 4-6 maps, images, pictures of the road from where we stopped to the new flow, news report of the residents staying put.