And so with a shuddering lurch I began my latest adventure out into the world. At the very least I had the sense to go about the always phenomenally entertaining production of jumping through my own asshole to avoid the various indignities of travel to buy plane tickets two months ago. Never before did I realize what an expensive inconvenience it is to desire to not leave and arrive at inhuman, torturous hours of the morning. I realize that’s how the world works these days in many ways, but I remain convinced that if clocks needed to shit, their assholes would be located between two and five AM. It’s such a theatrical balancing act, sitting at one’s computer, skittering deftly over a half-dozen different booking aggregators and booking aggregator aggregators, convinced that you’re going to be gaming the system like it’s never been gamed before. Naturally that system has been gamed so hard already that at this point it’s playing Dungeon Master and has a stack of rulebooks limited only by the height of the ceiling in its mother’s basement.

I’m almost certain that I paid myself substantially less than minimum wage for the time I spent on the Great 2015 Booking Hoedown. I suppose it’s still an important ritual though. There are a lot of key things to be hashed out. Things like “I like Southwest, but do I like Southwest $85 much?” Probably not. “Do I like them 5:30 AM much?” Fuck no. So yeah, it’s a lot of important stuff which, while conferring only a moderate tangible benefit, makes me feel a whole lot better about the whole process. At the very least when I’m sitting here I get to have the thought that this, somewhat depressingly, is the best possible experience I could’ve had. Sure, there were a few somewhat tempting alternatives. I discovered this new wrinkle in the quantum mesh that forms this strange construct; some special fare rates that were available by phone only. They were undoubtedly a small but statistically significant savings, but the offer felt skeezy as fuck and wanted me to fly out uncomfortably close to clockbutthole-in-the-morning, so I didn’t take them up on it. That’s just as well, I suppose. A phone call would’ve brought an uncomfortably high level of human interaction to the process. Simply can’t have that.

I suppose what finally made the decision for me was the fact that I decided this was the time I was going to really go for it and try to sneak my way through without a checked bag. I usually travel with a rolling bag that narrowly meets the dimensions of a carry-on and a backpack that narrowly meets the definition of a personal item, so the attempt was really just a matter of nutting up and shouldering the burden of carrying everything with me everywhere I went. Usually I just break down and pay the extra $25 to have the bag not be my problem for a while. My experience led me to believe that I had fairly good odds of slipping a free bag through without too much trouble. Even if it doesn’t fit in the bin (a feat I’d actually never tried) I knew that I could just check it at the gate, for free, ideally. Almost every time I fly there’s an announcement at the gate that the plane is too small for traditional carry-on luggage or it’s just like, SUPER full, you guys, and they’re relying on the assistance of we, the noble travelers, in order to free up bin space, so free gate-check for everyone!

It’s extremely rare these days to be on a flight that’s not 97% or more full. Hell, I’ve been on several that were 102% full. I guess that’s the influence of all the broke losers like me who are min/maxing their travel plans to shave as much as possible off the fares. I’m sure it’s done all manner of unholy things to their profit margins. Probably if you sent up a plane that was less than 90% full you’d lose money. Makes me wonder if they’re not shrewdly gaming us right back with their flight cancellations. It would explain how they’ve suddenly gotten so conspicuously good at filling all their flights. When a sudden mechanical problem comes up that shuffles everyone onto other planes, perhaps it might be that flight was merely unprofitable, and those people would be put to better use topping off eight or ten other flights than by betting on the loser. Sneaky, but I guess it is ultimately all our fault. If the only behavior we reward is lower fares, then we shouldn’t be too surprised when they add a new fare classes called “economy minus” or “steerage plus” where they just strap you to the wall for the duration of the flight.

In any case, leg one from Rochester to Philly was of the “oops the plane is too small, sorry!” variety, so my luggage subterfuge ( luggterfuge?) was off to a good start. I checked it, but this was the kind of check where they give it back to you at the end of the flight instead of at your destination. It was one of those little jumps where drink service is just barely shorter than the flight itself. Fine by me, especially since my bizarre and nonsensical insistence on daylight-hour flying had led to the trip consisting of three legs instead of two. Once again I ask a lot of my booking ritual. I want to fly to San Jose because Archai assures me that though it’s fairly close to the major hubs on the map, a change of airports can make a substantial difference in driving. Seeing as he’s letting me stay at his place for quite a substantial period, I ought to do what I can to accommodate him. The fare difference there would probably get me 2/3 of a night in a hotel, so it’s still a win for me overall.

Regardless, if one is trying to fly from a somewhat obscure regional airport to a somewhat obscure regional airport, you’re gonna have a bad time. Hence my realization that Rochester sends out all its flights to any place good smack dab in the middle of clockbutthole and I’d have to do something weird and dumb like reach O’hare by way of Philadelphia. In any case, the plane to Philly did get there (yay) and I got to see what kind of fresh inconvenience hell was spawned by the entire plane gate-checking their bags. It was decidedly not fun, though I don’t know what the hell I was expecting. Avoiding this kind of crap is what kept me paying baggage fees (or the Southwest fare/asinine scheduling markup) all this time. So yeah, we all got to stand around jammed close together in the gantry to scramble over each other to grab our bags. It looked remarkably like hyenas descending upon a fresh carcass, though less orderly and entertaining.

I wasn’t too bummed out about the delay at the gate because I had a long layover and I was looking for any excuse I could get to spend less time in the moldy tar-paper shack that Philly stubbornly insists is an airport. The board at the concourse didn’t list my connection and I couldn’t get a signal to ask the internet about it. I’m sure the gate attendant could’ve looked it up, but again I saw a chance to skim off some more of that silly human interaction nonsense and went with the hard way. And really, taking the most difficult path was far more entertaining and rewarding in the end. By taking the path less traveled by I spent more time in pursuit of actually accomplishing a thing and less time simply languishing in this decrepit sarlacc pit regretting, individually and collectively, every single decision that led me there.

Thumbing my nose at the intended path just to be spiteful of my situation reminded me of the time that the XO told me that I’d better not be on his bridge while wearing THAT hat with THAT uniform because it was out of regs. Naturally I responded by climbing eight decks down and walking the requisite 1.6 football fields aft to change into a different uniform because fuck you old man I like this hat! As I continued to survey what I surmise an airport would look like if it were a level in a post-apocalypse first-person shooter game, I recalled my father driving me to the airport. Upon hearing that I was connecting in Philly, he responded with “Ooh. You gonna be stuck there long? That place is a shithole, you know. Grungy, nasty dump of a place. I spent the whole time there wondering if that’s what it felt like to be homeless.” (I can’t imagine from whence I inherited my tremendously tactful discourse.) So yeah, it would seem dad wasn’t exaggerating and apparently this is far from a new problem.

A lot of the most decayed, dangerous and confusingly arranged areas of the concourse were under the guise of “renovation”, to which I responded with a politely skeptical “Fuck you. Ain’t none of this place ever been renovated. I bet that part of the building just fell down so you slapped up some sheetrock to cover it up.” In any case, though my archaeological surveys of the surrounding ruins, I learned the correct gate for my flight and got on the bus to get there. That’s always the first thing I do on arrival, because every airport seems to have a unique shenanigan in place to obstruct that process. Philly’s complication du jour was that our bus had to wait for a plane to take off before we could go across. Striking that no one thought of busses and planes crossing the same travel lanes as being a problem in the design stage. That trip involved some notable jaunts outdoors that were quite invigorating as I’d already put away my coat for the preceding flight and was hesitant to get it out again for just a little wait at the gantry and just a little dash for the slightly less frigid lean-to that I was being shuttled towards. I forewent the heavy coat this time because I wasn’t getting to California by way of a week in Denver like last time. The coat I brought this time is a nifty affair that transforms into a somewhat passable neck pillow when the scenario demands. A neat trick to be sure, but the process of inarticulately jamming all that into a space only allegedly designed to accommodate it is far less elegant and seamless than I was led to believe. (That’s what she said! Oh… No wonder she doesn’t return my calls.) So yes, I ended up making some not-insignificant outdoor jaunts in breezy see-your-breath kinds of conditions in just a t-shirt and jeans. Netted a few odd looks for my optimism about the whole production, but it felt good in the end, tipping my hat to a kindly passerby and assuring them “Why yes, I AM an indestructible highlander, wholly unmoved by this pathetic bluster you peasants claim to be winter, thank you for asking.”

Ah well, I soon found the hovel within which I was to while away the next few hours. Perhaps it was a good experience in the end. My constitution may have been softened by having been conditioned to expect frivolities like electrical power and windows that close properly. When I began using my laptop I was tempted to blow the extra battery power on leaving the wireless card enabled just because the erratic sputtering of the signal was hilarious to watch. I don’t think I could fuck up a wireless hotspot that badly if I tried. Just trying to navigate to the Cross Time Café Forum yielded one of the most interesting error messages I’ve seen in a long time. The spasmodic flickering of the wireless network icon in the taskbar was a lot like how the control panels on the starship Enterprise will flash wildly and shoot out a hail of molten slag at the slightest provocation. It’s like someone took the time to make the connection look as dramatically and devastatingly broken as possible. Wait, maybe that was it! This place looks the way it does because it was strafed by a squadron of TIE fighters just weeks ago and the Caprican refugees are struggling to hold it together to continue sheltering the budding Argent Dawn so that they can safely resume their crusade to take down Voldemort and his army of flying monkeys. It’s the most logical explanation! Realistically though, they were playing Fallout Boy over the announcing system a lot, so I forgive them for everything.

In any case, I eventually realized that I know a few giant eagles from way back and they owed me a favor, so I enlisted their help to be delivered from the clutches of the Urgals infesting the Philadelphia lowlands. Fortunately the eagles had very limited overhead bin space, so I was able to check my bag for free all the way to my destination. Hah! Consider yourself gamed, “the system”. I’mma take this hard won $25 to California and buy like, as much weed as that buys. I don’t actually know how much that is I’ve never bought weed before. It’s probably not a lot. Which is good as I’ve also never smoked much of it before. I thought through this decision very carefully is what I’m saying. Anyways, the Deus Eagles Machina dropped me off still pretty damn far from my destination, but then again they’re known for doing that. “The Lonely Mountain is right there, assholes! What gives?” I guess that’s why I only use them when I’ve written myself into a corner and need to handwave away a bunch of important details. Still, they did manage to confer me to the shining palace of the Goddess Oharé, where the vaunted ceilings and cheery merchants granted me solace. And also where they wanted $7 to use the internet so on second thought fuck those guys.

The last plane was large and fancy enough to have TVs. Not much in the free queue, but I took the opportunity to watch the Departed. It’s one of those movies that I have several friends who would never forgive me for having never seen it. Great film though, once you get past the sickeningly bad Boston accents. Lots of classics I don’t really “get”, but this one was solid. Had some of Jack Nicholson at his most Jack Nicholson-est and Leonardo Dicaprio at his most difficult-to-distinguish-from-Matt-Damon-est. I made it to San Jose and into Archai’s fancy sportscar without further incident worthy of note. I suppose that in and of itself is rather significant given that I just threw 2000 words at discussing how the flight was. The next day was the much-vaunted chicken meet. Actually it’s more like the kind-of-unremarkable chicken meet if you’re actually from the bay area. I am quite reliably both awed and sickened with envy that there are so many furry events in California (I’d say “the California coast” but let’s face it that’s the only part of California that has people.) that they start to compete with each other for the most primo timeslots and people get blasé about them because there’s just so damn many happening all over the place all the time. Chicken was the first of many reminders that I am a stranger in a strange land. Though quite well attended, there was a distinct lack of people I didn’t need an introduction to. I did manage to pick Casidhe out of the crowd though. That was nice. I never seem to be around him for very long at a stretch, but he’s a pretty chill dude.

I had met Rioku at chicken, and on Friday I came to find that he was slated to be my babysitter for the day while Arc went down to the peninsula to till the furrows at the server farm and other responsible adult things. As such, my day was filled with a lot more racecargofast kind of stuff, which I was by then at long last developing an appreciation for. It actually is kind of interesting to see and feel the differences in performance between different cars, now that I’ve managed to convince myself to care about such things. Rioku’s ride had a pretty interesting weight distribution in that its engine could be described as bigger than a breadbox but only slightly, with a minimalist body on the car to match. Really good power for fighting in the featherweight class. There’s plenty of great driving to be had up in the hills. It really is quite the novelty to be able to just throw a day at driving around and hanging out. It takes some good people and beautiful countryside to be able to do that.

Saturday’s highlight was go-karting. This place was one of the more advanced ones, so it was good stuff. I’d always thought of karting as a kid’s thing, but apparently there are some pretty intense racing experiences to be had if you’re willing to look. And boy are these guys willing to look! Archai has got quite a crew out here, and a great many of them were huge gearheads. Even the ones without fancy sportscars are pretty hard up about fancy sportscars and have done a lot of work souping up what they do have. One of them had a van that sounded like it wanted to grow up to be a turbine. It gets a little overwhelming and tiresome for someone that’s pretty lukewarm about cars. They’re still good people though, and I zone out sometimes anyways, so it’s nice to have designated zoning out periods built into the conversation. Or I could just talk to Sidian. Officially doubling the always-critical “people I saw in California who I can credibly claim to know” statistic with her eventual recollections of our previous interactions, Sidian was in much the same boat as I was. It was good to know there was someone else around who could get through the day without needing to huff octane and mainline a half-ounce of SAE 10W-30 to take the edge off.

It’s tougher to ignore the fact that I’m surrounded by a hypercompetitive Mad Max caravan on the racetrack though. I’m sure that I could’ve had a lot of fun out there if not for the all-city racing circuit out there trying to defy physics with nothing but the insatiable fury of their motor boners. It’s not a great experience if you’re just trying to have fun. Everyone out there doing their damndest to be immortalized as the fastest thing on earth powered by a leaf blower engine doesn’t make for the most cheery atmosphere. Plus there’s the fact that if everyone else in attendance is going to pass you four times then the race is going to be more letting people pass than actual racing. I did get some good advice that led to substantial performance improvements, but when you’re trying to actually accomplish something it’s a lot more aggravating to get slapped into the outside lane by OctaneCock #29. I guess in the end I made an impression though. By the end of our session everyone had learned to either stay the hell away from me or plow straight through me, because trying to predict my driving patterns was something that I couldn’t do myself. So woe betide those who’d waste their precious time attempting it. I still have really amazing skid control, which let me do a lot of fun stuff that felt really good. I got a pretty decent lap time for someone doing essentially everything wrong, so I’ll roll with it. A few times I’d try to do an actual coherent racing thing in order to improve my performance, but I’d always get t-boned straight into the wall in the middle of doing it, so I settled on the “Fuck lap times and fuck anyone within 20 yards of me” style that came naturally to me.

In any case, I resolved not to let something like a discontinuity in choice of hobbies make me bring everyone down and in the end I had a lot of fun having dinner with all those guys. Being constantly buried in new people is a bit exhausting, but at least I’m quite capable of it. I’d always thought of myself as being something of an acquired taste, but apparently I can still hack it when I’m playing away games. There was some discussion of who would drive that night at the end. I wasn’t feeling up to drinking a lot given the prolonged omnidirectional trauma that my abdomen had just been subjected to, so I briefly entertained the idea of being a driver. Until I remembered that all these piston-fucking gear twinks only have manual transmissions. So I just went as a passenger and then ended up drinking a bunch anyway. Zantal and Scotch had some egg nog left that wasn’t quite to the point of developing independent locomotion, so we managed to make some drinkable stuff with it. Honorable mentions of other gear twinks in attendance go to Broken Wing, LeadPaw, Leda and Frish.

From there we proceeded to Frolic, a monthly furry event that a local nightclub puts on. It wasn’t in conjunction with FC this year, but I think that’s really for the best. It would seem to me that the two events would compete rather than synergize, but then again I’m notoriously bad at predicting the behavior and values of this peculiar race known as “Californians”. It seemed like a cool opportunity though, and not one that ought to be dismissed out of hand. It was nice, I guess. It was a little difficult to get past the simple fact that “Let’s make this EDM mix show up on seismographs in Dallas” isn’t exactly my preferred choice of atmosphere. There were plenty of people outside though, so it wasn’t like taking a break outside was boring. I spent most of the night there, actually. Hell, that’s where most of the good stuff happened. Indoors had precisely one good thing and her name was Bernadette. She was a wily and spirited bar matron who took very good care of the animals in her charge. She was an absolute artist with cocktails and, had cash or perforated tympanic membranes not been valid considerations, she might’ve led me to get far more inebriated than I did. I’ve never before met someone who could reliably produce entirely palatable drinks of that potency and believe me, I take every chance I can get to investigate rumors of such things. All other such claims have proven to be more stuffed with crap than a dung beetle condo. I know it’s a little superficial to say that the true magic of the place was behind the bar, but it totally was, you guys.

Like I said, I found the outside of the club to be a lot more fun, lack of available organic solvents notwithstanding. For a time it was put upon me to hold SilverWolf in a somewhat vertical position. I’m not certain if he approached me because he remembered me from RainFurrest or because I had the sturdiest looking shoulders within grabbing distance. I couldn’t get much out of him in regards to that or any other question, but he appeared to be having a really good time. Corvus from the Furthemore staff also found me there and I got to catch up with him. It’s nice to stay at least a little in the loop on that. Not being able to go and staff this time around was a real bummer, but it sounds to me like they’re still doing great work out there. I’m glad that I remembered to bring those promotional fliers that Serval sent me back at RMFC. Not sure how many people we might be able to entice from this far out, but I bet it’ll be zero if I don’t try. Also hanging around outside was Vox Fox. I had to talk to him for a while and listen closely, but I remembered him singing at last year’s FC talent show and totally killing it. He was very flattered that I remembered him, even if it took me a bit to come around. Axio also featured prominently in this adventure, but was usually moving too fast to properly interact with.

One of those ubiquitous folks who I’d seen many times but never managed to pin down was the indomitable purple giraffe, Zarafa. He was quite a find and I’m glad I reached out to him. Ordinarily I’d say that he has quite a lot of energy, but that phrase carries a very different meaning in furry circles. That really wasn’t it. It was more like vitality. He had this sort of Mister Rodgers vibe to him where he’d take the most earnest and delightful interest in whatever you were up to and make you feel good about it no matter what it was. Also very common in the fandom is that whole “Yeah! Everyone hug everyone!” kind of attitude, but Zarafa has this way about him that actually gets people to do it. I got involved in a hug that he started which ballooned out to contain eight people or so. It fluctuated some, but it had to be 10 or 15 minutes after he left that the number trickled down. One of the last holdouts of that particular hug was Spottacus, who seemed to be just dying for someone to talk to in the best possible way. He does fancy technology things, like so many people around here, and was apparently making fantastical breakthroughs in wearable tech the likes of which the world has never seen. We were out there together for quite a while and I think Spotty spent more time draped over my shoulders than my jacket did. Really though, there are far worse positions to be stuck in than listening to exuberant strings of Oh God you guys I need to tell you about how happy I am AAAAAGH!

Out of convenience of location and presumably in service of the doing of more things, we spent the night at Zantal’s house. Sunday morning was kind of slow, but that’s to be expected for following a night of Frolicking. Vertanir, Tuna and I all went to Trader Joe’s in the morning to stock up with the ultimate intent of creating breakfast, and eventually we did so. Once we got ourselves around we concluded that there were sights to be seen and Catdude was up in the hills in sort of the area where we needed to be. He works at The Chabot Space and Science Center, so that sounded like a fun place to drop by. That didn’t work out ideally as some stalling on our departure and various logistical complications led to us arriving rather close to closing time and quite short on daylight. Still, it was nice to meet someone from the Freefall forum and we were close to the Embarcadero, one of the things that Archai had been so keen to show me.

We parked along one of the less famous parts of the famous Lombard Street and climbed the hill to see Coit Tower. We got there just in time for it to close, so yeah. There are consequences for staying out late, kids! Really though, it’s worth it. California has so many furries and so much stuff to do, I don’t think there was a single night where I went to bed earlier than 2 AM. Normally I’d be pissed about that schedule but this was amazing! We went on to climb down the hill and see the fascinating phenomenon of all the houses stacked like lego bricks all the way up the hillside. Lots of fascinating architecture there. Some creative stuff comes out when you’ve got some of the most expensive real-estate in the world and a whole host of crippling space constraints. Some spots look like they belong in a fantasy novel. There’s no way you’d assume people would build like that, but build they do.

The trip back up we did by cable car. A lot better than climbing, to be sure, and Arc remarked on how he’d never ridden one before either. I think he actually appreciated the chance to do all the tourist stuff that you just don’t normally do when you live in a place. We learned why they weren’t a commuter staple while we were waiting a half hour for our connection, but still, it’s about the experience. Cable cars are just about the most steampunk thing I’ve ever seen that actually serves a practical experience, so they’re definitely worth the price of admission. Which is occasionally free, so you can’t argue with that. Though I suppose we did get a reminder why it’s so rare for people to use them these days when we had to wait more than half an hour to make our connection.

Finishing out that night was a nice dinner at an Italian restaurant with a half dozen people I’d never met commemorating the return of two other people I’ve never met, Stormy Kittyhawk and Toby Snow Wolf if I recall correctly. So yeah, plenty of time to practice introductions once again. I’d say practice remembering names too, but I’m pretty ass at that even under normal conditions. Still pretty fun. Lobster ravioli is a thing that exists. My life is a little better for knowing that. And eating it. Monday had another quiet start, but I could hardly complain. We did a lot of fun driving that day. Out to see the sights in a couple parks and then a hell of a trip down Skyline Drive. I actually loved that one, a lot. Not just a putting-up-with-car-stuff-because-otherwise-I’ll-have-no-one-to-hang-out-with kind of thing either. That was actually a ton of fun. The roads were fantastically well designed for this. Great views, interesting layouts and plenty of space to really open up the throttle. I supposed that I’d best appreciate this stuff while I was in California, because I just don’t see roads like that back home. It was extreme sightseeing, such a delightful combination. I felt like I could spend a whole day doing that.

Actually, we kinda did. We walked down the downtown beach head when we were through and it was quite dark by then. It was a bit late for beachgoers and a bit early for bonfires, but I liked the quiet. I didn’t expect to be able to see at the waterfront, but we were right next to the massive disco ball that is San Francisco, so it was actually quite easy to see out there. Arc did his usual thing where we stopped at a coffee shop so he could work for a while. I was actually quite impressed with how little he’d had to work so far, especially given that he was about to take time off for FC. The next day that would change, but for right then we’d managed a pretty solid day together. Just when I thought that things were winding down though, Vert came to kidnap us for booze and cartoons. Of the things to be kidnapped for, that’s gotta be among the better ones.

The planned viewing was a bunch of episodes of Stephen Universe, which I could hardly contain my indifference about. The program was changed to cut out a few episodes in order to fit in a showing of Labyrinth in honor of the late Mr. Bowie. That sounded pretty nice. I’d never seen the movie, so I guess it would be worth figuring what all the fuss was about. The little bit of Stephen Universe that I did watch was in many ways about what I’d expected to find, but was also something of a pleasant surprise. It had some of the wildly insubstantial avalanches of Deus Ex Machina that I expected, but I came to look past that. There was some good character development and pacing, along with a very compelling heel-face-turn that I rather enjoyed. Not saying I’ll stick with the show, but for all the confusion I’ve experienced about the show’s massive and positively frothing fan base, I guess I can say now that I kinda get it. Labyrinth was pretty good too, definitely does deserve to be a classic. I wasn’t blown away, but it’s been awhile since I’ve seen a movie with such rock solid fundamentals. It hit all the right points, good pacing, very engaging, and had a lot of very impressive practical effects. All around, a great way to end a night.

Tuesday was where Arc’s whole “having a job” habit really caught up with him. Fortunately I’d managed to eventually put together some plans to meet a friend from school who lives in Novato. That town is a somewhat reasonable distance away, but I’d still be asking for a lot if I wanted a pickup. As such, it was put upon me to embark on a public transportation adventure of some notable scope. Having only casual familiarities with cities and transport infrastructures of any kind, this was a bit more of a tall order than one might expect. Archai was clever enough to toss me an old tablet to allow me to use modern space magic to smooth things over. That solved pretty much everything, actually. I’m actually considering getting a tablet. My objection to a smartphone is based in large part around the fact that if I had access to the internet at all times I’d probably never communicate with another human face to face again. Having a tablet divorces the phone functionality from all the future space magic, so I’d be able to use it only when it’s actually needed, and honestly so far traveling is the only time I’ve ever felt like I need one.

Archai had told me that the metro station was a few minutes away from his house. I came to learn later that he meant driving not walking, and had intended to deposit me there on his way to work. By the time I realized this I’d already YOLO’d out of the house and it was a bit too late to un-YOLO. I’d woken up to the sun that morning at like 7:30 as I had several times before and I realized that I could let it beat me as I’d done every other morning, or I could get mad! Ask to see this morning’s manager! Have my engineers invent combustible lemons and burn this morning’s house down! So yeah I got an early start just in case I suck at doing trains. In the end I did pretty okay at trains, so I got a good amount of useable time for the day. I took the ferry to Larkspur and was greeted by a most fascinating sign. Well there go all my plans I guess. Meeting up with my fraternity brother kicked off another day of mostly “Oh cool I never do these things because I live here this is really neat!”

Something that he definitely did a lot was go to In-N-Out Burger, but obviously that’s still worth doing. I’d been to one last time I was in California, obviously, since it’s a requirement. I didn’t really get it though. I'm not saying In-N-Out makes a bad burger by any stretch of the imagination. The thing is, people don't treat In-N-Out Burger like it makes a fine burger. People treat In-N-Out Burger like it cures cancer and makes you shit solid gold for a week. Essentially everyone I’ve ever known from the west coast was constantly spewing all of the over-the-top "It will change your life" kind of praise at me before I had ever even considered going to California. So, naturally, I was very much looking forward to investigating the hype once I arrived. I did. It was fine. Just fine. It took a second pass for me to figure it all out though. When you actually press someone for detail while they’re cleaning the ecstatic smear of jizz off the front of their shirt from the mere mention of In-N-Out, usually you come to find that it’s not really the quality of the food that makes the restaurant so iconic. Usually you’ll get them to admit that FatBurger or Five Guys or some other chain makes a superior product. The real reason for all the hype is right in the name.

This place has an incredibly streamlined architecture that lets them put people through with incredible speed and efficiency. I’ve always wondered why there aren’t more places that have a limited menu like they do. Having just a few things to specialize in means faster service, better quality and a cost savings as well, since maintaining a crazy huge inventory harms all those things. Having just three menu choices is actually a pretty clever way of circumventing the problem of people getting to the front of the line and just sitting there, gormlessly staring at the bewildering array of choices before them, finding themselves utterly unprepared for this utterly trivial decision. I’d never really understood the point of the secret menu until I saw it in action. Again, it’s all about efficiency. Secret menu items let you add variety without confusing any decision-impaired sea cucumbers with too many options, lest they experience a panic attack when asked what they wish to eat and vomit up their internal organs instead of placing an order. Because secret orders have to be looked up elsewhere, you’ve got to come in the door knowing exactly what you want or you won’t get it, and that’s exactly what this place needs to keep running smoothly. And of course no mention of this place would be complete without pointing out how jarring it is to see someone in the back cutting up potatoes to make into French fries. Did you know that French fries started as potatoes? It’s a well-concealed secret in most fast food joints.

In any case, I slogged through all that irreverent drivel in order to tell you all about the awful service that I got at In-N-Out Burger. I’m not even being facetious or anything. They fucked up objectively quite badly. It was a little awkward when my friend got his meal and I was still just sitting there. Being a long-time veteran of this crystal sky palace, he assured me that I need only have faith. For about ten minutes. Then his counsel changed to a baffled “Yeah, I guess maybe you should say something.” So with due diligence I mentioned how odd it was that they were serving up order 53 when I hadn’t seen order 46 yet. The employee that I asked about this confirmed that she had no recollection of filling that order. She asked for the receipt so that she could track it down. When she handed the paper to the fry cook he looked like she had just handed him a live squid. He’d never seen it before. So yeah, it wasn’t like my order was ready somewhere or someone else had picked it up. The cashier took my money and it just never got made.

Naturally from our vantage point we found this pretty hilarious. My friend because this was legitimately the first time he’d ever even heard of this place screwing up an order, and me because I was quite impressed with the amount of bricks that were shat when they realized how badly they’d dropped the ball on this one. They whipped through that order like a thing possessed. I actually felt a little bad when it got to me and I came back with “Yeah, but I ordered a shake too.” So they scrambled to get that over to me, and then scrambled to get me a fork to deal with my animal-style fries, and then scrambled to get me a gift card because they’re just like SUPER sorry about all this, for real. I thought the whole production was just adorable. That would’ve been a complete non-event anywhere else, but the commitment I saw there. Ya just don’t see that very much anymore. So yeah, I get it now. It’s basically just Waffle House but with hamburgers. I really wish someone could’ve just explained it to me like that early on. So take note, west-coasters. If you need to describe In-N-Out to someone, just call it the Waffle House of hamburgers and save yourself all the conclusion. It can be understood if you take the time. I get it now. If I had a place like that and went to a state without it, I’d miss it. Granted, I’d tell people the fucking ACTUAL reasons why it’s so great instead of acting like it’s some big goddamned secret for no reason, but that’s California for you.

The remainder of our time together was more of the same touring kind of stuff that the rest of my tenure in California was composed of, just north of the bay instead of south. Got to see some of those famous redwoods up close as we drove through a state park, and then some more fun twisty mountain road stuff in the Marin Headlands. Beautiful country out there. It was a California cold sort of day, so perfectly good beach weather in my opinion. We found a pretty big stretch that we had mostly to ourselves and walked down it. ALL the way down it. We got to talking and not really paying attention, and pretty soon we were pretty close to the end of the beach. He’d never walked to the end before, so we decided to go with it. Mostly I talked about shit that I’d had to put up with in the navy. Seemed to pass the time quite well actually. Our social chair for this semester has confirmed that getting me drunk and listening to me talk about the navy will be an event soon. I’m actually kind of looking forward to it now. I managed to fill about 7 miles of walking without even really trying, so I guess I’m pretty good at continuing to be entertaining when I get on that subject.

After that my friend showed me around his neck of the woods a little more and we took a break at his house. I thought that it might be easier and a little more fun if we all got together for dinner so we could make the handoff. That’s one of those cool ideas I tend to have that end up being a logistical catastrofuck in the end. There were a lot of snags trying to communicate with Arc at work because he wanted to use fancy spacephone methods and the tablet he gave me didn’t really feel like talking to cell networks at the time. This was especially complicated by the fact that we had to leave pretty much immediately if we were to get anywhere within a reasonable span of time. Naturally with only my wild assumptions as guidance I’d put our meet-in-the middle spot far too close to San Francisco, wherein a tornado of traffic was about to destroy all life in the area. I guess that’s the sort of mistake that comes from having the only person involved who is NOT familiar with the area making the decisions. Fortunately both natives were adamant that SF was a place to be avoided this time of day. Surprisingly my plan of “just start driving south and we’ll figure it out on the way actually worked and we managed to successfully find a target a ways down the peninsula to get sushi.

So yeah if I tried to feed the whole journal to FA all at once it would just sputter nervously and then puke on itself. Though to be fair, that's its response to a lot of things. Click here for the actual convention-containing part of the con journal.