Our story begins last night (being Friday the 29th). I'm not the most organized person in the world when it comes to most anything. I have my cards in bookcases, desks, shoeboxes, kitchen counters, a couple on the stove, under my feet, the bed and the reason I mention this is because while I have already written down my deck, I had to spend 7 hours trying to find them all. Naturally finishing all my other tasks of the day, it wasn't until 4:30 am that I finished. So I did what any non-normal person would do: Fall asleep sitting upright in front of the computer. If not for the divine providence of my answering machine having the loudest message recording system, I'd probably have gotten to work far later than my 7 minutes late status was but then again, working at 9 am can do that to you.

The adrenaline rush propelled me with enough awake juice to make it until 2 which is when I had to get out of work, walk home, shower, get clothes out of the dryer, grab essential gear for my rather odd traveling style, last but not least my deck and then depart. I don't travel like most people for a variety of reasons:

1) I can't drive, at least not legally. I'm old enough for a license, I own a car but I lack the funds for the required insurance and most especially, my eyes aren't the greatest in the world, prone to sporadic seconds of blindness and chronic double vision that'd extend far beyond the hood of any car. While the double vision I can deal with, the money I never can. By the way, if you're curious, it's a black Chevy Impala from 1981.

And

2) Greyhound has just one bus that arrives in Seaside (where I'm from) and it arrives at 3:00 pm every day. Combine that with Greyhound's prices and the inability to pay for a night at a hotel means only two things: Either I can stay with someone for the night or I stay outside all night.

For obvious safety reasons, I don't recommend option 2. However, if you're really keen on going to said tournament, it can be done if pressed but you should only do it if you're prepared and use common sense.

• Always walk as though you know where you're going, even if you're intentionally walking around to stay warm.
• Dress appropriately and that means overly warmly because without shelter, even a modest breeze can help make you feel very cold.
• Find places that are open 24 hours and buy something (doesn't have to be much) and read/go through your deck, etc.) while there (except for convenience marts because they're always mean.). A few places I recommend are IHoP (International House of Pancakes), Dunkin' Donuts, Kinko's (good if you want to go online for stuff), supermarkets and of course, dance clubs/bars/pubs etc.
• Always keep sugar/snacky foods and drinks with you. Too much food makes the body slow down to digest, making you much more sleepy than you will no doubt already be feeling at the time. Conserve both of these, rationing a drink and few pieces of food every hour or so.
• Bring an extra set of clothes more than the days you'll be gone. Helps to remove the smell from being outside all night, which will be appreciated by all concerned (except for me, because I have no sense of smell. Olav too, if he's there)
• Getting as much sleep as you can on the bus and alter your sleeping habits helps loads so that when you stay up all night, your body won't be yelling at you and punishing you for it.
• Just remember, only do this if you really want to go to a tournament. That's why I don't go to many tournaments, it takes a lot out of me as it is but to combine it with being conscious for long periods of time, it's just exhausting.

I'm traveling to Vancouver with those backup plans just in case the crew of the Mondor are unable to pick me up. The Mondor is really a description of Olav's car since it needs things to make it go but I figured it was a rather apt way to refer to them at this sentence. The crew consists of Olav Rokne, the very European Canadian Ferenginar Provincial Champion (but it's easier to call him T6E), Eric Neilson, the Quasi-Canadian/Oregonian Beaver Lad and follower of the teaching of Olav and our driving (and owner of this working car), Dr. Funk (insert umlaut over u) aka Dr. David Hyttenrauch, the quiet older gentleman who only came to get his foiled version of himself. But of course, he wanted to lay down the Funk!

In any case, the reason that I was worried was because Olav called my house several times while I was at work. He left the number for the hotel (Quality Inn), the room number (105), the fact that they, through the actions of gas stations, car roofs and the items not approved for roof transport, lost their Glossary, CR and decklists and the fact that they couldn't remember the address of the bus station, all of which wouldn't have been so bad now that my printer works. The bad part is, the power went out in my place shortly after my last message on the machine and having one of those digital answering machines, the power wiped out all of that information. So I plan for the worst.

Copy down directions from my buddy mapquest, make the printer spit out 28 pages for the CR, dilemma resolution and 3 complete deck list sheets. I e-mail every Quality Inn within a 20-mile radius and pack the necessary gear. I'm just about to hit the shower when my wife called. One of the barbaric things about the camp which she's at is the fact that there are no phones nor can you bring any phones with you to said camp. When you're apart by several thousand miles and are used to talking to her for hours on end, going cold turkey hurts like hell. Obviously, I couldn’t talk long which hurt but just being able to tell her that I love her and hearing her say the same back was very sweet. Heck, I get all misty thinking about it while writing about it down right now.

After the shortest shower on record (thank the Lloyd my hair was cut, otherwise it just couldn’t be done), I grabbed my stuff and most importantly, Emily and ran like hell down 10 blocks to catch the bus. Emily is my staff and accompanies me every time I travel on a bus. Its very good luck and it’s a sign from the big Lloyd that my future wife and I were meant to be. Emily was struck by lightning the day before I met my wife, the same day that I was walking several miles into the gusting wind of the most torrential rain I’ve been in since my senior year of high school. After meeting her, I found Emily shortly afterwards and I carried her ever since. I even twisted my ankle to bring her back on the plane since I’m convinced that a baggage attendant would break it. I tried to doze off every so often but it’s a bus, that’s difficult to do, especially on US 30 where you weave a lot. I woke up in Kelso where I changed buses and saw someone I hadn’t seen for years.

Her name is Leslie. I’d say probably 19 or 20 now, but still with a stunning body and face, tanned despite living in Washington thanks to her Hawaiian background, very dark eyes and soft, rounded cheekbones that always looked like she was smiling but soft to the touch I’d imagine. The fact that she remembered me at all when I said hello surprised me. Summer of 1998, she lived about twenty miles north of Seaside in Astoria but she worked in Seaside at Subway. For those of you not familiar with Seasidian Geographical studies, Subway and the arcade where I work is right next to each other so it was no doubt the reason why I went to Subway night after night after doing an errand for them once. Of course, like all stunning women, she was of course unavailable (the only exception I’ve found was my wife so no one else can have her ;-) so it wasn’t as though our relationship was in any way romantic (although I’d be lying if I hadn’t wanted it to be romantic) She’d come into the arcade after they were closed, I’d give her a couple of free games and we just chatted about whatever. It took a while to get past my usual inability to form sentences/stutter/stammer/unable to stop staring at her phase but it was nice. In any case, she was dropping off a friend of hers on my bus that was heading to Seattle. She’s still just as stunning as ever and just as unavailable but then, so am I. I’m only going to give myself one kick though, for not taking her picture since I had brought a camera with me.

Downtown Seattle has one major flaw for me: There isn’t a cheap restaurant anywhere within walking distance from the bus station. Eventually I had to settle for a sandwich of marginal quality from a Barnes and Noble café. Of course I didn’t realize it at the time but that was going to be my last real food for about 43 hours. Barnes and Noble will never be more than a corporate, soulless version of Powell’s without the used books. Wandering around Seattle looking for a place to eat certainly made the layover of 80 minutes seem much shorter so at least there’s that consolation.

Customs officers suck. Seriously. I have my Oregon’s ID card and a legal affidavit stating that I’m a citizen of the US. I even have my really old Dutch passport that was last renewed when I was 13 or so. If I recall correctly, here’s the following questions that I was asked:

Who are you, where do you live, how old are you, what do you do for a living, what’s with the stick, what are you going to Canada for, how long will you be here, where will you be, how can we be in contact with you, what are customizable card games, etc.

I would’ve remembered more but it was after 1 am and I wasn’t all that awake at the time.

I arrive in Vancouver after my interrogation (which was stalled because the customs officer apparently can’t read my name on the id card well enough to spell my name correctly) at 2 am which was a half hour early, surprising for the folks of Greyhound but I blame it on the fact that only three people were on the bus to Vancouver. So I wait outside, looking for some sign of a ride, passing up taxi’s left and right until the crew of the Mondor Advance, captained by Dr. Funk arrived. This is when Tara, the Cuban waitress came into the topic of talking.

Apparently the threesome of the Mondor spent the previous day eating lunch at a Cuban restaurant where Olav became smittened heavily over the waitress named Tara, asked her out and found her the most attractive woman on two legs in the history of mankind. Of course, that’s an exaggeration but from his talking about her and Dave’s quiet agreement and Eric’s taste in women seemingly lacking in the finer points of the obvious, she must’ve been quite stunning but do I get to see the lovely lady with my own eyes? I’m not that lucky.

We spent the rest of the night talking about lots of different things, ST decks, A.I. being a crappy movie ("It’s Blade Runner only poorer done.") and everything else that I again would be glad to share with you if it wasn’t for the fact that my body wasn’t agreeing with me at the time and passed out. However for the importance of the storyline involved, I told everyone in the room what I was playing more or less. After all, it doesn’t matter whether you know what I’m going to play or not, not as though I can play anything different.

In the morning on approximately 4½ hours of the substance known as sleep, I promptly showered, got dressed and went through about a hundred different shuffles with my basketball season deck. (So aptly named because the draw deck was 82 cards, one for each game of an NBA basketball season) I don’t generally like my decks that big but for whatever reason that I’m sure there’s statistical explanations for, it seemed to work almost all the time with varying degrees of success. Once everyone regained consciousness eventually, I showed Olav my deck list and I saw his. That point right there, I should’ve paid much more attention to. Also, the trick that he used to beat me 100-0 we had even talked about at the time and which I said I could get around, was also talked about but for sake of story, I’ll talk about that later. Eric was trying to get us to decide for him whether he should play his Olav-made deck which was a stasis via DQSS deck (9 Business Cards, Warp Bubbles, etc.) or a Dominion Smackdown deck via Empok Nor. Me, I have bias on that because frankly, I hate Smackdown in people beaming onto my ship and as such, I said not to play it. Normally, I don’t like telling people what to play, it’s inconvenient because it places me on the spot and can be easily blamed for anything that goes wrong with it. In the end, he played the stasis deck more out of the fact that he didn’t think he could get enough dilemma combos sorted together to make it work. I only mention this because I didn’t play Eric at the tournament unfortunately and fortunately.

Breakfast after getting gas (to which Eric and I had the oddest conversation about cursing, sex and furniture all because right across from the gas station was a 24 hour adult store) consisted of a bagel concoction which had some combination of vegetables for Olav and ice cream for Eric and I (I went with the caramel crunch and double chocolate fudge) and I added a Sunkist orange soda to go with it. One interesting note about Sunkist: I haven’t seen one of those in years, you can’t get them in Seaside. So I took that as a sign that today was to be no ordinary day, which of course I knew ahead of time but I like signs like that.

After picking up Dave at the hotel, we packed our stuff and drove to the store, Eric for whatever reason which I’m still unable to figure out, brought his entire collection with him. His poor bag had its guts filled with cardboxes, couldn’t be zipped closed and had like one or two other boxes outside. Me, I just brought my Cardassian sealed deck box and that’s it. We arrive at the store and Olav/Eric start trying to get some trades going on whereas me, I don’t really do much of anything except watch and write the notes down in the notepad which of course makes up this rather long and rambling tournament report/travel log. Eric then begins the rather humorous search for Kivas Fajo-Collectors. It seems that he was either counting on someone to have them available or something like that but he wasn’t able to get all the ones that he needs so he began to purchase packs and eventually a Enhanced Premiere box (The Trois). Not one Kivas or Palor Toff or even Distortion Fields and his most prized common: No Wormholes.

After a while I just started to watch the people come into the store, trying to see whether I could recognize anyone from anywhere. Jason Drake was easy to spot since I remember seeing him and playing him at DCon (for those of you wondering: he won 100-0), I had a pretty good guess who Stephen was when I saw him but since, contrary to popular belief, I am a quiet guy, I didn’t say anything until long into the tournament to him. Of course I saw Roxanne, I seem to play her in every single tournament I’m in outside of Oregon and Washington (every GenCon, DCon, etc.) but also because it’s her store we’re having the tournament in. Eventually Todd showed up, actually remembered who I was (which is rather rare since we only played once, and if you’re wondering, he won 100-0 but at least I scared him ;-) and after eventually getting all of the decklists (one very jovial gentleman whom I never did get to talk to although he had the most wonderful accent had the devil of a time getting the decklist done) we began our little merry jaunt into the Open.

See, as I said before, we always play against each other ;-) We go to "her" table ("It’s my store, I’m entitled to special privileges.") and of course, she starts. I always let ladies go first and the game gets underway. When I first showed up, my intention was to play all AQ because I figured everyone was going to play DQ. She was playing all DQ with the following spaceline: Restore Victims-Research Phage-and other assorted missions. I had mine almost perfectly sorted and we began. She countered my second Senior Staff Meeting and a Higher the Fewer plus two Penalty Boxes from two different missions made me stuck at 99 points for a while until I could tent for a Phoenix and play it for the win. She was stuck for a spell on my Scow/Dead End combo at her outpost on Research Phage and didn’t have all that great of an opening hand.

My apologies if my description of my side of the table is left vague however as I would like to try to use this deck design again over the summer and if you see it coming, you can prepare for it quite easily.

I made a couple of rather noticeable flaws on my part (forgetting to download pre-game cards from my draw deck, a couple of downloads that might’ve made things easier although it wouldn’t have changed the outcome I don’t think but they were things I’d forget later on which most likely affected the rest of the tournament.

She was playing DQ Vidiians/Federation if I remember correctly but she was having a devil of a time reporting people fast enough to compensate for my deck’s speed. It lasted maybe 4 or 5 turns but ruling questions (Apparently you can’t use a capture related card on Penalty Box being one of them) and the fact that my deck has so much stuff to do that it lasted for about 52 minutes.

End Result: Michael 100 – Roxanne 0 (2 +100)

This is when I started to curse myself out and essentially psych myself out. I’m really a very self-critical person, borderline on absolute hatred of myself at times and rarely ever confident in anything I do so if I play someone that I know is a much better player than I am, I just continue with that train of thought until the game is done. Retrospectively, things being equal, I should’ve won. I’m not saying this in order to console myself for losing or to give myself an ego, nor to belittle Jason in any way. He’s a great guy and you don’t get to be the top player in any region without having great decks and great playing skills, I’m just comparing our decks together and I think mine was the better deck.

My opening hand needs two key cards in order to make it work right, one of which I never saw the entire game; however, I had an opening hand which made it possible to solve my first mission. First mistake of the game, not playing the 62^nd Rule to drop his score by 10 (which was more important than raising mine up by ten at the time.) I complete my first mission, getting a Barclay’s and a Gift Box. Second mistake of the game for me was at this junction. I had the means to grab two Exobiology and a Biology on my next turn and a Wormhole to my opponent’s Cure Deadly Virus to steal it from him for the win (I having 60 points at the time after playing the Phoenix to my HQ) but I don’t do it simply because I didn’t think about it. Of course, I even mentioned it before that I wish I had my Fed deck since it can steal it on turn one, not even considering that I should steal it myself. While this is going on, he’s towed away my Scow and overcome my Maglock (Two Tom Paris’ and a Vidiian with Harvester) for 35 + 5 from Ayala to grab a Mysterious Orb. This is where he made his one mistake of the game: He Mysterious Orb’s the wrong guy to his Vidiians, leaving me still able to complete my second main mission but that’s where my 3^rd and final mistake shows up. I, for whatever reason, left both of my Medical personnel at the previous mission so that when I tried to SSM my mission, it fizzled due to lack of Medical. When I tried to get them over there with a Distortion (the ship was out of range) he QtR’d Temporal Vortex. I had one ace in the hole though and tried to Wormhole him to a different quadrant since he had burned his last QtR. Unfortunately for me, he stocked a Wormhole in his Tent and he happened to have a Tent in his hand so he made it back to the DQ. He then beamed down his people, passed a self-seeded Barclay’s, passed my weak Friendly Fire-Dead End combo for 95 total points, then proceeded to Harvest my guy for the remaining points. Game took like 4 turns at most, it was just very time consuming with all the downloading and whatnot.

Final score: Jason 100 – Michael 60. (2 +60)

This reaffirms what I didn’t like about some decks and why I like playing for fun rather than for the kill or the win, because I feel incredibly guilty as a result of it. It’s a game, people are supposed to have fun and I try to have fun playing, even if I’m completely obliterated. Almost always, I stay away from decks like mine because frankly, they aren’t fun to play against but this year, I have a goal and it’s the World Championship and I need to win in order to go to college in Winter term up in Windsor, Ontario. All the money would be going to pay off Uncle Sam and his Oregonian counterpart: Mr. Beaver Duck (personal name for the state of Oregon).

The reason I bring this up is because this was the bulk of my opponent’s turn since he went first. His AMS were Selok and someone else, his ASP was Mendak, his Defend Homeworld was Lore and he played War Council to draw three cards. His spaceline, with the exception of Cloaked Mission, were all stealable missions: Earth, Study Shattered Space, Lonka Pulsar, Wormhole Negotiations and Pegasus Search. My guess at the deck was a War Council/Barzan Wormhole motif but I never got the chance to find out. My deck worked perfectly and solved two missions for the win, getting the points from AMS and a 62^nd Rule plus the two missions.

He was angry, that much was obvious. I couldn’t think of anything to make him feel any better and it physically made me ill after seeing him leave the table. Made me wish that the break was then, just so that I didn’t feel so sick at the time. I took some broken down Excedrin pills for the pain (stomach and my eyes, we were outside and I’m very light sensitive.

Final Score – Michael 100 – James 0 (4 +160)

During the lull, I chatted with one of the ladies in the store, an older lady with glasses whom we just talked about whatever came up, which helped ease the nerves somewhat. I later found out how the rest of the crew of the Mondor was doing: Olav had gone undefeated thus far, Dr. Funk was at I think 2-1 and Eric was at 1-2. Olav was still convinced that he shouldn’t be doing this well, Eric was lamenting his deck and Dr. Funk as always was keeping rather quiet, observing everything with a psychologist’s detachment.

One note about this: If it’s not Carlin who I played, I apologize, I was almost positive that Todd said Carlin. My memory is rather poor and I didn’t write any of this down at the time.

I see an odd spaceline of Fed and Bajoran missions and the treaty which later comes out, the Chamber at Alter and some built in outposts along with Hunt for DNA Program. Like all but one person today, he had a Q-Flash out. Here’s when I start suspecting that something funny is going on: His deck is practically as big as mine (mine was 82 cards) so naturally I’m wondering what on Earth is he playing. Then it hits me: Intentional Defend Homeworld download. I’m just hoping for a lot of luck on my part and sure enough, I had probably the most luck against my opponent.

He goes first and gets Mora Pol, Kira Nerys and QIR for 10 and 01, Tent for Return Orb to Bajor and gets his Mysterious Orb underneath Bajor. However he didn’t seed Sarjenka after that, since I only seeded one dilemma there, he probably figured that it was Dead End. Female’s Love Interest/Garbage Scow. No ship for him yet and Kira is relocated to one of my planets with her RotB attached to her.

Then I start my turn and it just worked. I never saw a single Flash and his Dead End went away to my Senior Staff Meeting. I solved my first mission quickly and if it wasn’t for my other mission being farther away than the range of my ships, it would’ve been done that turn. Instead, I had to pass it to him who unexpecting how fast my deck was going, tried a few things to get anything going on but to no avail. I went to my second mission on my second turn and solved it, with AMS and the 62^nd Rule for 100 points and the win.

He was rather stunned by my deck and later on, I found out that I was right about his deck design and what it was supposed to do. He was more cheerful about it, asking me my rating (1612 or something like that, I don’t remember) and conceded the fact that I was just dang lucky to never see one of his Flashes.

Final Score – Michael 100 – Carlin 0 (6 +260)

On the good side, I only made one mistake this entire game. On the bad side, it was one mistake too many. I knew what Olav’s deck was doing (and since he has a friend that is using it at a later Open event, I won’t go into details much) so you’d think that I’d remember exactly what it could do that could seriously jeopardize my plans.

Nope, of course not.

I went first and downloaded the wrong person since I had another person in my deck that could’ve countered his rather mean travesty to my people, not thinking or because this was the exact table that Jason had beaten me at, in the exact chair that I had sat at, so naturally it was cursed. But for whatever the reason, my deck was shut down when Olav played his card to my side of the table.

After that, there was nothing I could do. He Revolving Door’d my doorways, I couldn’t get a good drawing going on out of my deck, it was just horrid.

I believe that he was relieved because he knew exactly what my deck could do and how potent a force it could’ve been had he not gotten the perfect opening hand card. At this point, I knew I had no shot in getting first or second place. If Jason were to lose his last round and I were to win by maximum spread, I think he would’ve been in there or his opponent, but it wasn’t going to be me. My only shot of getting a bye was a ruling by the new tournament director as to where Olav’s bye from this Open would go to (He having already qualified at his Provincial championship). If it were to go to third place at this Open, I might have a shot if I win my next game in resounding fashion and if Jason were to win his.

Final Score: Olav 100 – Michael 0 ( 6 +160)

He’s a very quiet man to play against with a definite poker face who studies everything you could ever hope to read, short of telepathy. He was playing with a straightforward Bajoran spaceline (Bajor Region, Cardassia, etc.) but as the game got underway, he didn’t do all that much, even though he had quite a few hidden agendas down, he didn’t do anything which got me cautious once again. He hadn’t self-seeded anything but he did have DS9 @ Bajor and he did download Leeta who d/ld Dabo. I went at my first mission and luck was on my side again, removing Dead End with Senior Staff Meeting. I went to the next mission, my Treasure just one range short of landing at my next mission which wasn’t all that far from Bajor. He reports a Xeophilite Freighter, gets a few people on and flies to my mission and attacks my ship, which damages it (My landable ship isn’t all that strong) However before he attacks my people, he beams people down to the planet to oppose me there as well. So I send down Lore and help finish the job. He can’t do anything else to oppose me and I work through the dilemmas for the win. He had 8 points from Dabo but my 62^nd Rule negated those in the total summation of things.

Final Score: Michael 100 – Dr. Funk 0 (8 +260)

Then, we wait. I started talking to a variety of different people about what they were playing, how ST was going and so on and so forth which was fun. It’s nice to actually talk about such things with actual people whose reactions and response you can see and hear rather than a chatroom. I felt comfortable although I was still rather ill at the time from earlier in the day, the sun must’ve really gotten to me. I knew before it was announced that it was going to be Jason and Olav in the final and I was rooting for Olav (who hadn’t lost the entire tournament) simply because I knew him better and he really was only here for the larger trophy. Then Todd started with the results and I just watched intently as one by one the names were reeled off. By 11 points differential over Keith Watabayashi, I ended up with 3^rd place. All I had to do was hear back from Decipher’s tournament director to find out whether I have a bye to Worlds or not.

I didn’t watch the final confrontation, I hate watching games so I went into the backroom, helped Eric increase his Wormhole collection, I got a few uncommons that I needed as well and just chatted with the others in the back. Dr. Funk got out his Borg deck and played without a doubt the loveliest lady in the place who plays ST. Strong, rounded cheekbones, soft eyes of a color which I can’t remember, fairly tall and slender, curly brown to this side of dark hair but I never did ask her what her name was (bad Michael) but at least she I took a photo of, just to prove again that there are attractive women who play ST:CCG ;-) It also gave me the opportunity to show Eric that there’s nothing wrong with flirting when you’re in a relationship as long as you trust each other and never go beyond flirting. I was tempted to show him just what going beyond it meant but by that time, Jason had won or had come close to winning the final confrontation.

That’s when I noticed the time: It was 10:25 pm. That was bad because the last bus to Portland leaves in 20 minutes and I still have to get back to the hotel for the rest of my stuff. There was no way that I could do it in time. So I asked Todd if I could hitch a ride in his car back to Seattle and have him just drop me off at the bus station which he graciously agreed to do.

Once I got back to the hotel with Olav (he had the room key), he briefly broke down the final confrontation: He was doing fine until he accidentally SSM’d his self-seed, which left him open to lose his Science personnel, thereby making it practically impossible for him to recover. Just like me, he’s still rather annoyed at himself for the faux pas which I can understand from personal experience.

Anyway, I grabbed my stuff and headed out the door, thanking them for the use of their floor and everything and went outside to the waiting car where I decided to try and fall asleep so that the customs officer wouldn’t have to bother me when we got to the border as my previous experience with customs officers show but that was all for naught as I couldn’t sleep until I was out of Canada and the customs officer talked to Todd mainly which was a good thing. I dozed off and woke up as he was making it to the bus station. Grabbing Emily and my backpack out of the car, I thanked Todd again for everything.

It wasn’t until I bought my bus ticket that I realized that I didn’t have my hockey puck anymore. Hopefully I just left it inside his car since I had it in my hand the entire trip since leaving the hotel, but if it fell out when I got out of the car, well there goes my puck. Guess I’ll have to win another one.

Waiting at the bus station for two hours wasn’t too bad as I had a book with me, Cyrano de Bergerac. Probably the single most complimentary literary character to me I’ll probably ever read about (except for my own writings of course) because he’s so much like me, it’s somewhat staggering. I checked out the book again to help with my wife’s birthday present and while I’d go into those details, I’ll save it until I can give it to her in person which will be after the Colorado Open.

Once on the delayed bus (showed up 45 minutes late, how nice of them to tell us that /sarcasm), I promptly fell asleep which only proves how exhausted I was. But my bus arrives in Portland and I’m stuck here for another three hours so I make my way to Burger King to have some semblance of food since I’m not going to eat the hot dogs I saw in the bus station. I was probably still way too tired but I swear I saw tails on them. After eating some semblance of food (since I hate breakfast meals at fast food restaurants, I just had some hash browns and soda), I walked up to the best bookstore in the world (Powell’s) and looked around for books and whatnot before walking back to the bus station and then home.

Well that’s about it, if anyone has any comments or critiques etc, just let me know at theninjascot@yahoo.com and I’ll respond to each and everyone of them. I’ll try to come up with a report for both the Colorado Open and GenCon, after they happen of course.

Michael van Breemen
3^rd place at the Vancouver Open
Odd little hermit lad of Seaside, Oregon origin.