It was Friday morning. Arriving in Toronto at 2 in the morning is no joy. This is due to several factors: it's muggy, hot, it's 2 AM, and worst of all, its Toronto. I had a pleasant walk to my hotel, the Regal Constellation, and stopped for a bite to eat along the way.

        At the all-nite (I guess Toronto is too close to the USA to know how to spell "night") diner, a nice young woman named Chi-chi (no joke!) and I chatted about Toronto, (she was from Cuba and hates the city as much as I do) prostitution (she was on the stroll, I have a liberal arts degree and work in marketing-- there really isn't much difference), and drugs (I play STCCG, she's addicted to cocaine-- there really isn't much difference).  She ate a grilled cheeze (spelled with a z on the menu) sandwich. I had a veggie burger, which was surprisingly good. In an uncommon (for me) fit of gentility, I turned down her offers of sex and/or cocaine. I bid her adieu.

        There was also an all night internet cafe, where I quickly stopped in to e-mail Chris Lobban, the local ambassador, about how to get in touch with anyone going to the Detroit opens.

        As I arrived at the hotel, I was shocked to run into Lance, an ol'school Star Trek fan, with whom I hadn't spoken in a year. He was a little surprised to see me-- as a member of the Convention Committee at Toronto Trek (the Convention I was there to attend.) he had access to a full attendee list. I explained that 6 hours ago, I'd had no clue that I would be going to Toronto, that I didn't have a Con membership, a hotel room (yet) or underwear (a fact that I hadn't realized until during the flight when I had looked through my luggage to find my novel)

        Lance is a thoroughly decent fellow and helped me out on the first two points-- I refused his help on the third. Getting to his room, I realized by the decor (which included large posters bearing "this is Condom country-- ride safely cowboy") that Lance had done some self discovery since I spoke to him last. It turns out that he has gotten in touch with his inner Gay-- he is in fact, gayer than a barrel of monkeys on nitrous oxide. He had other people in his room, but the sofa was comfortable, and I got a good night's rest.

        The morning came, and I snuck out of the den of inequity (actually it was a clean room, with really nice clean folk in it who had all shown up for a science fiction con, but I want to hideously distort the truth for comic effect) I'd spent the night in and went out on a quest for underpants. This was Friday.

        One of Toronto's landmarks is Younge street. A place known for its interesting shopping areas and underpants. I quickly found several stores that sold a plethora of underwear-- most of it hideously impractical. I couldn't seem to find anyplace that sold just plain and simple Boxer-briefs. I ended up with the next best thing, three pairs (one for each day I would be there) one pair silver (like really shiny!)  two Black-stretch-velvet (hey! I couldn't find anything else!).

        I stopped in to an e-mail cafe for a variety of reasons-- the most important being that I don't like going commando and needed a washroom to change in, the second, to check my e-mail. At this point Chris Lobban had e-mailed me back with the phone number of Lorne Kates, the provincial champion of Ontario, who had been trying to organize a road trip to Detroit for the Pandemonium opens.

        I spent the afternoon wandering around the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM for short), which was featuring an excellent exhibit of Russia's forgotten masterworks, and not too far away, there was an unforgettable Klimpt Exhibit at the Toronto Art Gallery. There, I met the second Cuban girl of the trip. Floer is 33, she is about 5'11", 140lbs, dark skin, long curly hair and a wonderful smile. She speaks German, Spanish, English, Italian and French. The last is how I got to know her. She is actually only learning French now, and as practice was trying to figure out the museum's explanation of the sarcophagus. I walked up to her and we started conversing. It turned out that she lived in the end of town near the hotel I was staying at. and we spend a couple of hours together in the hot July sun.

        We ended up on the same train and then on the same bus. She said that she would like to have me over, but that she had a friend coming in from Cuba that night from the airport. She asked about Tuesday. I said that I had to be back in Edmonton on Tuesday. We chatted about a variety of things. She kissed me.

        Her stop came up before we had exchanged contact information, she was in a hurry, I almost got off at the same stop and walked the rest of the way, but wasn't certain how to proceed. We frantically searched for a pen. The bus driver was rude and started shouting at us. She gave me her number and I can't recall it. At all.

        If anyone knows floer, please. PLEASE send me her e-mail. I liked her. I never told her that I was wearing black stretch velvet underwear. I'd like her to find that out for herself. I went back to the con in a deep blue funk because I'd already forgotten the phone number and hadn't found pen and paper in time.

        I waited for Lorne to arrive and pick me up so that we could get to Detroit.  Lorne is an unimposing guy who looks for specificity in everything, and plays rigid, balanced decks. I had the opportunity to play him a game before the tournament. He played a team consisting of The Ray, Shadow King, White Queen and Professor X in reserve. Did I neglect to mention that we were playing Overpower and not 'Trek? My bad. To make a long story short he kicked my ass at Overpower (the first time that has happened in a long time) I had my revenge the next day when I faced him at the opens.

        I took an hour's nap on his sofa and the next morning, or more to the point that night, we headed out in the worst rental car ^(TM) ever. I found that my driving companion had almost the polar opposite music tastes to mine-- or at least I thought so, until we picked up David Hyttenrauch.

        By a weird coincidence, David Hyttenrauch had ended up visiting his parents in Windsor that weekend. Dave is the second best player in my home town, and a good friend. Although he hadn't planned to attend the Opens, he'd packed a 'Trek deck as a contingency. He wasn't even aware of the Opens till I e-mailed him and offered to pick him up.

        I find it hard to reconcile my view of David (AKA Bat'leth) with the brief exposure to his home town. Hell! I find it hard to reconcile my view of him with the fact that he's Canadian and not British! If any of you watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer, think of David as Giles and picture me as a cross between Xander and Spike.

        Anyhow, if it is possible through some twist of 8 dimensional math, to generate a sphere with three different poles, then that is the spectrum of music tastes-- Lorne sits at one pole, Dave at another and myself at the last. We drove the rest of the way without music.

        I'm afraid of border guards. I've had several bad experiences with them. I was ready with my passport, my birth certificate, the rental papers to the car and a variety of other documentation in case they pulled us over. I suddenly realized what a mistake I'd made on Younge street the previous day. I always get pulled over and roughly fifty percent of the time get strip searched at the border. That morning I'd decided that since I only had one pair of silver lamé underwear, that these would be my good luck underpants, and that I would wear them at the opens. I started having these terrifying visions of being searched and being detained and refused entrance to the states because of the reflective quality of my undergarments. For the first time in my life, I was let across the border into the USA without being searched, detained, or humiliated. I still don't quite understand how it happened.

        Regardless of the border, the silver briefs turned out to be a mistake on several fronts (actually on almost every front).  I'm not sure if anybody who reads WNOHGB has ever worn silver lamé underwear before, but they insulate, don't breathe well and stick to all the wrong places. It was massively hot in Detroit that day, though it was raining. I spent much of the time between rounds trying to cool off my nether regions.

        Arriving at the tournament, we found we had enough time to stop at the McDonalds and the convenience store across the way. I want to quickly make a point here to ask all the Americans reading this: How in God's name do you survive without McDonalds Breakfast Burritos? I'm serious? I can't get through a day without eating like 7 of them. E-mail me and tell me how you live without the cheezy zesty goodness of a McD's Breakfast burrito!

        So returning to the tourney breakfast-burrito-less and angry, I submitted my decklist (a totally standard ooby-dooby deck of the variety I'm prone to playing) and was ready just in time to find out that I had been paired against David Bowling. I had never met him before and was taken aback that he was looking forward to playing me because he'd heard so much. So before I get any further, let me re-iterate I am not a good player! And I look nothing like Christopher Walken!

        One of the major mistakes I see among CCG players in general is that they spend too much time obsession over why they should have won, why they won, how great they are and such. I generally find it more instructive to discuss my losses than my victories, and examining why I lost dispassionately without self glorification.

        I lost twice this tournament, and I'm still searching for meaning in the losses, and how to improve my game so that I'm up to the challenge next time I face either David Bowling, or Lee Sneathen. The game versus David was one of the best, most challenging, most enjoyable games I've ever played.

        David is sportsmanlike and gentlemanly. He played a stable, well balanced, fast Vidiian Deck. I think that my biggest mistake was in attempting missions to early, and not false teaming enough. I also believe that I should have aimed to steal his 40 point mission-- due to the combo scow I had placed there, and the fact that I only had one ship in play, I knew I couldn't attempt the mission without he grabbing it on the next turn (mission debriefing was in play.) I'm also now certain that 4 leadership in a deck is insufficient unless you balance out the attribute numbers on your characters (something I did once, but am unlikely to reattempt-- it was never quite worth it.) As a related note, has anyone noticed that due to DQSS, Chula the Chandra is far more effective?

        I normally feel burnt out after a Star Trek tournament of this magnitude. I normally get crabby and irritable and don't want to play the game for two or three weeks. I haven't been able to stop re-analyzing the game with David; it's gotten me looking at some alternatives to certain cards in my current deck design. David also showed me the inordinate might of mutation. David was like a freaking X-men character, mutating all the time, and being inordinately effective because of it.

         A couple of rounds later I was blindsided by Lee Sneathen. I hadn't realized how effective the Kazon could be. I've never built an armada deck-- it's just one of the deck paradigms I've been able to wrap my head around-- and so I tend to neglect preparing for them because I don't see how badly they can hurt me. Lee provided me with a shocking reminder of the might of armadas.

        I can't feel too badly about losing to Lee. He went undefeated in the tourney, and was only kept from the finals by an incorrect deck list.  I'm currently trying to figure out a good armada defense for my deck. I have a number of space card plays from DQSS-- I'm tempted by Metaphasic Shields (which should pump me up by about +10 per Metaphasic by the end of the first turn.) I'm also tempted by Asteroid Sanctuary, though I feel a little bit of trepidation as I would need to draw into navigation or change my deck to have more of the skill.

        I came in 6th, not my best showing ever, but a learning experience. The drive back was quiet. Dave was quite pleased to have come in 8th, significantly above where he'd placed in Vancouver, though Lorne was annoyed that he didn't qualify for worlds. All in all a satisfying experience.

Email Olav "The Pendari Champion" Rokne