9/29-30/04

Travelling to Australia!

The trip to Melbourne was fairly unremarkable. I will say one thing: If you are travelling to Australia from the US and can exchange bonus miles, spare children, or anything else to get an upgrade to business class, do it! While I didn't experience it first-hand, the business-class cabin was HUGE. The seats were big, the cushions were comfy, and the chairs actually allowed you to stretch out horizontally! In addition, they had power outlets, so if you had a laptop you could use it throughout the trip. Not knowing this in advance, I spent the trip in the sardine-like back of the plane, but James Wyatt had the good sense to get an upgrade.

I hate James Wyatt.

I was also struck by the fact that the United Airlines drink napkins said "Our flight attendants speak thirty different languages and dialects; chances are, they speak yours." Of course, the phrase was only printed in English. I'm sure that many English-speakers were reassured when their napkins let them know that "chances were" the flight attendants spoke English!

Anyhow, squeezed into the back of the plane, I didn't manage to get any sleep over the course of what ended up being a 24-hour trip. So I was bright and chipper on arrival. Luckily, customs went smoothly. Wes (photo to left!) and Dane were there to meet me at the airport, but sadly I didn't actually get to see Wes holding up the sign that said "Keith Baker"… I took the sign anyway, just to have as a souvenir.

I didn't have to run any sessions until the evening, so James and I wandered around the suburb a bit. Eventually, time came to run my first session of the Open. Just to make things interesting, one of the pregen characters for the Open was a favored soul – but no one (me included) had a copy of the Miniatures Handbook or Complete Divine, and a number of my players didn't even know what a favored soul was! "What do you mean, I can't turn undead?"

Anyhow, on with the games!

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