Estrella/Vegas '09 - Part 1, Travelling and Regrets

The flight was, thankfully, uneventful. No crying babies. No flatulus-prone seat-mates, no large smoking craters in the ground.

Phoenix's airport has a reputation for being the friendliest in America. I certainly find no disagreement with this as it was the friendliest airport I've ever been in, including Canadian, Cuban and Scottish ones. I had a major need for help when I got there and they bent over backwards to accomodate me.

First was finding a means to get to the Estrella site (about an hour SE of Phoenix. They found a shuttle for me that would go there that was actually cheaper then the one that the Estrella War website pushed.

I was going to get a ride from Beothuk, but the van was stuck in the mud at the site and he was under orders from the staff to not attempt moving it.

I got to the site about two hours after my flight landed. The rain had stopped and the ground was thick with adobe mud. The first good thing to happen that day was that conejita_diabla and minyata were waiting for me at the front gate.

My +3 cloak of Awesomeness was thrown on top of my modern clothing and I made my way to a party, where I had "bucket" (a four litre plastic bucket filled with margarita mixer and whatever booze was handy, pplus some water to cut down on the tooth-crumbling sweetness) and some home-made mead that was the second best I've had.

Went to bed in my tent and bedroll that the others were kind enough to set up for me and I tried to sleep but damn near froze to death instead. Night time temperatures in the Arizona desert were on the order of 0 to 3 degrees. The cloak is the only reason I'm alive to write this.