Travel

6am - Any event diary that begins with 6am sucks. With my coach for Coventry departing my local bus station at 7.55am I had to be up with time for the three S's, finish packing and enough time to catch a bus to the station. A nip on to IRC to see who else was awake (no one) and it was time to go.

I caught a break with a bus I wasn't expecting that showed up just as I was en route to the bus I planned to catch that was another ten minutes away. Though this did mean waiting over thirty minutes for the coach, it was a lot better than walking along the road with an airport travel case (the kind on wheels, that old people use for their shopping) on pavement.

7.55am - The coach arrives! I notice while waiting that no attractive girls are awake at this time (or take the bus), only old people. Lots of old people. A massive total of three people including myself get on the caoch from this stop, which is good as there is no leg room unless you spread out over two seats.

Around 10.30am - We arrive in Oxford, a Uni town + sunny day makes for some sight seeing ^_^. We move off picking up what I assume were students heading home for the weekend. Until we reach Coventry absolutely nothing interesting happens, I went through a couple of chicken sandwiches, some Tropicana and make a good start on Tom Clancy - The Cardinal of the Kremlin

12.40pm - Coventry! As a southerner I was expecting it to look a lot different, mostly a lot more industrial looking. I call Ste to pick me up, two further phone calls later and 50 minutes, he arrives! For some reason winz and Appleseed held him up. We head off to their hotel (growl, you'll find out why soon) and they book their room with an ATM style machine. Next up is a visit to B&Q for some super long power cables, then off to the event.

Event

Finally I get to the event, after something like 7 hours, first people I see are TosspoT and ReDeYe, I declare hunger, TosspoT concurs and we head off down the road to the nearest pub for some eating. They have a combo chicken, mushroom, onion ring and garlic bread each, I go for just chicken. Paul and Stu reminisce over the times they've shared together, we talk about the event, whats happening in gaming at the moment, Warsow comes up quite a few times ;). ReDeYe declares he can't finish a shandy he had all of two sips of, so we go back to the event.

I setup my laptop, which I later give up for the Reason-Gaming shuttle and ASUS TFT that I'm using now, which most importantly can, unlike my laptop, play Warsow!

Over the course of the afternoon more people arrive, I see Q50, ddk, r2k, storm, zkyp, PURRI, ooze, fooKi, deus, raoul, Akiles, Logan, dozo, Ser etc..

Sometime later ESRealtiy megapersonality tom says hi finally, stupidly he invites me and TosspoT to a BBQ at storm's and we discuss sharing a hotel as LAN floor is teh suck. Bad move.

Althrough storm lives ten minutes away, he does not know the area, in fact he's a hinderence in helping us find his home. Before we even leave though, it turns out that a Ford Fiesta doesn't fit 6 people. For a while we discuss the idea of someone (me) travelling in the boot or someone (ddk) laying over three of us in the back. After much deliberation we settle on taking two trips, dropping me and storm off the first time going back for zkyp and ddk.

However, we need firelighters and veggie burgers, requiring a stop at Sainsburys. Don't mention Sainburys to tom, follow storm's directions (to his own house) we circle the supermarket three times before escaping its clutches.

Well over thirty minutes since leaving the event (and ddk & zkyp), we make it to storm's house. tom and TosspoT head off back to the LAN, entrusting the navigation to Toss who ReD claims has got them lost in several countries. Amazingly they manage to get back safely and the BBQ starts.

I'll skip to the end of the night now, I mentioned earlier we agreed on staying in a hotel, the same one that winz and Appleseed checked in to earlier in the day. We transport ddk/zkyp's PCs to the event, I consult someone for diretions to the hotel who even draws a handy map. Go right out of the event, then left, drive down a long road, past two roundabouts, go right on the A45, left at the first junction and from there its easy.

It wasn't. We managed to complete the first direction (go right out of the event), the first left tom was skeptical about (with industrial park on the sign), so we continue on. And on. And on. We dont' turn left until the road ends and we hit a join to another road going perpendicular. At this point I'm sure we had actually left Coventry.

Knowing the second direction we were given was to go left, we went left. After this we lost track of where we were, even though we left at 00:30 and knew the hotel closed at 1am, we continued searching for the hotel for almost an hour. tom, who was already pretty tired and miffed after getting to the BBQ, got increasingly annoyed and eventually we gave up and headed for the LAN. Until storm called and offered us space at his house, so we changed direction again!

So we get to storm's, he ,his sister and his friend Ady are still up drinking (we had left about 3hrs ago), we're only interested in sleep after our driving misadventures. We bed down and try to get some sleep, but what are drunk people best at, interupting sleep. The dignitas video from the event, will give you an idea of what we went through. Then finally, we slept.