a looong weekend of adventures
Jun. 22nd, 2010 06:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kareinaBack when I lived in An Tir my Knight had a rule of thumb he’d use to determine if we should go to an event or if it was too far away. His rule states that one shouldn’t spend more time travelling to and from the event than one does at the event. This weekend we deliberately cast aside that rule and planned Adventures on the way to and from Drachenwald Coronation/
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aelfgyfu's flight was scheduled to arrive at 10:30 Thursday morning. Therefore I booked the rental car to be picked up at the location closest to my house at 07:30 so that I’d have time to load the car and do the hour drive to the airport to fetch her. Then we'd have the day to do adventures in the Alps before driving to the home of the outgoing Queen, who lives about half way to the event from Milan, where we would sleep for the night before continuing on to the event site. All went well with the car pick up and loading, and we even had a chance to visit a bit more with our houseguests from Ealdormere before clovis_t and I needed to depart. We were about half way to the airport when we got a call from aelfgyfu. Her flight leaving the US had been delayed four hours, so she didn’t make her connecting flight to Milan. She was now scheduled to land at 16:30.
So we stopped in a town near the airport, had some gelato (at much better prices than available in Milan!), went for a walk, and then spent an hour at the airport doing work on the computer to kill time till her arrival. Eventually we were on the road. It was now late enough in the day that we didn’t have time for hikes, but the trip over the Alps were beautiful. Even more beautiful than anticipated—the main highway we’d planned to take was closed, and the detour led us over really truly beautiful mountain passes. We all agreed that we should plan to go that route on purpose on the return trip, so that we’d have time to get out and do some exploring. However, the detour added some hours to our trip—we were concerned about getting out of the hills before full dark. We made it. Just.
We crossed the border into Germany at Midnight. New day. New country. From there it shouldn't have been more than a few more hours to HRM’s house. However, we soon encountered another closed highway (or, in this case, autobahn). Unlike the ones in Italy and in Switzerland, there were no detour signs to guide us on an alterative path, and we had no idea where we were when forced to take the exit. We did have a decent map book showing all of Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, so while I followed road signs towards Strasbourg (it being the only town on any of the "to" signs that we could find on the map my navigators scoured the map for the names of other towns that might be useful. We didn’t quite make it to the French border before we, finally, found a sign pointing towards a town in a useful direction (why aren’t German roads marked with signs telling one what road one is on?). We then spent far too long following small roads from one town to another till we finally got to a place where we could get on an autobahn. We finally arrived at HRM’s house at 5:30 in the morning! Pretty much 12 hours to do what should have been a six hour trip. Good thing we three were all content to enjoy what we were doing and not stress about it.
We got a few hours sleep, and set out on the road Friday morning by about 10:45, arriving on site on time to set up beforezoezebra’s class on Viking tablet weaving. Her on explanation how to convert a design into a chart of which cards to turn when was most helpful, and her handout on the Viking age applications is very nice. We had just enough light for her to demonstrate the technique, and to show us some finished examples she’d made. Having seen the work, I agree with her premise that fine silk threads give better results than thick wool ones.
Saturday was the Coronation itself. Not too dissimilar to others I’ve seen in Kingdoms wherein they do a bit of role-playing for the transition. The outgoing royals were poisoned (the wine from the Ambassador of the Khan), the Queen passed away and was carried out, the King managed to hold on long enough to Crown his Heir, and then “died” and was carried off before the new King Crowned his Queen. The real oddness to me, having lived so much of my life in densely populated Kingdoms is how few people are able to travel to events. There were two Royal peers to swear fealty, one knight, two laurels (not counting people who’d already sworn under another peerage—I didn’t go up a second time, nor did the knight, who is also a laurel) and perhaps three or four pelicans. I know there are far more peers than that in Kingdom (though what % swear fealty, I don’t know), but clearly they couldn’t all make it this weekend.
I got to meet again several nice people I’d met at October Crown and the December Dance event I attended last year, and met many new delightful people. One kindred spirit does his sewing by hand because he can’t sit still, either. I look forward to seeing the candle light enhancer (16th century technology) that he had made so that he could stitch at night at events—aelfgyfu thinks she can make me one.
Sunday we broke camp (my modern tent—a decent sized dome thatclovis_t's parent’s gave us takes longer to set up and take down than my pavilion, but since it takes much less space to pack (well, the poles do), we brought it instead, not knowing how big the rental car would be) and set back down the road.
About mid-day I ate one of the figs I’d purchased at market the week before. They were kind of disappointing from when I purchased them—sort of dry and mushy, but I figured they must still have some nutritional value, so I was eating my way through the pile nonetheless. Alas, this one had a spot that tasted rather mouldy. Ick! Since I was driving as I ate it, it wasn’t convenient to look at it, and I didn’t really have anyplace to spit it out, so to get the unpleasant taste out of my mouth I swallowed it. This was, in retrospect, probably a mistake. Around 7pm, as we stopped in the town Speyer to see their Cathedral, and I was feeling vaguely nauseous (which started, oddly enough *after* the car stopped moving). I opted to nap while they stayed awake and look for a campground, and didn’t add in a vote when they couldn’t find one with someone on duty and decided on a hotel. After two tries they found one at a rate they thought reasonable, and made me wake up to head up to our room. Made it as far as the stairs, which, fortunately, are marble, not carpet, before losing everything I’d eaten over the course of the day. I felt bad for the hotel staff, who had to clean it up, and hope that they did so before the acids damaged the marble. Needless to say, after that I didn’t have the energy for my normal full yoga routine before bed, so did just a few short minutes before sleeping. Got rid of the rest of the ick in my system via the other option around 03:00, and as a result woke up feeling *much* better at 08:00 so we could get back on the road.
Even though I was feeling better I couldn’t face the thought of food, and I mostly slept on the return trip. Given my condition they decided to seek out a ruined castle and a Schloss near to our path instead of doing the originally planned alpine adventures. I managed to wake up for each of the stops, but other than that mostly slept for the whole drive, and many, many thanks toaelfgyfu for doing all of the driving! By the time we returned to Milan I was feeling well enough to actually stop by a store on the way home, and then I drove the last few blocks, since I knew where we were going. I rallied even more and managed to help with the unloading of the car and I managed to put nearly everything away while aelfgyfu and clovis_t returned the rental car.
Taking an entire day off of eating has done wonders for my food log for the month. The first few days of the month I happened to have eaten a fair bit more than usual, but now my average for the month is showing a bit less than usual.
Now that I’m back in Milan I’ve got ever so much work to do—we downloaded my latest experiment today—this one ran at the highest pressure and temperature I’ve tried yet, so I’m keen to see the results. Alas, the capsules have stuck together, and my attempt to separate them caused one to break open. Darn. This means that we will have to put them into the same epoxy mount and polish it—if I’m lucky I’ll expose the contents of both at once. If not I’ll polish the one which is closest to the surface of the mount, analyse it fully, take lots of photos, and then polish it off to get to the second one and analyse it. Wish me luck!
aelfgyfu's flight was scheduled to arrive at 10:30 Thursday morning. Therefore I booked the rental car to be picked up at the location closest to my house at 07:30 so that I’d have time to load the car and do the hour drive to the airport to fetch her. Then we'd have the day to do adventures in the Alps before driving to the home of the outgoing Queen, who lives about half way to the event from Milan, where we would sleep for the night before continuing on to the event site. All went well with the car pick up and loading, and we even had a chance to visit a bit more with our houseguests from Ealdormere before clovis_t and I needed to depart. We were about half way to the airport when we got a call from aelfgyfu. Her flight leaving the US had been delayed four hours, so she didn’t make her connecting flight to Milan. She was now scheduled to land at 16:30. So we stopped in a town near the airport, had some gelato (at much better prices than available in Milan!), went for a walk, and then spent an hour at the airport doing work on the computer to kill time till her arrival. Eventually we were on the road. It was now late enough in the day that we didn’t have time for hikes, but the trip over the Alps were beautiful. Even more beautiful than anticipated—the main highway we’d planned to take was closed, and the detour led us over really truly beautiful mountain passes. We all agreed that we should plan to go that route on purpose on the return trip, so that we’d have time to get out and do some exploring. However, the detour added some hours to our trip—we were concerned about getting out of the hills before full dark. We made it. Just.
We crossed the border into Germany at Midnight. New day. New country. From there it shouldn't have been more than a few more hours to HRM’s house. However, we soon encountered another closed highway (or, in this case, autobahn). Unlike the ones in Italy and in Switzerland, there were no detour signs to guide us on an alterative path, and we had no idea where we were when forced to take the exit. We did have a decent map book showing all of Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, so while I followed road signs towards Strasbourg (it being the only town on any of the "to" signs that we could find on the map my navigators scoured the map for the names of other towns that might be useful. We didn’t quite make it to the French border before we, finally, found a sign pointing towards a town in a useful direction (why aren’t German roads marked with signs telling one what road one is on?). We then spent far too long following small roads from one town to another till we finally got to a place where we could get on an autobahn. We finally arrived at HRM’s house at 5:30 in the morning! Pretty much 12 hours to do what should have been a six hour trip. Good thing we three were all content to enjoy what we were doing and not stress about it.
We got a few hours sleep, and set out on the road Friday morning by about 10:45, arriving on site on time to set up before
zoezebra’s class on Viking tablet weaving. Her on explanation how to convert a design into a chart of which cards to turn when was most helpful, and her handout on the Viking age applications is very nice. We had just enough light for her to demonstrate the technique, and to show us some finished examples she’d made. Having seen the work, I agree with her premise that fine silk threads give better results than thick wool ones.Saturday was the Coronation itself. Not too dissimilar to others I’ve seen in Kingdoms wherein they do a bit of role-playing for the transition. The outgoing royals were poisoned (the wine from the Ambassador of the Khan), the Queen passed away and was carried out, the King managed to hold on long enough to Crown his Heir, and then “died” and was carried off before the new King Crowned his Queen. The real oddness to me, having lived so much of my life in densely populated Kingdoms is how few people are able to travel to events. There were two Royal peers to swear fealty, one knight, two laurels (not counting people who’d already sworn under another peerage—I didn’t go up a second time, nor did the knight, who is also a laurel) and perhaps three or four pelicans. I know there are far more peers than that in Kingdom (though what % swear fealty, I don’t know), but clearly they couldn’t all make it this weekend.
I got to meet again several nice people I’d met at October Crown and the December Dance event I attended last year, and met many new delightful people. One kindred spirit does his sewing by hand because he can’t sit still, either. I look forward to seeing the candle light enhancer (16th century technology) that he had made so that he could stitch at night at events—
aelfgyfu thinks she can make me one. Sunday we broke camp (my modern tent—a decent sized dome that
clovis_t's parent’s gave us takes longer to set up and take down than my pavilion, but since it takes much less space to pack (well, the poles do), we brought it instead, not knowing how big the rental car would be) and set back down the road.About mid-day I ate one of the figs I’d purchased at market the week before. They were kind of disappointing from when I purchased them—sort of dry and mushy, but I figured they must still have some nutritional value, so I was eating my way through the pile nonetheless. Alas, this one had a spot that tasted rather mouldy. Ick! Since I was driving as I ate it, it wasn’t convenient to look at it, and I didn’t really have anyplace to spit it out, so to get the unpleasant taste out of my mouth I swallowed it. This was, in retrospect, probably a mistake. Around 7pm, as we stopped in the town Speyer to see their Cathedral, and I was feeling vaguely nauseous (which started, oddly enough *after* the car stopped moving). I opted to nap while they stayed awake and look for a campground, and didn’t add in a vote when they couldn’t find one with someone on duty and decided on a hotel. After two tries they found one at a rate they thought reasonable, and made me wake up to head up to our room. Made it as far as the stairs, which, fortunately, are marble, not carpet, before losing everything I’d eaten over the course of the day. I felt bad for the hotel staff, who had to clean it up, and hope that they did so before the acids damaged the marble. Needless to say, after that I didn’t have the energy for my normal full yoga routine before bed, so did just a few short minutes before sleeping. Got rid of the rest of the ick in my system via the other option around 03:00, and as a result woke up feeling *much* better at 08:00 so we could get back on the road.
Even though I was feeling better I couldn’t face the thought of food, and I mostly slept on the return trip. Given my condition they decided to seek out a ruined castle and a Schloss near to our path instead of doing the originally planned alpine adventures. I managed to wake up for each of the stops, but other than that mostly slept for the whole drive, and many, many thanks to
aelfgyfu for doing all of the driving! By the time we returned to Milan I was feeling well enough to actually stop by a store on the way home, and then I drove the last few blocks, since I knew where we were going. I rallied even more and managed to help with the unloading of the car and I managed to put nearly everything away while aelfgyfu and clovis_t returned the rental car. Taking an entire day off of eating has done wonders for my food log for the month. The first few days of the month I happened to have eaten a fair bit more than usual, but now my average for the month is showing a bit less than usual.
Now that I’m back in Milan I’ve got ever so much work to do—we downloaded my latest experiment today—this one ran at the highest pressure and temperature I’ve tried yet, so I’m keen to see the results. Alas, the capsules have stuck together, and my attempt to separate them caused one to break open. Darn. This means that we will have to put them into the same epoxy mount and polish it—if I’m lucky I’ll expose the contents of both at once. If not I’ll polish the one which is closest to the surface of the mount, analyse it fully, take lots of photos, and then polish it off to get to the second one and analyse it. Wish me luck!
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(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-22 05:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-23 07:32 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-23 12:52 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-24 06:32 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-23 01:51 pm (UTC)You also took exploring a new country by accident, to an all time high :)
Thanks for the links to the handout etc.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-24 06:31 am (UTC)