Odin
Before heading to Baltimore, we had some Einherjar business to take care of. As luck would have it, our Einherjar timing worked out so that we had an Odin to fight during our cookout for the second year in a row. It's always interesting doing an event like this with a group of people as opposed to the general solitude most of us play games like this in.
Since the level cap increase, we've done Odin twice. Both times have been ridiculously easy. We started utilizing Odin on Odin crime at the starts of the fights, so our team really only has 80ish% of his health to deal with. I tend to view this as a way to make up for time lost actually entering Valgrind, but that really didn't have anything to do with the level cap increase itself.
Both times we've fought him, we've been done in about 15 mins tops. He's pretty much a cakewalk now. Don't get me wrong, he can still cause a lot of havoc at times (looking at you 50% mark + valks or 30% mark + valks), but he's nowhere near the time nailbiter he used to be.
Drops yielded a long overdue E.Body and a pair of M.Legs Kreoss actually won the lot on, then inexplicably dropped his lamp before they distributed to him and Jess ended up getting them. Not that he cared much about them to begin with since it was a 3-way lot of 4 point bids on them, but that was still cause for some ridicule. Once done, the rest of us that hadn't showered yet got cleaned up and we loaded up the Vue and the Crankyvette to make our way to Baltimore.
FUCK SLOW DOWN
Normally I drive a 4 door sedan, not a 4-door SUV. Driving along I-68 in the mountains was rather challenging for me. At one point, there's a curve that lasts for literally 2-3 minutes. The Gs presented on one's body on this curve in an SUV with an ABS system about as sensitive as a WoW'er that just got dumped by a man he thought was a girl actually got me to get Kay to call Suraph and tell him to slow down.
Y'see, I'm lead-footed by nature. That's the irony presented in this story. If I'm asking someone to slow down on the highway, it's akin to McDonald's running out of hamburgers AND fries in the same night. If it had just been me in the Vue, I probably wouldn't have asked, but since 3 others were with me, it had me a little concerned. Naturally, the only thing that was my saving grace was the fact that Kreoss was getting carsick and actually falling asleep with his mouth open.
That translates to an escape from ridicule. :)
Sports Talk Radio Makes Erimentha Go ZZZZZzzzzz
One other thing I discovered during this drive that was rather comical was the effect of Sports Talk Radio on Erimentha. Eri had just finished telling a story or having a conversation or something and I decided to try to catch up on what was happening in the sports world before we actually went to the sporting event...
I flipped the switch on the radio, found a station and, I shit you not, Eri was out cold in a matter of seconds.
So naturally, just for testing purposes, I turned the radio off.
She woke up.
I turned it back on.
She went to sleep.
Ok, probably not that exaggerated, but still funny nonetheless. :)
Toys R Us Hunting
Naturally, on any road trip, I'm going to stop off at Walmarts and Toys R Us'es to hunt for Transformers. Before we left, we mapped out that there were 3 of them along our way to Baltimore. We figured we'd get some lunch in the area around the first one.
This was also a great example of GPS fail. The GPS in BOTH vehicles got us to the vicinity, but pretty much made us drive an extra 10 miles through city backroads to get to it when it was actually sitting right off the interstate about 5 miles ahead of the exit the GPS told us to get off at. I forget the name of the first city we pulled off at (I want to say Hagerstown).
Anyway, after getting into the vicinity, I'm still following the Crankymaro. I spot the Toys R Us and then get led around the mall it's in. After about 3 minutes of this and getting further away from said Toys R Us, I remarked that Suraph is either screwing with me or he's lost. Turns out...he got lost.
In a mall parking lot.
With 2 GPSs.
TALENT! :)
After realizing he wasn't getting anywhere, he pulls over into a remote section of the parking lot and lets me take the lead. After about half a dozen nearly-hit pedestrians (GTFO OFF MY ASPHALT OLD PEOPLE! TOYS R US OR BUST), 1 dozen zigs and 2 dozen zags through one of the dumbest parking lots I've ever seen, we arrived! And I promptly corrupted someone else's kid by cussing the minute I got out of the car. Even to the point Suraph was embarassed to be seen with me cussing in the presence of a 3 year old I didn't know was there. :)
And all of that turned out to be for naught. Nothing new there. So we piled back in and headed up the parking lot a ways for lunch...
Olive Garden
Since we knew we were going to have one more Toys R Us stop along the way, we figured we'd rearrange passengers based on the following criteria:
"I give a shit about Toys R Us"
and
"I don't give a shit about Toys R Us"
The first group would pile into the Vue. The second would pile into the Crankilac. In my car wound up Drakus, Kreoss, Kay (there cause of me and not cause of Toys R Us...) and myself. In the Crankybaru, Kaelis, Eri and Cranky.
This is the sort of stuff that happens on a road trip when you have a 15-20 minute wait to seat a group of 7 at Olive Garden.
Lunch was rather uneventful outside of that. Lots of conversation about a wide variety of topics along with Kreoss' introduction to Touchdown Jesus and what's left of him after getting smote by lightning. Anyone else familiar with the region also knows that lightning bolt was probably aimed for porn shop, but in typical Ohio fashion, somehow managed to even cause that to fail in a football-related manner.
Lunch done, piling back into the vehicles and...off we go.
Toys R Us #2 - Frederick, MD
We pretty much agreed we'd just meet up in Baltimore from that point as trying to stay together on the highway is far more of a pain than it needs to be. About 30-40 miles later, we come up on our next Toys R Us exit. Yet again, both GPS's failed. Apparently, the highway the exit lands us on actually ENDS in the middle of a Toys R Us.
Nevermind the fact that said highway actually goes on for miles afterwards and the Toys R Us itself is actually a right turn off said highway. Again my keen Toys R Us senses saved us some time and I spotted the sign for it before anyone else did. This trip proved fruitful however. We picked Drakus up the newly redone Seaspray figure and I picked up the core combiners 5-pack called Bombshock. This excursion actually didn't cost us much time as it relates to the Crankibu since they had to stop off for some meds or something I can't remember...
Unfortunately, time was a little short and we weren't going to be able to make it to the third Toys R Us that was actually in Baltimore. So we just headed straight for the game.
Parking Disaster
I've been in enough big cities to know that during a huge sporting event, Downtown Anything = Long Waits in Traffic. Baltimore was easily the worst in this regard. We literally spent about 45 minutes trying to drive about a mile to a parking structure off the interstate. There's pretty much 3 things in this world that make me insta-tantrum:
1. Dishonesty.
2. Stealing.
3. Idiotic Traffic Congestion
Anyway, we finally found a place to park and walked up to where Suraph, Kaelis and Eri were all waiting for us.
For the record, I went asshole on the parking structure and parked my big ass SUV in a "Compact Cars Only" spot.
We're here!
Camden Yards has always been ranked rather high on the list of "Best Ballparks". I became somewhat enamored with it after watching the 1993 All-Star Game when I watched Ken Griffey Jr. hit the warehouse during the home run derby. It wasn't some out-of-the-park-and-bounced-to-the-warehouse dinger. The guy hit the warehouse wall on the fly. Seeing that warehouse brought back a lot of the memories I had as a kid watching baseball. Not that I really liked my memories of Jr. roughing up my favorite pitcher (Steve Avery, at the time) the following night in the All-Star Game, but yeah, that's why I wanted to see a game here.
View of the warehouse from our seats.
So after the huge parking struggle, we get up to the gate and find...a long ass line. Starting to think it would have been a better idea to pre-order the tix. BUT! That didn't sway us. Stand in that line we did. Sweat and Stand. Walk 2 steps. Sweat and stand. Walk 2 steps.
Are we there yet?
No?
Fuck.
Only 4 more cattle herd rows to go! (That's no one we know in that pic...she just got in the way of me trying to get a picture of the stadium section picture on the wall).
Section 58, Row 15 x7 Please!
Turns out the Orioles number their sections funny. I found what I thought to be section 58 only to discover the numbers hanging from the rails were deceiving. Normally, I'd think the section was identified on the outside, but nope...designated on the inside. So we had to move once we got seated the first time. Was rather odd (or just a sign of how much the Orioles suck..) that we found the same 7 empty seats (seats 4-10, row 15) in section 60 that we did in Section 58 (seats 4-10, row 15...).
With it being 96F with 100% humidity, Drakus made a good call regarding getting tickets along the third base line. Why? No sun on us. Was still cramped seating and hot as fuck though, so this picture of this Diet Coke is to commemorate the one, and only time, I've ever been happy paying $5 for a Diet Coke. Not pictured is the empty canister that was housing the $4.50 ice cream I crushed.
Miguel Roidjada. One fan, after watching Tejada almost hit a homer declared:
"HEY TEJADA! GET BACK ON ROIDS!"
The outfielder's last name in this picture is "Pie". Simple right? Fuck no. It's pronounced "Pee-a" Suraph just resorted to calling him "Cake". Much simpler and, probably not coincidentally, reflected the opinions of some fans.
"HEY P.A.! GOD FORBID YOU GET THAT UNIFORM DIRTY!"
Fan was right. Cake managed to go the whole game w/o so much as a smudge.
Pictured Lower Right to uh....Guy with Ballcap:
Suraph - Kreoss - Erimentha - Kaelis - Drakus.
This is a picture of the Baltimore sky line during the night. Just random picture. :)
Onto the game itself in quick-note style:
- Before we were even completely seated, the Toronto leadoff hitter knocked the very first pitch out into the bleachers. 1-0 Blue Jays.
- Whoever is employed as the "Other Games" scoreboard operator needs to be fired. That damn thing was barely updated the entire game.
- Baltimore took the lead a few innings later 2-1.
- Baltimore quickly lost the lead later. Down 3-2.
- Some guy a few rows up had an entertaining conversation with the Beer Guy. It ended with:
Guy: MILLER LITE SUCKS
Beer Guy: IT'S COLD! THAT'S ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW!
- Toronto ended up winning 3-2. The important thing to note here is that no one in the ball park seemed to care. At least the 7 of us didn't. I cared more about the 10-5 drubbing Drakus' Yankees got at the hands of Kreoss' Devil Rays.
- The only thing missing from this event was someone who's been MIA for a long while. We needed a Canuck there since the game was basically USA vs. Canada.
Random pictures from the game:
Down at field level after the game was over.
The Orioles' retired numbers.
The shop Kay just had to get hats out of before the game started. :)
I amused Drakus.
Group shot! Left to right: Erimentha, Kaelis, me, Kaylea, Suraph, Kreoss, and Drakus.
And with that, we left...getting out of downtown Baltimore after a 30,000ish people event wasn't as bad as I thought it'd be. It really only took us about 20 minutes to get back to the interstate.
"If It's More Than Two Miles Off the Interstate, It Shouldn't Get a Sign"
The Crankyvenger had a decent head start on us though. We weren't exactly racing to get back, but we had agreed to meet up as we got closer to home so I could follow Suraph back up the mountain. At one point, Cranky had to pull off for gas, discovered the gas station mentioned on the road sign was about 7 miles off the highway, cussed a lot and got back onto the highway.
This waste of time caused him to mutter about the sub-title of this section for a good while. It also gave us a chance to catch up to him completely. I ended up actually passing him on the highway before he actually found a gas station.
State Trooper
As we got closer to home and back onto I-68, I happened to look in my rearview mirror and see the unmistakable headlights belonging to a Ford Crown Victoria. Anyone who's done any significant road travel understands that if a pair of these are tailgating you, you're probably about to get pulled over.
Well these were tailgating me and, trust me when I say, I've been pulled over enough to kind of get an idea of their habits. Yes I was speeding down that mountain highway to the tune of about 20mph over, but I was also in a huge crowd of cars all doing the same. I took the next opening in the right lane and merged into the traffic to try to force the trooper's hand. If he was going to pull me over, he'd follow me.
Fortunately, he didn't. However he got right up on the tail end of the Crankyolstice and proceeded to tailgate him for a good long while. Suraph didn't change lanes or even bother to slow down. Come to find out Suraph thought it was me the entire time. Eventually, the Trooper just decided to pass on the right and zip on down the highway at speeds easily exceeding 100mph (we were doing 85 when I saw him...).
The great part of this story is, Suraph apparently thought I was the one that was passing him and had his own special "WTF?!??!" moment as it relates to it. This was either due to him remembering that I didn't want to go too fast around those curves in an SUV or due to him forgetting about that and thinking I knew the way home myself...
Back Home
All of us were happy to get back after spending approximately 6 hours on the road and 3.5-4 hours outdoors, most of which were in sweltering conditions. After a short round of Castle Crashers and the obligatory checking of our AH items and whatnot, it was time to crash.
More Stories next week with (hopefully) a surprise video proving a long standing observation. :)
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