Skiasco

There's a ski resort called Kelly Canyon just like half an hour's drive away from here. Every year as a stake there's a trip up; the past two years I've missed it but could finally make it this time. I could go into details- there would be a lot to cover if I did- but it's not the only thing that happened today.

Actually basically it is.

My latest YouTube video got a like and that makes me happy; I worked hard on that. Four views! That's, um, that's a lot for me...

Also, From the Dust, which I told you about two years ago almost to the day, is updating again, now that... like under the old distribution model it just wasn't worth it, and everything, like I've said, but Patreon opens up this new model and new avenue of support that was impossible when the project first started 7 years ago. So that's exciting.

So fast Sunday yesterday I was really wondering what to fast about; it kind of took me by surprise. I made my fast about, getting the opportunity to socialize with people more somehow. And hey! presto, the annual ski trip today presented the perfect opportunity.

There was a bus, but the bus filled up quickly behind my back even though I made sure to get to the bus stop early, but it turned out there was a second bus, but waiting for that I was offered a ride by a girl whose friends were taking her. Austin (sp?), her name; and Kaitlyn (sp?) was the driver and there was a fellow passenger in the backseat named Becky. (Well, first I was offered a seat in her truck to wait for the second bus, but then her friends came.) We went to get gas, and pulled back to the truck to get Austin's tickets; she had an extra one so she gave it to me up there and that's the last I saw of any of them.

The tickets are apparently necessary if you want the free food, so it's good she had that. The tickets are free through the stake, but I didn't know we needed them. Or that they were free? Well I knew the food was free, but there were three tickets together, printed side-by-side. One for food, one for equipment rentals if you want to rent ski equipment, and one for... I think taking the ski lift or something?

Think of the annual ski trip as a freemium service- it's for free, but there are certain extras that cost. $10 to rent equipment. $10 for, some other thing, maybe the ski lift.

I thought the $10 was included in the ticket's existence itself? Left my wallet at home; all I had on me was $1.51 in cash, and I'd given the Washington to Kaitlyn to help pay for the gas. I figured, if Austin is going to be nice and give me the $20 worth of ticket, I might as well take advantage of that. I hadn't been planning on skiing, but I decided to ski.

After playing a handful of rounds of Avalon with a group I found playing Avalon (some of the faces were familiar back from when I had the board game workshop. George.)

I'm not sure if it's an expansion or what, but there's this Lancelot thing, and the way it works is there's two Lancelots who know who each other are, and their alignment can swap because one starts as a servant of Arthur and the other starts as a servant of Mordred and there can be triggers to swap which is which. I started out good and ended good, but was bad in the middle there. They found Merlin though (I guess it's a hazard when the Lancelots know each other, because that's automatically one good guy fewer who can be Merlin, because it's Lancelot.)

But the game before that though, that was also interesting because there was, probably a fan expansion, with a Jester, who's like his own thing and knows who everyone is, but good won in the first three rounds because we just stuck with the people who'd won the quests already, and none of those fancy characters even mattered. I was just a loyal, vanilla servant of Arthur, and was king second round, and just chose the same people who'd won the quest the first round, plus one, and we just stumbled in the dark and happened to come out on top.

And the game before that, I was Merlin but I was king first round, so I chose two villains to be on the first quest to deliberately throw my scent off, and it worked and we won though of course one person of the two failed that quest for us.

But anyway, turns out that the ticket doesn't cover the cost of rental. They gave me the stuff anyway since it was so late in the evening already; I payed the last two quarters and a penny.

And didn't have gloves for a bit there, and never had poles, and crashed a lot, and got dragged by the bunny slopes pully mini lift. And poles must be necessary, because everyone with poles, even the other newbies, made it look easy. er. 

There was room on the bus leaving.