Fallen off the face of the Earth?

Well... Not really...

Last time I posted I was in on the road in the San Joaquin Valley heading for San Jose.

Since then I've been in San Jose, Seattle, Vancouver, Detroit, and finally back to Jacksonville.
As the late great Jerry Garcia said: What a long strange trip it's been.

Let's see...

A few pictures and a recap seem to be in order.

First- The drive from Jacksonville to Dallas was mostly uneventful.

I rented a Pontiac Vibe from Avis- gas milage wasn't too bad- I got about 360 miles per tank of gas. Not too shabby.

I got a late start out of Jax and as the sun was going down over Mobile it was killing my contacts so I stopped at one of the seafood places on Battleship Row...

My favorite one is being rebuilt after Katerina blew it out, so I had to go to the second choice.

Felix's

The oysters were local and not too bad, but not great either.
I had some crab soup too... Again, nothing to write home about.
They were out of the fried crab claws, which was the entire reason I stopped. Bummer.

Oh well... Just my luck.


I got back on the road just after sundown.

I made it all the way to Breaux Bridge just outside Lafayette LA before I had to break for the night, and I was off again just after daybreak.


I caught a quick lunch at Crazy Bob's BBQ in Hog Eye Texas...
And I arrived in Dallas fairly early that afternoon.

So with my carload of equipment I got to work the next day and the first of a oft-recurring problem presented itself.


"Uh... did anyone get a tape measure and measure the brackets and the rack?"

Once Dallas was finished I was off to laid-back California...Home of Pearly Sweetcake, you probably knew her well...

The Honda Center in Anaheim was on the list. I loaded their equipment in and found that their rack was even shallower than the one in Dallas.
Lovely. We'll be putting a new rack in there... Probably doing it the 3rd round of the playoffs.

I loaded up my rental car and drove the next shipment up to San Jose...

Ever driven up I-5, through the Breadbasket of California?

It's nasty.
Farmlands and stockyards. Yuk.
I had left Anaheim in the early evening and made it up just north of LA before I took a short nap, then drove on to Coalinga and got a room at a Motel 6, so I'd have a real bed and a shower before getting to the HP PAvilion Arena in San Jose.

I arrived in San Jose early the next day and spent some time in the arena,
and had dinner at a place called Hukilau in Japantown, San Jose. Not a bad little place.

I finished out (most of) the install the next day. There are a couple things outstanding that we'll iron out during the off-season, but overall we're doing good there.
The UPS took a little damage in shipment...

The shipping company obviously dropped it right on the corner of the unit...
(heh..heh...he said "unit") but I got it straightened out and it's ok now.

One thing about California- they wear their hearts on their sleeves and they wear their politics on their bumpers...
One sticker I really got a tickle out of...



I caught a flight out of San Jose the next morning for Seattle on my way to Vancouver...
There is a big, long explanation concerning why I went to Seattle and drove to Vancouver, involving reasonable airfares, rental car drop-offs and border crossings, and if you really want to know the details, email me.
Otherwise just accept it and move along....

Crossing the border at the Peace Bridge north of Seattle was cool...

I got into Vancouver that evening and stayed in a funky little Best Western called the Abercorn Inn in Richmond... The motif was Highland Scotland, and the folks in the bar were right friendly. The game was on that night and I hung out in the bar with a bunch of tourists from "Minna-Sowta" and had a great time.

Again, into battle the next morning, installing the UPS, switches, server, wiring, shelving and what-have-you...

The Canucks were practicing as I was installing my equipment... I peered over the edge of the press box to see what was going on...

Looked like a big druid worship circle, imploring the big fish-god to bring them a victory...
All went well... Obstacles were encountered and overcome.

I headed out that night, crossed back into the good ol' US of A, and stayed in one of the little neon-lit cut-rate hotel-places that border SEA-TAC, since I had a 5:30 AM flight to Detroit.
Just for the record- the Red Roof Inn at Sea-Tac is not worth the $59.00 a night that I paid. $39.00 would be overpaying. To call it a nasty shithole would be an insult to other nasty shitholes.
Avoid avoid avoid.

Back to Detroit. Again.

I got into the arena and got my hardware... I even found the cables that the building guys had run for me...
None of them were labeled, and I had no idea which ones went where, but I never let a little thing like that stop me... I jumped right into the fray.

What the hell...?

Doesn't that look suspiciously like a forklift tine hole in the side of my server box?


Why yes, so it does look like a forklift done skewered my server!

I'm fortunate, Constant Readers, that I was alone up in rafters of Joe Louis Arena; Had anyone been with me it would have been an embarrassment, As I stood there looking at the pierced box (No out-of-context jokes please) I went through all 5 stages of the Kubler-Ross grief cycle:

Denial - No way! They did not run a forklift tine into my server!

Anger - If I find the M#*&%@er who did this...I'm gonna razzel-frazzin...

Bargaining - Oh, C'mon... If I could fix that UPS in San Jose, I'm sure I could get this patched up...And besides, Detroit probably won't make it to the third round anyway.

Depression - Oh man... I'm screwed. This thing is dead-dead-dead, and they'll never believe it was like this when I got here. They'll blame it on me. It will all end in tears.

Acceptance - Screw it. I'll give it a shot just to see if it will work. Who knows, I might get lucky.

Well... It was ok... the damage was superficial. I dodged a bullet there.

I did as much as I could and then split out of there...

As for the East- teams like Ottawa, Bufallo and the NY/NJ multiplex, my compatriot Sean handled them...

Sean? You know Sean.

This is Sean. (He's the one on the right.)
The other one is Nicole. You can visit her at the Hooters near the Long Island Coliseum.


Ok... Onward. More stuff as we proceed into Round 3.

(Oh yeah- By the way- Luc, I got your message. I said *I* liked "Galapagos"... I didn't say *you* would... I am a warped and twisted literary omnivore. My taste is quite suspect. The only thing I like better than Hunter S. Thompson's writing is perusing pornographic stained-glass windows. )

TBG out-