Back in the Saddle

Well I'm back in the saddle after a great weekend at Gatering in the Desert 2009. You can read more about how the weekend went at my co-organizers site Cursed Treasures, I can say it went really well.

The entire weekend was a blast for myself. Here is a quick breakdown of events.

Friday:
3:00 AM Limo came and picked my cousin (helping me drive back) and myself up and we headed for O'Hare airport.

We got to O'Hare pretty early (3:30 AM) and the flight wasnt till 5:00 AM. But thats OK, better safe than sorry.

I still had status with U.S. Airways from all my travels with them for work, so we both had First Class all the way to the desert, it was nice and relaxing.

We landed close to 8:00 AM (local time) and my parents picked us up and we headed out.

After a quick cup of coffee and a smoke, my cousin and I decided to head out to Old Tucson Studios. This is the Hollywood for Arizona, where films like Young Guns 2 and Tombstone were filmed. My cousin is a Cowboy at heart (horse/sixguns and all) so he really enjoys visiting places like this, as do I. We spent the entire afternoon there and around 3:30 PM headed back for Phoenix.

I was suppose to be playing my buddy Tim K in an LoTOW game that night, but we had just missed each other.

Saturday:
Saturday was the start of GitD 2009. Like I stated it was blast. As a "Ringer" I got to play in Game 2 "Light the Beacons" against Keith H from Colorodo. What a fun game.......

Saturday night a group of us from GitD all went to BJ's for some microbrew and sandwiches. The dinner was great, and it was nice to be able to relax with the players who attended.

Sunday:
This was Day 2 of GitD, and again I got to play in Game 5 "The Last Alliance" against Kyle K (owner of Empire Games). Another great game as I saw my Spider Queen run off the table.

GitD was over around 4:30 PM and we started to pack things up.

Later that evening, my cousin and I decided to visit Rawhide. Its a 1880's Wild West town in Phoenix. They have a saloon and plenty of stores to pickup gifts. We walked the town while drinking our Root Beers. I ended up getting a t-shirt and a cactus to bring home.

Monday:
Time to make the "road trip" back home. My plan was to have a 5:00 AM start, but that turned into a 6:30 AM start. That was OK, since we were heading West through the city of Globe, traffic was not going to be a problem. We wanted to do some sight seeing on the way home so we cut the corner of the state of Arizona to get to New Mexico instead of going on the Interstate. It was a very scenic drive.

As we are driving through New Mexico we decided to make a pit stop and veer off the interstate and head towards Fort Sumner. In case you do not know, Fort Sumner is where Billy the Kid is buried. We toured the Billy the Kid Musuem and took photos at the gravesite. Perfect timing, as we finished up the photos, the sun decided then to set.

Tuesday:
After driving straight through from Phoenix, at 4:00 PM I walked in through the door and crashed on my bed for a nap.

It was a very fun packed weekend and I had a blast.
Now its time to start building my models.....