I’ve been having a great spring. The two biggest highlights of the season for me have been two trips I took with Kristin to the mid-south region of our fine nation. The first was MidSouthCon 39, in Memphis, Tennessee and the second was the eclipse, which we saw in Washington, Indiana.
MidSouthCon 39
Four years ago, when Covid shut the world down, the first event we missed was MidSouthCon, where Kristin & I were supposed to be some of their Guests of Honors. Last month, we finally managed to make good on that promise, attending MidSouthCon 39 as their Gaming GoHs. We had a wonderful time!
We brought out all the old favorites: I did a couple of sessions of Andy vs. Everybody and ran a bunch of my Parsely games, Kristin ran some open gaming sessions, and together we sat on a variety of panel discussions. Topics for those included Gaming as a Business, The Ins & Outs of Podcasting, Gaming Done Virtually, the Art of Self Promotion, and “Being the Looneys.” Other fun included the Opening and Closing Ceremonies, the official banquet, and a gift basket of goodies.
It was great to finally go to a convention again. It also put on bookend of sorts on the pandemic for me. Now that we’ve finally done the MidSouthCon thing, I feel like the covid era is really over, even though the virus itself will never go away. But this is the new normal, and thus, the next era. I’m still very keen on never catching it, but I hate masking and rarely do it anymore. That said, I do still try to practice social distancing, and generally prefer small groups to large ones. So I’m still not planning to go to GenCon, but I like small events like MidSouthCon. So thanks again for inviting us, MidSouthCon friends!
Chasing the Eclipse
I saw my first solar eclipse when I was six and a half years old, specifically on March 7, 1970. We weren’t completely in the path of totality, but we did get 95% coverage and it was pretty amazing. I remember hanging out in the backyard with the family, where my NASA engineer dad had an elaborate viewing apparatus set up. I remember being told, “This won’t happen around here again for almost 50 years!” Of course, that was impossibly far in the future… and yet, that’s now six and a half years ago!
I saw my second solar eclipse in 2017 with a couple of very close friends: Dr. Leila and Sleevs. By then I’d come to realize that 95% just isn’t good enough… I needed to see full totality. So we drove to a spot in the middle of the Great Smoky Mountains and it was one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen in my life.
But I was sad that my lovely wife Kristin had missed out, so when the last easy chance to see this extraordinary show for a long time rolled around, I wanted to make sure she got to see it. And we had an incredible time!
Of course, the bane of the eclipse chaser is bad weather, so I resisted making plans for any place in particular. Fortunately, since we were road-tripping in Betty, the no-frills RV I drove around the country last summer, we were able to decide where to go at the last minute, based on the most up-to-date weather predictions. We literally chased the eclipse!
At first, we’d been planning to go to Buffalo NY, and perhaps slide up or down the line of totality as the final predictions came in, but as we go closer it looked like it would be bad weather in Buffalo. I started to lobby for Maine instead, where it looked like clear skies, but Kristin rightly pointed out that going to Maine would put us right into the middle of the worse traffic patterns, with all the other eclipse chasers on the east coast highways. Instead, we should go west and south. Another spot where the long range forecast was looking good was Paducah, KY, and when we finally got on the road, that’s where we headed.
As we always like to do when on the road, we dropped in to visit a couple of game stores along the way. The first was Derby Comics & Games in Shelbyville, KY. That’s where this photo was taken; we hung out for awhile at Derby’s, studying the map and the weather reports before deciding to head for Bloomington IN, our first city along the line of totality. There we visited The Game Preserve and asked the locals about eclipse viewing venues, but we decided to keep moving and ended up in a fun little city called Washington. Hey, we’re from Washington, too!
We could not have found a better place. This town was excited about the eclipse! They’d closed Main street and the whole town was celebrating, with vendors and food trucks and the best mood you could ask for. We parked Betty just steps away from a pavilion where we hung out all day, watching as the sun was gradually covered up. The weather was perfect and we danced in the street as the sky went dark. It was another of the most wonderful moments of my life.
I remember reading an article many years ago, about how moving the experience of totality can be, and how it changes you. Once you’ve seen it, you ache to see it again. Some eclipse chasers go to incredible lengths just to see another performance of this three minute show. And now, having seen three and wondering when I might see another, I guess I’ve become one of those people.