Since moving to Canada, we've joined a new guild (group of people) in World of Warcraft, many of whom are based in Toronto. This has been brilliant and we have met lots of awesome friends this way. This guild has an awesome organisational team, who found and rented an entire ranch in southern Indiana for 19 guild members from all over the USA and Canada to hang out in for a week.
The Toronto crowd included 6 cars, so we headed down in a big convoy for the 13 hour drive.
We knew we were in America, pretty quickly.
4 of the cars in front of us. The bikes on the roof saved us all at multiple points when we got lost and couldn't see the others - 6 car convoys are pretty tough to maintain. In true Canadian style, our guildmates drove bare metres apart, and very rarely less than 15kph over the speed limit - Canadian driving is slightly terrifying to me :) Apparently there isn't a whole lot of speed enforcement - despite driving the whole way well above the speed limit, no one was fined or ticketed and the police we saw didn't even look interested in the people driving much faster than we were.
Nervous meetings - the Toronto-based people all knew each other, but some of the other guildies from the USA hadn't met others before in person (although we've spoken to them and done things together in-game for months). Amusingly, people are much the same online as offline, and it didn't take long to adjust to the voices coming from that person rather than their avatar representation.
Cars parked outside the ranch. The ranch was huge, and could have easily slept many more than the 19 people we had. It had the main building with communal areas, an industrial kitchen, a gym, and some sleeping space, plus another two smaller buildings with additional sleeping space. We stayed in the smallest building, which was a couple of minutes walk away from the bigger buildings - this came in very handy being as we are old and boring (despite being a similar age to most other guildies) and like to sleep for 10 hours a night.
The other sleeping building, colloquially the couples' building. I heard rumors that the wooden construction was designed in such a way as to make the entire house creak and groan loudly any time anyone moved - not quite the romantic retreat after all :P
Being a group of nerds, there was a lot of board gaming happening - the pool table was quickly converted into an epic board game table, and many debates over the rules were heard day and night. Sadly for me, I only got to play ONE game of Ticket to Ride. Woe.
The ranch also contained vineyards, 9 holes of golf, fields of soy beans, and supposedly some elk, although we didn't see (or taste) those. The weather was fairly nice - 30-32 degrees most days and probably around 60% humidity. Apparently it was a bit too warm for our Canadian friends, because most people spent most of their time in the air conditioned main building (which was so cold that I had to wear a jumper).
Being a ranch, there was plenty of kitschy decor around.
To be continued in Part 2 (imaginatively labelled "People Doing Things"), and Part 3 and Part 4 which cover Stephen and my sidetrips in the local area.
The Toronto crowd included 6 cars, so we headed down in a big convoy for the 13 hour drive.
Part of the communal space - couches for reading or chatting, tables for gaming, and a giant bar. The couches are also facing a big tv, which saw some Gamecube use.
To be continued in Part 2 (imaginatively labelled "People Doing Things"), and Part 3 and Part 4 which cover Stephen and my sidetrips in the local area.
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