Day One started for me at 3:00am on Thursday the 25th, that is the time I woke up to get ready to travel to the airport for my 6:10am flight to Chicago. I was flying out of Phoenix on American Airlines, out of terminal 3. In years past I have flown out on America West out of terminal 4 and TSA security check is usually backed up, even in the morning.
Well I was the only one in line through security check when I arrived at 4:45am and quickly got to my gate and sat for an hour until my flight was ready for boarding. One thing I learned last year was to bring a movie or two along for the flight. America West had cancelled their in flight movies on the Chicago flights, so the night before I loaded Matrix & 3:10 to Yuma on my I-pod. We boarded on time but did not pull out of the gate until 6:35am since it was a full flight and the flight attendants were trying to make room for all the carry on luggage that people bring now. Thankfully I checked a large suitcase with Tom O's skirmish pack inside. His Charon Skirmish pack was 2" too large for a carry on, so I would rather check it inside my luggage for some added protection.
Flight was uneventful and smooth, I was glad for that and we touched down at 11:31am Chicago time. My friend Jay Ryan was waiting for my at the luggage carousal when I got down there. Once I got my suitcase we headed off to the Hotel which was about 20 minutes away. Before we got to the hotel we stopped at Portillos for some Italian Beef sandwich's. I have to tell you, Chicago does have some awesome food and the Italian sandwich was the bomb!
Jay was going to be my roomie for the weekend but when I went to check in the Hotel had put me in a King room with one King sized bed. I looked at Jay and said he would not be spooning with me & I asked for a roll away bed to be brought up. Jay & I dropped our stuff off in the room and I headed down to meet up with Hank Edley and Rich Nelson for set up.
Main Hall for 40K
But as I entered the main hall, most of everything had been set up and there was not much to do until later that night when the Specialist stuff would arrive. Did get to chat with Dave Taylor for awhile and he showed off his greatest modeling project that is a year old, his beautiful daughter! So after chatting with Dave I headed up to my room to do a little blogging and rest. But here is what surprised me, when I tried to access the WIFI, I was directed to a pay site for the Westin. It seems that the Westin does not offer free WiFi for their customers and I was not going to pay $9.99 each day to log on to the net. I have to ask why does the Westin charge for their guests? Hell I have stayed in Motel 6's and Hilton's and they never charge, so what gives Westin??
So after a short nap (man I must be getting old!) I headed down to check out the other rooms. Across from the Lilac room was the Junior Ballroom that was being set up for Warhammer Fantasy Battle and Flames of War. Since the 40K event has grown to 120 tables, the Fantasy stuff had to be moved to it's own room.
Right across the hallway to the Lilac room was another smaller room for Combat Patrols, Youngbloods and Necromunda. I never made it over to watch any of these games but I heard that everyone had a blast.
I finally made it to the Lilac room were the Specialist games was being set up. Although I think I take offense to the term Specialist games since that is a place were GW games go to die to the company. But we had big crowds in our room all weekend. We had Epic, Battle Fleet Gothic, Lord of the Rings, Warhammer Ancients Battle, Legends of the Old West, Space Hulk and even Warhammer Quest going on.
Anyway, I meet up with Rich and Jamie and helped set up the Lord of the Rings terrain along with the Warhammer Ancient Battle tables. Now, most people that know me or have attended GitD know that I like to have a ton of terrain on the tables for LotR. Now Jamie has a lot of terrain, but in my opinion, there was not allot of terrain and the tables looked bare to me. Now I am not trying to cause any trouble and Jamie is an awesome guy, but the lack of terrain was a bit disappointing to me. I would have to say that GitD beats Adepticons terrain hands down and we have much better tables to play on. Judge for yourselves.
After I helped Jamie, I than set up the LotOW table for Jay that would be happening Friday night. Most of this stuff is from Arnica and belongs to Hank Edley and it is awesome stuff. I could not wait to play on it Friday night.
Once we had the hall set up it was time for dinner, Rich had to head home so I asked Jamie if he wanted to eat dinner with me and John from Plastic Legions. The three of us headed for Harry Caray's for Burgers and Beers and spent a good amount of time talking Hobby stuff and anything else that came up. After dinner (which was an awesome Hamburger!) John and I headed over to the Lilac room for a little warm up game of LotR. John had not had his Grey Company out since the primer and I had yet to take the field with my Numemoreans. We played a meeting engagement game and John proceeded to kick the crap out of me. I kept loosing guys to strength 3 bows and not remembering how to figure out tied fights with the same fight scores (Grey company only gets Strength 2 bows and you roll off for tied fights with the same fight value). Needless to say it was late when we played and being up since 3:00am was getting to me.
The game ended around 12:30am and I headed up to the room. During our game Jeremy Williams and Jay came down to watch and Jeremy said he had an extra bed in his room. So Jay decided to room with Jeremy. Well once Jay and Jeremy got to his room they found out that Jeremy does not know how to count and only had one bed! So Jay got to sleep on the floor since there was no more roll away beds left.
I hit the sack around 1:30am and set the alarm for 7:00am for Friday. The next post will be Fridays activities...
TK
