To War

Before I start, ATTENTION TONY NUZZO, THE FUNNIEST MOTHER FUCKING COMEDIAN I KNOW WILL BE IN PORTLAND ON MONDAY OCTOBER 21ST. GO.

HERE HE IS ON NATIONALISM OR FREEDOM

So the plan. Get up at 3 AM Friday, leave to pick up Toby from a train station in Brewster, NY and then to Alfred by Friday night to help them prepare for the war. The next day, battle and party. Then on Sunday up at 6 AM to drive back to The County. Damn near 1700 miles of driving in about 3 days. My family said I was crazy. What they failed to realize is that this is what I've been mentally preparing to do for months. Also it was just sort of amazing to do something, anything, especially something a little insane for mostly very silly reasons. After four months of absolutely nothing, three days of hour by hour something were a godsend.

The truly amazing bit, it all worked. Brilliantly. The trip was zero stress and adhered to schedule surprisingly well. The only glitch was the curse of Toby. Every single god damned time Toby and I get in a car together and say "LET'S GO ON AN ADVENTURE" the car fails. Every. Single. Time. There was my trip to see him in Toronto where my Jeep died in the parking garage. Him and Renee's trip to see me where her clutch fell out. Then this time my battery just sort of disappeared about twenty minutes after he got in the car. After we pulled off it was pretty apparent that all that happened was the battery terminal was loose and sort of bounced the fuck off after a bump. But still we had to pull over and tinker for an hour to figure that simple thing out. It is Tobias Hrynick and I, we are not known for our mechanical prowess.

We arrived in Alfred and dove right into helping the club build swords for the war. We had a good twenty five people building swords quickly for about four hours and met our quota. of 72 new swords. Got to meet a lot of the new faces including one kid everyone refers to as "New Tyler". I was weirded out until I found out he got the name for having similar drunken personalities. Looks like I've got someone to take on an adventure at Hot Dog Day. Then Toby and I went back to AJs apartment, had some beers and went to bed.

Wake up at 9 AM for the Officers breakfast, Toby, AJ and I were not officers but insisted that we are a necessary element of their discussion. Also I need Battle Waffles, it's tradition to eat waffles prior to combat for me. It's kind of my thing. We ate our waffles and headed up to the field of battle to set everything up. There was a lot of on the spot improvisation as it turned out we didn't have half the things we needed but in the end the new officer corps did it up nice. Alfred States army arrived and after a pretty ad libbed speech about the rules, we all headed back to camp.

I was happy that this year we got time to properly put together a strategy. We divided up into units, nicknamed the units, even had a group dedicated to relaying communication from the General. I could have really used that last time. We fought for maybe 4 hours and it was awesome. I spent most of the match defending the AU homebase which eventually fell after a near 90 minute siege. In the end Alfred State won, again. I had fun, Toby had fun, trip well worth it. After the war we got a couple cars and took some good folk to the chinese buffet in Wellsville and then went to AJs apartment for a wonderful night of drunken revelry.  I didn't get to see everyone I wanted to see because of the short window of time I was there but I saw a good bunch. The weekend was pretty expensive to pull off but it was well worth it. PICTURES!

Toby Hrynick, in Alfred, helping fend off the State school horde.

My good friend Gaelen representing.

Pic from the final battle around the King Alfred statue.

A nice orchestrated group shot.

Toby and I left at 7 AM Sunday and I got home around 2 AM so I could start my new job at 8 AM. After 10 hours of OSHA safety videos I was considered an employee at Columbia Forest Products, making whole piece hardwood veneer of the maple and birch variety. The job is not exactly what I would call a dream job for me. The job is very physically demanding and only just mentally demanding enough that I'm not allowed to zone out for even a second. That said, the people are all very nice and the pay is quite nice. It's mostly headed to the bank where hopefully I can finally grow a small amount of savings. I haven't had more than a few hundred dollars in the bank since High School. A bit of money in the bank to fall on is just what I need while I plan the next step, which currently is move somewhere that people live and get a job that sort of uses this brain thing I got bouncing around my shoulders. It works decently and could be applied to any number of things.

Anyways, time to sit here and wait for something to happen.