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[Alondite]

That sounds like a fantastic idea!......except I'm in really good shape so I metabolize alcohol very quickly and efficiently, so it doesn't take much to get me drunk anymore :\

[yse]

Yeah except Alondite you fit none of the descriptions X)

Funny, CF, I had just suggested to RPG the exact same plan. Except that I probably won't drink :P I suppose things could change if you find me a drink I actually like though.

Anyway I am in need of booking tickets before they get too expensive, so I need some idea of dates. I'm going to be in America probably from the last couple of days of December until mid to late January, and then in England from then until some time in February. I need to be back before the 17th so I can move into my new place for next year before uni starts. Give me a hand here, guys!

I particularly want the Americans to help me plot a course through the country... here's what I've got so far:
Dec... 29 or so?: California (Upth, Quartz, magnum, etc)
Jan 1-4: DC (MAGfest, the SDA crew)
Jan 5-8?: Northeast corner (Thorn, Alondite, DsS etc: this is also where most of my friends from college will be)
Jan 9-10: Michigan (I vaguely recall one of you saying it had to be on a weekend, so I'm going to try and take this weekend out for you)
From there, anyone in the middle that wants to see me (eg. Stefan, Aitamen), then I'll probably fly from there back to NY, maybe spend a couple more days in the northeast before setting off to England.

So something I need to work out is how to get between places. How's the public transport between states, for example? Does it even exist?

[Flying Fox]

I have nothing planned in January or February so if you're around any where near london we could meet up and do something together if you want :)

[yse]

OK, I'll fit you in somewhere :) I know douglas is gonna be in London so I'll definitely be there at some point.

[Thorn]

I don't know if your SDA convention thingy has moved since last year, but I seem to recall you saying that was in Washington D.C., and anybody who's listened to Joe Biden enough knows that there's a train that runs from there to Wilmington, DE daily. I could pick you up from Wilmington Station, but I don't know much about transportation from Wilmington to anywhere north. I could drop you off at Philadelphia International Airport if you're hopping on a plane like we planned out last year.

[EngiNerd]

Jan 5-8?: Northeast corner (Thorn, Alondite, DsS etc: this is also where most of my friends from college will be)

I'd invite you up to Maine, but I'm pretty sure I'm the only one up that far, and nobody around here cares about me that much...
Okay, maybe Donna, but otherwise...

[Emma Watson]

FF I'M NEAR LONDON YOU NEVER WANT TO MEET UP AND DO SOMETHING WITH ME D: D: D: D: D:

[flyby]

She's too smart to be strung along by you!

[Emma Watson]

flyby just cuz I left you hangin' in new york~

[flyby]

"just", that is a very valid reason!

[Strong Bad]

yo i live in missouri.
kinda close to michigan
but kinda not.
definitely not a necro

[flyby]

...lol most epic post ever. SB wins

[Spinballwizard]

Lies, douglas already won this topic.

[Spinballwizard]

Double post fail. Necro fail. But I think reviving the topic DURING THE TOUR is acceptable.

Post your experiences of meeting the man behind the madness! For instance, today:

1. "When I evolve, I'm going to kill you all."
2. AD, Donna, and I doing Pokemon shenanigans (mixing records, evolving, and random ID trades) while Ben introduces Mike to the "carpocalypse" that happened around here.
3. Me convincing Donna to read my shirt right. (After mike posts the evidence, you'll see what I mean.)
4. ZERO instances of "I CALL BS!" (I was disappointed.)
5. The actual TSC players doing this Indy 500 arcade thing at GameWorks. Proof that mike isn't the speedrunner he's made out to be! (Finishing order: 1st AD, 2nd Donna, 3rd SBW, 4th Mike)

Mike currently has the evidence on his camera. We found a crane game with Sonic plushies to use as our background. (We almost posed in front of a Detroit Lions statue thing!)

[Taillow]

Oh hey, here's the topic.  Also, good idea.

1: The airport!  There's a lot of it off limits to people waiting for arrivals >_>  Good thing I knew Mike by his face.
2: The transit!  We ran into who could have been a hooker or something, someone asking for change, and a stall on one of the linerails or whatever they call them.  I've never run into this kind of thing before <_<
        Then again I haven't taken the linerails, just the subway around here >_>
3: Apparently Mike's number shows up as an Ohio call on my phone.  I blame my phone not being able to work with foreign numbers.
4: Union Station is pretty cool when leaving the Red Line.  You go up the stairs in this plain, gray station and then boom.  Fancy brown station waiting room.  In my opinion, the best way to enter that station.
5: Hey Mike how's your sudoku book going along?
6: Apparently I can't call Mike back.  As such it was lucky that I got to give him his chocolate squares after eating lunch. <_<
        On a subway interception, to boot.  With that said, if I missed him then I would have eaten it myself >_>
7: Mike never asked me for my name.
8: ZERO instances of "I CALL BS!".  Though it would have been perfect for the Blue Line holdup.

It was particularly short but perhaps next time there can be more cool stuff done with.  By the way I'm a terrible host.

[Thorn]

Hm.

January 5th-6th
I got a call from mike about an hour before he was supposed to arrive on the 5th saying that he had bought the wrong train tickets and wouldn't be arriving until an hour later than expected. I picked him up at the Wilmington Station, and we went to Arby's for a quick bite to eat. We discussed the $0.01 coupons on the tray, which made their way to FailBlog because idiots didn't understand the marketing campaign (but comments kept calling it "Arbus" instead, so this was clearly worthy of a FailBlog Fail). We took his bags to my house and met my parents, my two dogs beat him up, and we took refuge upstairs. He purchased train tickets online for the next day for his next stop, at which point we headed to the Septa platform in Claymont. I got a call from GerbilSoft making sure that we were coming and we boarded a train for 30th Street Station in Philadelphia to meet him. His voice sounded surprisingly like a jock over the phone, going completely against the mental image I'd had of him.

We ended up talking about TSC on the train ride, because it's more fun in person than on IRC, or something. I commented on the argument #soniccenter had over the competition rules right before I left to pick mike up, then said that I should take a week off from chat before I strangle somebody (I didn't >_>).

We arrived at 30th Street Station, and I said to mike that I had no idea where GerbilSoft is, trying to judge what he'd look like based on the impression of him I formed from his voice over the phone. Right after saying this, I heard, "I'm right here," and turned around to see somebody in a trenchcoat holding a silver briefcase. I started hearing that song "Secret *beat* Ag-ent Man, Se-cret..." in my head, but didn't say anything aloud. We followed GerbilSoft to his workplace, where he showed us a heck of broken and/or old computers, and then went to his dorm. We needed IDs to get in, and I almost panicked when I couldn't find it when mike pointed out that I'd moved it to my jacket pocket. In his dorm, GerbilSoft showed us some of the projects he was working on such as his emulator, and mike did a lot of smiling and nodding as the discussion went over his head while I hung on by a thread with sparse bits of knowledge I'd picked up on my way to Tech Membership at Sonic Retro. We ended up playing Super Smash Bros. Brawl for the rest of the night, and while I won most of the matches, they weren't easy matches by any means, and I realized that I really miss having live competition. We also had a Manaphy appear, but it was during the all-Sonic match we had before we left, so it was more of a Manaphail. (Another Manaphy appeared during a match of me vs. DsS later that week and it worked; my karma must've been awesome). We went to the train station and GerbilSoft saw us off.

On the train, I went to apologize to mike that the day was a bit dull, but he was falling asleep with his head on the seat in front of him, so I figured it was probably better that way anyway. It was late when we made it back home and he had an early train on the way out, so the rest of his time here consisted of him getting on the Internet to keep in touch with people while I was playing the cool parts of Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games.

The next day, we made it to Wilmington Station with plenty of time left to go before his train left, so we sat down and waited. His train was then delayed 10 minutes. 10 minutes later, the train was delayed indefinitely. 30 minutes after that, Amtrak gave him tickets for the express train going to the same destination at 1:12pm. I pointed out that it's 1:09pm right now, and we ran to the platform where the train arrived, and he left. I stood there on the platform watching it pull away, then went home.

Exciting stuff.

January 12th-13th
Mom made something I didn't particularly care for for dinner, so I spent about a half-hour making and then eating Kraft Macaroni & Cheese. I went back to my computer afterwards to find MSN blinking.

(5:57 PM) Mike:
hey thorn, you there?
(5:57 PM) Thorn:
yep
caught me just as I came back
(5:57 PM) Mike:
heh
if there's a couple of missed calls on your phone they're from me >_>
(5:58 PM) Thorn:
...oh, what's going on?
phone was off, sorry
(5:58 PM) Mike:
I'm in philly and have nowhere to go >_>
(5:58 PM) Thorn:
oh, heh
where in Philly?
(5:58 PM) Mike:
well I say that, I could -get- myself somewhere to go right now
at 30th street, just got off a train
I do have friends here >_> but they can't put me up for a night so I'm going to have to see them tomorrow
(6:00 PM) Thorn:
heh, iono the local train schedule for today, I think it changed yesterday from what it was last week
lemme check it out
(6:00 PM) Mike:
hahaha
(6:01 PM) Thorn:
not actually sure, but I thought I saw a sign while I was waving goodbye at your train that said the schedule chaged yesterday
(6:03 PM) Thorn:
so what's going on, you want me to come up there, or do you need a place to crash again?
(6:03 PM) Mike:
I hate to ask... but yeah, a place to crash

Thank God I didn't take that week off from chat, or I'd've never gotten the message: my phone had no memory of the calls. I picked mike up at the Claymont platform at about 7:15pm, and given that we didn't really do much last time outside of ride trains and talk, I decide to head to the bowling alley instead of heading home and doing nothing. I go to enter our names onto the scoreboard, and get stuck before deciding on TALLMIKE and SHORTMIKE. TALLMIKE pulls 7 to 9 pins every frame consistently while I get between 1 and 8. Eight frames in, it's 88-60 in TALLMIKE's favor. He ended with 100 even. I bowled a double followed by two throws for a few and end with 102. BS was called during the game. We went home and played 1 vs. 100 Live, where mike was surprisingly competent with American trivia. The rest of the night was spent watching SDA Marathon runs such as Pianotoads and eating chicken nuggets.

The next day, mike tried to book train tickets for an 11:36pm train from Wilmington to New York City, but his card was denied, so we decided to purchase them at the train station before he left. I took mike to the Claymont platform where he left to meet some friends at Villanova. While he was gone, I had another friend call, and we hung out for the time being. I got a text from mike later on saying

Hey mike, going to
get the 5:14 back, 8
minutes late

so I went to the platform again to meet him. The train arrived 35 minutes late, which was followed by a 20-minute line to leave the parking lot. We made it back home at about 7pm, and his train left at 11:36pm, so we had time to get his stuff together and to play a rousing game of Sonic Shuffle. I beat a CPU with an emblem tie but more rings, and mike sat in last place. :( We then played a bit of Sonic Adventure 2 and experienced the most epic camera screw known to man. We drove to Wilmington Station, where the ticket counters were closed and the electronic ticket machines wouldn't take his card either. We spent the next 45 minutes panicking until the train came, at which point a security guard explained the situation to the staff on the train, and mike was allowed to purchase on-board. I'd given mike money in case there was a surcharge for the late purchase, and before leaving I said, "See you later." I then started leaving, thought about it, walked back, and said, "wait, no I won't."

It was more fun than it sounds. It also turns out that there was no surcharge, so hopefully mike put that money to good use while meeting flyby and SonicAD.

[Strong Bad]

a rousing game of sonic shuffle?

[Emma Watson]

mike and ff are vastly different in height.

That is all.

[Flying Fox]

mike and ff are vastly different in height.

That is all.

He's right and we have the picture to prove it. It should be going up on the Post Your Face topic soon, so keep an eye for it :P Also we even had RPG laughing at us when we were hugging so that will give you some indication of how vastly the difference is >_>

EDIT: Finally made it to 200 posts :P

[Emma Watson]

ff is small enough that she could probably be lifted into the air by spinning twin-tails.

[Spinballwizard]

I have a feeling RPG would be laughing regardless of what happened. But hey.

Also did it become CF's dream of a "TSC Piss Up"?