Ornoth

      The following is my travelogue from the 2007 DargonZine Writers' Summit. The official project writeup and photos can be found here, while my favorites out of my own photos can be found here.

Wednesday, 21 March 2007

      Woke up to 20 degrees, but at least it was sunny. We'd had snow showers the day before, and a serious snowfall last weekend. I finished packing and swept the house, then left for the airport at 11am.
      We were about ten minutes late taking off, due to the outbound aircraft showing up late, which made me anxious because my connection in Denver was tight to begin with. Despite the fact that we wound up landing on time, by the end of my brisk walk the length of Denver's Terminal B my second flight was already boarding Seating Area 2, which meant me. No time to stretch out my back after a five-hour flight from Boston!
      The flight to Vegas added another couple hours onto that, continuing to stress my back, which has been painful since I stood in line for three hours waiting to tour the aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy in Boston two weeks ago.
      The approach to Vegas was absolutely stunning from the air, the Earth a carpet of rugged mountains and etched canyons. After passing over one final high ridge, we approached the McCarran runway that runs parallel to the Strip, passing the Stratosphere, the Wynn, the Bellagio, New York New York, Paris, and the Luxor, among the sights. It was pretty impressive. On arrival at 6pm, it was 70 blessed degrees.
      I met up with two of my writers -- Rena and Dafydd -- at the luggage carousel, then we drove off in Daf's white Lincoln Town Car to meet Carlo -- another Dargon Project member -- in the lobby of the Green Valley Ranch Casino in Henderson.
      From there, we had supper at the Red Hawk Tavern, which was clearly a dive for the locals. The food was mundane, but at least it wasn't a chain, and the waitress was friendly. The highlight, however, was the quite busty other waitress, whom I eyed as she worked the booths. Very nice, I must say.
      After dinner and chat, we hit the Albertson's grocery next door for some supplies, then made our way back to the town house that Dafydd, this year's host, had rented. The nighttime view of the city was interesting: a huge grid of lights filling the valley, tightly bound by arid mountains, with the Strip in the middle.
      As for the house, called Cappellini, there's not much I can say about it but “Oh my gawd!” Okay, aside from the pool and hot tub, and the pool table, and the wireless Internet, the place was gigrontic. I think it had seven bedrooms, but I'm not sure. I wound up picking a nice little suite with -- of all things -- a very high sleigh bed. The place is a new development, and the accommodations were absolutely unsurpassed. Stupendous.
      I stayed up for a while, unpacking and getting ready for Thursday's planned bike ride. I finally hit the hay sometime around 1am, which would have been 3am Eastern. Long day!

Thursday, 22 March 2007

      Sadly, my internal clock was still on Eastern time, so I was awake at 5:45 am. After a casual breakfast, Dafydd and Rena dropped me at Las Vegas Cyclery, where I talked to a friendly dude and rented a 60cm Cannondale Synapse: the other bike I considered when I bought my Roubaix a year and a half ago.
      While the others headed off to tour the Luxor and Caesar's Palace, I started the westward ride out of town, which promised a steady four percent grade, gaining of 2500 feet over a dozen miles. After a few miles, I caught up with another cyclist at a stop light, and I chatted pleasantly with him for several miles, until the end of Alta, where he turned right to do some offroad riding, while I turned left to get back down to West Charleston and Route 159, which would take me out to Red Rock Canyon.

      I knew Las Vegas was in the Mojave Desert, but I had no idea it was surrounded by mountains. You can see the Spring Mountains and Red Rock Canyon from the Strip, and it only took me six miles to get outside of town and into very serious desert scenery.
      Within an hour I turned into the park's 17-mile scenic loop road, which began a more serious ascent, skirting the entire circumference of valley between the Calico Hills (huge thousand-foot cliffs of red sandstone) and the immense Spring Mountains. As I slowly made my way up to 4800 feet, I took a few sets of pictures, but absolutely no photos can do justice to the immense wall of rock on my right. Although it hadn’t taken long, I was very glad to see the sign for the highest point on the loop road, because my springtime legs had been pretty well used up.
      From there, the remaining two-thirds of my ride were all downhill or flat, starting with the descent from the canyon, which featured lots of switchbacks and speeds up to 40 mph. At 2pm I stopped at the end of the loop road and took another panorama of the canyon before hopping back onto Route 159 south toward the tiny village of Blue Diamond.
      Route 159 was great: smooth, wide, and all downhill. Despite a very stiff headwind, I was still making 25-35 mph before I turned onto Route 160, a busy road that led back into Vegas from the south, near where our house was. However, since Dafydd and Rena were touring the Strip, I skipped the house and turned left onto Jones, through an industrial area, where I found a penny in the road. I figured finding money in the streets of Vegas would be a good story, so I took the time to stop and pick it up.
      The last five miles of the 50-mile ride were tough, between the wind, my bad back, and my legs losing power on this first significant ride I've done in six or eight months. I finally pulled back into the bike shop and returned my ride, stretched, then plunked myself down in front of the store to wait for Dafydd and Rena to pick me up.
      When they did, we had to exchange the Lincoln Town Car for the behemoth van we'd use to transport the nine of us around town. That was a bit of an adventure, as we had to return the car in one place (after missing the rental car return exit twice), take a shuttle bus back to the airport terminal, then catch another shuttle to a different rental place. Then we drove the beast back to the house to again meet up with Carlo for dinner.
      After I took a quick shower, we headed out to where Daf thought an Ethiopian restaurant was. We found the strip mall, and even the sign, but the restaurant was gone. However, there was an Ethiopian grocery and a “club” next door with silvered windows that hid the interior. Eventually Daf stepped into the “club”, and we followed timorously.
      Inside looked like a VFW hall, with a bunch of tables, and a group of natives huddled at one. It took several minutes for Daf to get any attention from the residents, but eventually we sat down and were served. The staff seemed very surprised, and we soon found out that they were out of some dishes because it was an Ethiopian fasting holiday. We ordered anyways, but I have to say the food was singularly bad. I got lamb bones and bread, and that's about it, so I was pretty glad to leave that adventure behind.
      From there, we returned to the house. Both Liam and his wife (MaryEllen) and Jim and his wife (Naomi) showed up late that evening, and we played a game of Carcassonne, which I won, surprisingly. Eventually it was 2am, and I hit the hay.

Friday, 23 March 2007

      Friday was another 6am start, but it was a pretty casual morning. Eventually the group got together in the van and Dafydd drove us down to Hoover Dam, where we promptly parked and headed indoors for the tour.
      The tour really wasn't too much: a movie, an elevator ride down to the generator floor, then a walk past one of the huge bypass water pipes that feed the turbines. Somehow I find the dam both stupendously huge and yet thoroughly trivial at the same time. It's 780 feet high, and two football fields deep at the base. The lake behind it is absolutely huge. But ultimately it's just a simple waterwheel. It's kinda like having a 300-foot screwdriver.
      After the tour, we stepped out into the sunlight of the observation deck to take some pictures, then walked the length of the road atop the dam, across to the Arizona side of the Colorado River. The intake towers were kind of interesting, and we spotted a couple lizards lounging in the sun on one of the cement walls atop the dam. Although the wind was calm on both sides of the dam, it was brutally strong right in the middle, which was very odd. When we'd had our fill, we went through the gift shop, then into the cafe for lunch, where I had chicken fingers.
      Then it was back into the van up the arid no mans land along the edge of Lake Mead. The landscape became gradually more and more rugged, and it reminded me a great deal of Scotland: driving winding roads in a van through huge mountains, while half of the passengers slept.
      At about 4pm we finally found the entrance to the Valley of Fire, another immense outcropping of red sandstone. We took a short walk up to Elephant Rock, an odd stone formation on a hill overlooking the visitor center. I encouraged Liam and his wife to climb up to it for photos, while a mother nearby lectured her kids about not leaving the trail.
      After a short breather, Jim fetched the van and we drove on to another point called Seven Sisters. Getting out of the van, the weather had turned breezy and cool, and one could feel the occasional raindrop. The wind picked up to storm levels, kicking up eddies of sand and driving us back into the van.
      From there it was another short side trip to a place with the intriguing name of Mouse's Tank, which turned out to be absolutely fascinating. It was a very narrow box canyon, a third of a mile long, bordered by huge sandstone cliffs and boulders of all sizes and shapes, many of them covered with petroglyphs that could be one or two thousand years old. At the head of the canyon is a small hollow filled with water. The whole area defies description, and was one of the highlights of the trip.
      From there we went a little further to a place called Rainbow Vista, which offered an intriguing perspective: more huge red rocks in the foreground, but contrasting sharply with the verdant valley and higher mountains beyond. It was visually spectacular.
      We returned to the main road and stopped a final time at a place called the Beehives, which not only offered a similar overlook, but also a view of the rainbow promised in the title of the previous stop. By then we were getting pretty tired of spectacular scenery and big red rocks, so we hopped into the van and headed back into town for our next adventure: teppanyaki.

      We piled out at a Japanese beast row called Fukuda, met up with Carlo, and took up positions on the perimeter of a stainless steel grill. Not long after our order was taken, a Japanese chef showed up and starting in on his theatrics, flipping knives and spatulas and eggs and keeping up a lively banter as he began to prepare our food right before our eyes: shrimp, lo mein, fried rice, assorted veggies and meat, and a flaming tower of onions. The meal was very good, and very well presented, even if the chef did drop one knife and a plastic squeeze bottle of oil. I've always been skeptical of Japanese food, but the teppanyaki was a great show and an enjoyable meal.
      When dinner was over, half the group went straight home, and the rest of us went to the airport to pick up Jon, our final arrival. We snagged him, then made a grocery run before getting back to the house. Everyone was tired, and a bit frustrated when we couldn't figure out how to get the hot tub's heat to activate. After greetings were exchanged, we all retired.

Saturday, 24 March 2007

      Once again I was up at 6:30am Saturday. Jon and Liam managed to break one of the house's pottery cups by cooperating too hard. Then we kicked around and played a little pool while waiting for Liam to make a run to Office Depot to pick up an easel pad.
      When he returned, Daf presented us with some amazing gifts he had prepared: several decks of custom Las Vegas Summit playing cards, and a whole case full of ceramic poker chips bearing the DargonZine logo. That was quite an impressive item!
      At the same time, Liam mentioned two books to us. The first was a textbook called “Writing Fiction” by Janet Burroway, and Liam read to us a section about the importance of allowing yourself to write garbage first drafts. The other was the Tough Guide to Fantasyland by Diana Wynne Jones, which is written like a tour guide but makes scathing fun of all the stock fantasy cliches like stew, ale, grand viziers, and so forth.
      With that out of the way, we got into the working sessions, which began with Liam facilitating a brainstorming session on where story ideas come from. The list included:

• My philosophical ideas or inner demons
• My ideas for inventions
• My dreams or daydreams, especially the surreal ones
• External requirements/expectations/motivators
• Doing research, including maps (Dargon or otherwise)
• Start writing about a character and just see where it goes
• Take a visual impression and work it into a story
• Rewrite/alter/extend/follow up on someone else's story
• Getting struck by an idea (character, line, scene)
• A story in an article/book/radio/television/song

      Next I took the floor for the only thing I had to present this year: a talk about how to take a simple basic plot and add complication upon complication until it becomes almost baroque in its ornateness, using the scriptwriting of Buckaroo Banzai as an example. It was a quick session, but hopefully people left with an appreciation of how little work it can be to make a fast-paced story if you pare everything down to just plot.
      After that, Dafydd and Liam talked a little bit about how the Doravin arc had changed under their current plan. I'm glad to see it moving forward, and even if it's not going in the original direction Daf intended for it, it's still a great addition to the milieu.
      By this time it was noon, so we broke for sandwiches. Carlo arrived in the middle, and walked us through some of the graphics work he's been doing, including revised maps.
      And the final item of the day was to go around and talk about the stories we'd each written in response to a writing challenge Dafydd had posted to the list several weeks earlier. My own story was originally written to fulfill the need for a “Dargon walking tour”, as expressed at our previous writers' Summit.

      That left us the balance of the day to go exploring, and Dafydd drove us west of the city to Mount Charleston, at 11,918 feet the eighth highest peak in Nevada. We stopped briefly at the visitor's center, where several people picked up sweatshirts, since they were unprepared for the cold air around 9000 feet. Between Las Vegas' dryness and the altitude, Jim's wife Naomi even suffered a couple inconvenient nosebleeds.
      From there, we drove a few miles to a short trail called Robbers' Roost. This footpath went up into the aromatic conifers that were the only real trees I saw in Nevada, and we were quickly trudging through wet snow among the boulders and pinecones. The mountain goats among us quickly shed followers, until it was just me, Jon, Liam, and his wife, having gone about as far as we could go without climbing gear. As we stood there, I looked up and noticed carabiners on hangers attached to an immense overhang above us, as Dafydd and Jim caught up.
      After a few minutes' rest, we tromped back down to the van, and rode on to the Desert View Overlook. Here we milled around a bit before piling back in the van for the ride back into town.
      The descent was interesting, and made moreso by the van's overheating brakes causing it to vibrate badly until Daf set the van into low gear. But eventually we got back to town, safe and sound.
      Having given up on trying to meet the (fondue) Melting Pot's dress code, our dinner stop was at a place called Thai Spice, which served passable Asian, including my Szechuan chicken. The highlight of the meal was the Summit toast, which was given by Liam and Jon, each alternating words in a hilarious impromptu improv routine. I tried to capture it on my camera phone, but it failed to record the audio, as I'd feared.
      We returned to the house at 8pm, where we again split into two groups. The two married couples -- Jim and Naomi, Liam and MaryEllen -- drove up to the Strip and toured the Paris hotel and casino. Liam came back and validated my impression that the Strip really wasn't worth my time, as I wouldn't have enjoyed it, although Jim did get some wonderful pictures of the Strip at night.
      Meanwhile, Dafydd, Jon, and I hung out in the hot tub, since we'd been told how to operate the thing earlier in the day. I took great pleasure in lounging in a hot tub while eating Haagen-Dazs and some of my $230 bottle Port Ellen.
      We finished the day with another game of Carcassonne, then crashed.

Sunday, 25 March 2007

      Sunday's working session began pretty promptly at 9am, with Jon's review of our financials, followed by voting for officers. One of the votes we took changed the Editor position so that it is appointed by the board, rather than a lifelong position. Another change was Dafydd's election as Vice President, which is a largely titular office, but it was still a great thing to see.
      Liam then led us through a discussion of the tasks that need to be performed in order to consider the DPWW ready. The DPWW -- Dargon Project Writers' Workshop -- was dreamt up last year to give new writers a way to get peer review of non-Dargon works as a way of ramping up on DargonZine and our processes. Five things came out of the discussion: instructions for mentors and mentees, a closer partnership with Carlo's Arcane Twilight, a reorganization of the writers' section of our web site, moving the DPWW mailing list to dargonzine.org, and a document defining the process for responding to new writer signup requests.
      We also were led through a brainstorming exercise on what the word “aspiring” means in our mission statement, since there'd been a debate on the list about its relevance. We came up with the following attributes of an “aspiring writer”:

• Desires to (and does) write and improve, and explore the craft
• Shares their writing with either the public or other writers
• Values critiques, is willing to learn
• Sees their work as not perfect yet

      We ended the working sessions by once again going through our Summit challenge stories, deciding on points where our stories could refer to one another. After taking some time to hash that out, the writers went off to work on their stories, while I kinda milled around a bit.
      We took something like two hours to figure out who wanted what kind of pizza, then trying to find a place to order from, then finding the right franchise to deliver to our area, then waiting for the pizza to show up. It finally did, and we scarfed it down in no time at all.
      After lunch I took a quick group photo, then we played another game of Carcassonne before we finally got the group together for a trip over to South Point, the nearest big casino. After four days, I was finally getting the opportunity to put some money on the tables at Las Vegas!
      We wandered around for a bit, with Dafydd, Liam, and Jon following me to the blackjack pit. I walked around the tables, looking at who was dealing shoe versus hand, who was winning and who was losing, which dealers were talkative, how fast each dealer was operating, where the players were, and the rules set. The rules weren't great: no surrender, and the dealer hit soft 17. As I walked around, Liam asked me what I was doing, and I explained the idea behind scoping the pit out a little before sitting down. Jon commented that I gambled like I write (so cautiously that it never happened).
      There was one table that we watched for a few minutes. The dealer seemed pleasant, and there were four open seats, since there were three people playing. But as we watched, hand after hand the dealer smashed the players, dealing himself improbable 21s and other outs. It was a massacre, so we moved on. A few minutes later, Liam pointed out to me that the table was now empty: the dealer had busted all three players and driven them off.
      What happened next would be termed a learning experience. Liam seemed eager to start playing, so he said he was going to go over to that very table and sit down. I was incredulous, and said as much, reminding him of the bloodbath he'd just witnessed. But he wasn't dissuaded, and Jon and Daf tagged along, so against my better judgment I sat down, as well, laying out a $500 buy-in and telling Jon that “No, I don't gamble like I write”.
      As I predicted, the dealer hammered us. I ate through my buy-in, despite playing solid basic strategy, and put another $500 on the table. From there, things were up and down a bit. Jon managed to get $100 clear and left for the roulette wheel. Daf had purchased a basic strategy card, but turned it over to Liam, who seemed to need it more. He soon joined Jon, with $50 in his pocket. Liam was a different story. Despite having the card on the table in front of him, he made a number of plays that contradicted basic strategy, which jarred my nerves. He blew through his ante, and I was left alone at the table for a while.
      Being so far down, I was in for a long, difficult climb back to even, but I didn't have the time, because we only had about 45 minutes before we had to meet to drive Rena to the airport. So I played it out as long as I could, and left the table still $265 in the hole. Technically, that's not bad, given that I was down about $700 at one point, but it's not what I could have done, given more time and a better table.
      So we gathered up in the parking lot, meeting up with our other group, who had gone bowling in the meantime. We drove through the Strip on the way to the airport, then came right back to the casino, where after some deliberation we backed our way into the inevitable Vegas buffet. It was about what you'd expect -- average food at average prices -- but it was okay to have a normal meal for a change, and the all-you-can-eat soft-serve was okay, too.
      From there, I made my way back to the blackjack table, experiencing yet another distinctly odd experience. I found a happy table and bought in for another $500, and settled in for a good long run. But within half an hour, the guys came by and told me they were done, and Daf was probably going to drive them home at some point. Okay, I said, and continued playing. I'd found a good table and was making hay.
      About 20 minutes later, they called from the house. They had immediately left, and had called to let me know that I should call them whenever I wanted a ride home.
      Well, as it was, I was pretty close to finishing, or at least taking a break. I was about $450 to the good, and I automatically step away from the table when I'm up $500. But I wasn't quite there yet, and it would have pissed Daf off to have to turn around and pick me up after just bringing the others home. So I told them I'd continue playing for a while and call when I was done. The night was still young; it wasn't even 9pm yet!
      So I continued playing, and you can imagine how things went from there: it was a mixed bag, but mostly downward. They called me again around 10pm, checking in just before they started a game of Carcassonne, but I decided to bail. I'd been struggling to keep ahead of the game, and the longer you play, the lower your chance is of winning. So I stood up, leaving the table with $100 more than I arrived with, for a net loss of $165. That's not too bad, considering how the evening started, but it’s also not the $250 gain that was near my maximum gain, either.
      Daf graciously picked me up, and when we got back to the house I started sorting and entering my 300 bills into Where's George, much to the amusement of my companions. At the cage, I'd picked up two straps of ones and $400 in fives, in addition to a fistful of Bens and some spare bills, and managed to give the casino about a dozen marked Grants and about the same number of Bens. Hopefully those'll go interesting places and garner interesting hits, since I've never had a hit on a bill larger than a $20. And now I've got about two months' worth of cash to distribute that was all entered in Las Vegas!
      After I finished all that, we played a couple games of Carcassonne while the others gradually nodded off. Jon and I decided we were going to stay up all night, since we had to leave the house at 5am to catch Jon’s 7am flight. Ugh. Ironically, my last all-nighter was a couple years ago, driving down to Philly and back for Jon's wedding.
      But 5am finally came, and we woke Liam up to drive us over to the airport. We got through ticketing, but security... Well, let's say that the line to go through security was five people wide and about 500 feet long. It was obscene. Fortunately, they were moving people through pretty well, and my flight wasn't until 8:30am. After eventually getting through security, I went to Jon's gate and saw him off, then hung out at my gate until we boarded. Thank you Las Vegas for being the only airport I've been to that had free wireless Internet!

      And that was it for my first trip ever to Las Vegas. The Strip really didn't seem like my cup of tea, and the rest of the town was basically just 1200 square miles of strip malls. And it definitely didn’t come close to living up to its “sin city” reputation at all.
      But the food was interesting, the accommodations were absolutely unmatched, and the landscape and outdoors activities were surprisingly breathtaking. Although I'd known Las Vegas was in the middle of a desert, I hadn't expected it to be surrounded by huge mountains, which were absolutely stunning.
      I'd expected it to be arid, but I was surprised by how that manifested itself. Specifically, my nose was constantly dried out and clogged, and the cuticles on my fingers painfully cracked and peeled. Not exactly the symptoms I'd expected!
      The bike ride was, of course, an absolute pleasure, and I'm very glad I took the time to enjoy that. I enjoyed the whole trip as a photographic opportunity, although I feel like I could have done better if I’d devoted more time and better composed my shots. And, of course, the gambling... Well, I'm pleased that we fit it in, even if I'm not entirely happy with the net result.
      The working sessions were reasonably productive, and the company was good, although I'm always disappointed when we have no new writers at the Summit. As for giving up control of DargonZine, every day convinces me more and more that I need to give up all responsibility and any sense of ownership I still have in it, because it will never be what I dreamed it would. But I still care about the people, and enjoy our annual get-togethers a great deal.
      And it hardly feels like a week has gone by. With the notable exception of our twelve days in Scotland, the Summit always feels too short, and I dread the beginning of the goodbyes and the unavoidable return to the working world. But the Summit itself... that was a wonderful experience, and I'm glad to have my fellow writers as friends to share these wonderful memories with.