KansasFest 2008 Report - Tuesday

[Kirk Mitchell <kirkmitchell@gmail.com>]

Normally, I try to get these reports out before I hit the hay that
evening.  I plan on being abnormal from now on.  B-)

I usually start my KFest adventure by getting up early on Tuesday
morning, and driving 6-7 hours until I get to KFest.  This year was
different.

Tony Diaz was driving from Oceanside, CA, and the plan was that he'd
stay at my place in Moscow, KS, then we'd go together to KFest from
there on Tuesday.  But when he showed up Monday evening around 6:00
pm, he was still raring to go.  Being on California time, and having
the sun still so high in the sky...  So I hurriedly packed, and away
we went.

Tony's PT Cruiser is really a "PC Cruiser", as he has his Mac perched
on some kind of device that hovers over the passenger seat and allows
him to type on it, while using a Cradlepoint to feed him an internet
connection where ever he roams.  With a Blackberry running GPS, his
car has a pleasant glow of LCD displays whereever he goes.

All went well until we drove into the "Internet Black Hole" of mid-
Kansas.  Then the signal got weak or lost entirely.  For an internet
addict like Tony, this was truely evil.  Ignoring the advice of the
GPS device by misreading some printed Google Map directions got us
rattled when we realized we weren't going where we thought we were.
We blundered on until we left the black hole, and finally got our
internet back.  It was 11:45 pm in Salina, KS... We found a motel that
still had rooms on the internet, and rolled in too late for me to hit
the bar and try the "Mugout Monday" special...32 oz mug of beer.  That
sucked.

Got the room, and crashed and burned.  Next morning, housekeeping came
banging on the door early, but I didn't bother to get up and put out
the Do not Disturb sign.  So they came back and hour later, and did it
again.  That got me up.  Too late for the free breakfast.  I did get
my MDR of coffee though.

After we packed up, we went to the parking lot to find.... a flat
tire.  An itty bitty air pump got it up enough to get us to a tire
shop a few businesses down.  We'd driven over a razor blade somewhere,
so Tony had to get a new tire.  So, we got out of town 1.5 hours later
than we'd planned.

Stopped at a Wal-Mart to find notebooks and folders for the KFest
participants, but the first store was sold out.  We continued down the
road.  Second WM had what we needed, and we also got everything we
needed for the Kookout.  Except I forgot the frigging charcoal.

Finally made it to Kansas City and to KFest, where we had lots of help
unloading that Cruiser... I was beginning to feel like a sardine.  B-P

Got to our rooms, unpacked, had a few minutes to visit, when it was
time to go eat at Sweet Tomatoes.  Good times!  Back to Rockhurst, but
stopped to get the charcoal, so all was fine.

The rest of the evening was spent wandering from room to room,
greeting old friends and meeting new ones.  Lane Roathe is cool, and I
learned he used to live in the same area as a couple of my cousins.

Finally, the excitement got to me, and I crashed at 2:30 am while my
roomie continued coding on his KFest session.  (to be continued)