My Fighters Blog: OUCH, Right In My Soul!

 

It's EVO Time! and IM NOT THERE!!

    I wrote an entire entry last week about how excited I was for EVO. I had hoped my next blog post would be my stories of success and a drop of all the pictures I got with my crew; perhaps some selfies with my favorite players. But apparently it was not meant to be.

    I worked a normal shift on Thursday. Up at 6 am, bowl of Apple Jacks, and off to work. I knew that to make my flight, i had to leave home about 7 pm. So all day at work it was : 

10 hours until i leave for my flight.

9 hours until i leave for my flight.

I get an email - my flight has been delayed by half an hour.

Upsetting, but whatever. 9 and a half hours until i leave for my flight.

8 hours

7 hours

and so on.

When I finally left I practically skipped out the door. Its an hour and a half drive from my house to the airport in Belgrade. I checked my bag at the desk at 9 pm. Then i walked over to check the departures board. I did a double take, rubbed my eyes, thinking I must not know how to read, and look a third time. My flight, originally scheduled for departure at 10:09 was now leaving at 12:45.

This was when I started to worry. I booked a flight out of Belgrade airport on Allegiant. People who like to travel in confidence, who find things like arriving on time or having an airplane to ride, don't ride Allegiant. They take better, faster means of travel, like Southwest Airline, or a donkey. I had already been burned by Allegiant Air, and I got that disturbing sense of foreboding that comes with the knowledge you might be about to witness a disaster.

At that point I had to check in with the crew. Not only was I going to be late, I was going to be so late I would have to consider skipping my morning Tekken match.. The crew, having basic knowledge of American travel, had already arrived by other methods. They were comfortably set up in the room and already practicing. They told me what I already suspected: I was an idiot for putting an important trip in the hands of Allegiant air, and I get what I deserve for living in rural Montana.

A Quick google and some simple division tells us that Allegiant has 80 flights that are delayed or cancelled EVERY SINGLE DAY

After that I tried napping, thinking perhaps if I slept now I could still make my morning matches. I actually did manage to fall asleep against one wall, propped up on my stick bag like a pillow. When I awoke, I found more good news, plane was another half hour behind. I'd already been waiting at the airport for two and a half hours. Flight's new arrival time - 1:15 am.

Around this time, I was trying to make peace with the fact I wouldn't be making my morning match. Half the country away, a tech company I've never heard of started their nightly software update. Within an hour, this unknown fart of a company would cripple international infrastructure.

It was around 1:45 when the copilot made an announcement that there was some sort of trouble with software and we cant board yet. Being Allegiant though, they let us know how much we meant as customers - we dont know if were going to take off. we dont know if the flight is cancelled. we dont know if there will be a flight for you to take tomorrow. if you leave, you are not entitled to a refund.

At 3:00 (thats 0300 - 6 hours since I parked outside) the pilot made the announcement that something called Kr0wdStryK3 had forced an update and travel all over america has been grounded. we dont know if there will be a flight tomorrow, probably not.

Travel was disrupted across the globe. It takes a big BIG event to cause problems that big. In my lifetime all i can think of are Covid, and 9/11. We're talking once every few decades type of travel disruption.

I dont travel often, maybe twice a year. and that once-a-decade event happened minutes before my ultra-delayed flight came in.

If Allegiant was a competent, reliable company, I'd be at EVO. If CrowdStrike, a company I didn't know existed, had been a competent, reliable company, I'd be at EVO. The cascade of bad-luck-horseshit that had to happen to lead to me missing out on EVO has left me stunned and oh so bitter.

All my friends and family are sympathetic of course, they offer their condolences and they are sincere. But they really don't know how deep it cuts. It's not like I missed a vacation, it's more like a holiday got cancelled. Imagine a Hindu acquaintance tells you how upset he is because Navratri was cancelled. You feel bad sure, your friend is clearly upset, but you don't really know what Navratri is, and you can't understand how much it means to him. (Its a celebration of their goddess Gurga, and it involves alot of dancing)

I was going to give one of these to each of the people that eliminated me from the tournament. No idea what to do with them now.

I'll remember Friday July 19th as one of the worst days of my life. I was up waiting for the damn plane all night, but managed to get a few hours nap in  that morning. The rest of that day was spent feeling like my heart had been carved out. I was so tired and miserable that it physically hurt. If you've ever had your heart broken, you know the feeling.

Writing this has been therapeutic. I've been avoiding watching the stream, I'm afraid it will just make me more upset. But my crew played well, and good luck to everyone still in it!

The Worst Ever Way to Wake Up

     Previously in this blog, I have mentioned my two dogs. One is named Penny, (who gets her name from The Big Bang Theory) and the other is Dude. (See my previous entry on my eternal fascination with The Big Lebowski) I do not change the names of my pets in these blogs because dogs seem to be much less likely to complain about being mentioned online, and infinitely less litigious.

    Penny is a Border Collie - Griffon cross. She weighs maybe 45 pounds and is a decent sized pup. Dude is a Chiwienie. (chihuahua-wiener dog cross however you spell that word) He weighs maybe 5 pounds, and he is Princess Consuela Bananahammock's favorite thing in the world. (Names of humans have been altered to protect those who claim to be innocent)

    I never thought I would like having a small dog. They always seemed like bossy, yippy little things. (Don't get me wrong, Dude is both bossy and yippy) But what I didn't expect, is that, in the end, they are still dogs. They love you with all their heart, they are loyal, and they act as if nothing could ever make their day more than to greet you at the door, tail wagging like mad.

My favorite picture of Dude. As you can see, he's calm, cool, and collected.

    Since Dude is so perfectly travel-sized, we do just that. We travel with him. I am actually writing this from an Air B&B in sunny California. Dude has traveled with us several times without issue, but this particular trip - issue.

    We arrived in LA after a long day spent doing nothing but travelling. We hadn't packed any food for the Dude, intending to just buy some of his usual fare when we arrived at our destination. However, we arrived late in the evening, and as it turned out, the nearest place that was open did not have his usual brand of dog food.

    As you may have experienced, dogs do not adjust well to new diets. The digestive system of a dog baffles me. A dog can tear into a garbage bag that has been sitting in the sun for a week and be perfectly fine. But switch a dog from Iams to Purina and it become more like a perfect storm.

We've all known a dog like this.

    So my little dog Dude got a small bowl of a brand new dog food. He ate it up, and we all went to sleep, perfect storm a-brewing.

    When we are traveling, Dude usually sleeps in bed with us. At home, he's got a extra puffy rug on Princess Consuela's side of the bed that he sleeps on, but we don't bring it with on trips, so he just sleeps on the bed.

    This morning, early (and I mean early) I awoke quite suddenly to the sound of violent diarrhea. It was dog diarrhea, and it was happening ON MY PILLOW INCHES FROM MY FACE! 

    I do believe that is the fastest I have ever gone from dead asleep to wide awake in my life. I let loose a guttural yell-scream that is a completely involuntary sound. It's just the sound you make when you wake up because your wife's purse-dog is taking a dump on the pillow you are using.

    Luckily, I got the full sympathy of Princess Consuela, who immediately woke to the wild howling I was doing. She had the outstanding self-control to contain her laughter until after the dog had been punished and the mess cleaned.

    But then the laughing and the jokes started. And she kept it up for easily an hour. It's the hardest she has laughed since I walked in with my dyed facial hair. (see previous posts for that wonderful story) But after maybe an hour and a half of laughing at me (now probably 5 am) she was able to settle into a hearty chuckle, and we fell back asleep - on all fresh linens mind you.