Thanksgiving Trip

emilytheslayer and I went to visit garrity, space_mice (and their kids WW and MM), bluecrowlaughing and corvos down in Richmond. We had a great time. A GREAT time. We took the train! I'll make a series of posts about the trip, but I'll start with the trip to the train station.

emilytheslayer and I were up at 4 AM. We had a cab pick us up at 5:15 and got the the train station at 5:45 for our 6:15 departure. We'd had a problem with the airport not being open when we got there when we had an early flight once, so we checked South Station to see when they're open. Apparently they only close from 11:59 PM to midnight. rayan4d2, what do they do during that minute??

As we arrived at the station, I had a canvas bag full of games on my lap. The driver said "What've you got in there." I replied "Board games." I figured, here we go, he's gonna say "Like Monopoly? Risk?" and I'll reply with the usual "Yeah, like that, kinda."
However, the driver got a funny look on his face and said "Board games? Like, I'm just gonna throw this out there, but like Avalon Hill?"

I was very surprised and said "Yes!" He got so excited. He'd started playing wargames in the 70s in high school with some friends and had never met anyone outside a game store or his group of friends that knew what Avalon Hill was. I think we made his day.

We went into the train station, leaving a happy cabbie behind and used the automated kiosk to get our tickets. The web site said we could bring 3 items of checked luggage each, 2 of carry-on each and 1 personal item each. Between us, we had 7 bags, intending to check one each. Also, my main bag was a fine size for checked luggage, but too large for carry-on. After getting our tickets, I went to a Red Cap and asked where baggage check was. He told me there wasn't any. So I activated my fire imps and we defeated him... Wait, that's City of Heroes.

Since there was no checking baggage, we ended up having to carry everything on the train, but no-one even looked askance at us for having too much or the wrong size luggage. In fact, no-one checked anything, we simply got on the train. Of course, we had to stand through several announcements over the PA system that their arrivals/departures board was broken, but everything started off quite nicely.