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What an awesome, full weekend.

Housatonic Range Trail

(pics)

Saturday morning came and I headed up to a portion of the Housatonic Range Trail north of Danbury. I jumped in my car and listened to a book on the way up there. I left early just in case I got lost; most of the other people going were car pooling from near Hartford. I chose not to join them in this because they were scheduled to be returning at 6pm, and I had a gaming session scheduled for 6pm in West Haven. So I ended up getting there like a half an hour or 45 minutes early.

We were scheduled to meet at the trailhead for Tory's Cave. I found the trailhead, and hung out. I busted out with M­aelstrom and checked out some of the factions I hadn't seen before. I did some pushups. I went across the road and down over the bank and filled up my purifier water bottle from the river. When 9:15 came around and they hadn't arrived, I went back to the directions and made sure I was in the right place. I was, but that didn't stop me from scouting around in the car. I came back, waited a little longer, and Kevin came up in his caravan.

Kevin, his son (who's 12 years old), Kallima, and Janice were there. There were also a couple of girls I hadn't met, and Nicki (whom I'd met one and had lunch with afterwards). While we met at the trailhead to Tory's Cave, we drove to another location less easy to describe. I took shotgun in Nicki's jeep. We parked at our destination, and embarked on a grand adventure.

The hike itself was very nice, lots of variation in the terrain, rocks, gentle and steep grades (though nothing absurd). What was awesome was the glacial caves. A bunch of rocks smacked together that you could crawl around inside. I lead the way, and poked around in there. I had great fun secreting myself in an overhanging shelf, turning off my headlamp, and startling the next person coming up (which happened to be Kallima). As I was crawling around, I crested into sunlight and found two of the other girls coming up from the outside! They wanted to go in, but wanted a guide, so I went back in and lead the way for them. Kali came with us too.

After that, we headed back to the cars. More wonderful terrain, and just a beautiful day.

We had another expedition scheduled for noonish, but didn't arrive at the local until 12:30. A couple more people trickled in, and Nicki had to leave (she had a lunch scheduled). We outfitted ourselves and headed into the woods in search of Tory's Cave.

Tory's Cave

(pics)

We walk into the woods a ways and before too long there's a depression leading into a black hole. You descend into darkness.

Actually, we had headlamps. And jackets, because it was cold in there. And wet.

Again, I lead the way. Down into a narrow passage, and before too long there's a room below me. A little bit of nimble overhang work, but I had to be careful because it was slippery down there. The rock was marble, and I think this has something to do with it. A nice big, dark cave. Everyone came down. As they were coming, I explored some more. And hid =) “Gollum,” I'd say, quietly. I got a kick out of that.

It didn't work though; Kevin's son saw me, though I tried to hide behind my hood.

There was another section of the cave that had a very large ceiling. On the wall was a small brown bat.

We hung out in there, explored. I ended up finding myself in a narrow dead-end and having to back up.

Kevin had me bring up the rear on our exit. Before too long, only Janice, Paul and I were left. Janice went ahead of Paul, and Paul went up over the lip of the overhang. Janice missed a turn and found herself at a dead end. Then she slipped on the slick rock, and found herself stuck. A little. She was able to dislodge herself. And she made it out okay. But she started to panic a little bit. When I came out, the girls were down in another cave, and I had to take a leak. I found Janice outside by herself crying a little. I touched her shoulder as I passed by, did my business in the woods, and sat down next to her.

She told me how she got so scared getting stuck in there and how it unnerved her. Before too long we were joined by the rest of the group, and we headed out. Three of the girls wanted to ride back with me (Kevin had plans to grab a bite to eat locally there, and was scheduled to arrive back in the Hartford area by 6pm), and I was happy to oblige, with the caveat that we stop at a thrift store I'd seen on the way here to check for board games =) Women generally enjoy stores like that, and I didn't hear any grumbling. Charleen actually picked up a painting. I found 221B Baker Street. I seem to recall having listened to a podcast (Adam and Nate?) that mentioned this game was good.

Once the conversation had died down, I put in some of the little non-Christian music in the car. It's primarily violin music. “Music to go to sleep by” I said as I put it in. And Charleen, who had commented that she was tired and needed a nap, shortly thereafter nodded off. I dropped the girls off (Charleen, her friend, and Kallima) and found I was hungry. I was near Ritas, and Ritas is near a Goodwill, so I killed two birds with one stone. Only it wasn't quite so easy. There was some kind of festival in town and I got lost in Detourland. I eventually found myself forced back on 84, and a couple exits later I found my way there.

Unfortunately, Rita's didn't have what I was looking for. I'd picked up a couple of Wendy's Jr. Bacon Cheeseburgers (2 bucks!) to accompany a shake from Rita's, but they were out of black cherry. I asked the girl behind the counter what she'd recommend, and she hooked me up with a watermelon & vanilla shake. It was good! Still, I think I'd've preferred black cherry.

For Sale

I got home, and I don't think I had much time to prepare. I gathered together the games I'd bring, and also brought one of my folding tables and my hex topper as well. Placed those in the back seat, and off I went!

When I arrived for the evening at a little after 6:15, Don (my erstwhile companion in board gaming) had a group of ladies together and was teaching them For Sale. Nate was also there, and he's actually shaping up to be a brain gamer.

I sat down to watch, and one of the ladies was a little intimidated by all the outhouses and space stations, and tried to beg off and hand her cards to me to take her place (there were 6 in the game already). I would have none of it, but agreed to “be on her team”.

She eventually won. I didn't have much to do with it.

Amongst the amusing things that happened was the first 15 being taken by a 20 or 22, and my “partner” bidding one of her property cards before the first of the checks were laid out.

Someone inquired as to game length, giving the impression that they thought the game was taking too long.

Thebes

When For Sale was over, we split into a couple of groups. Don suggested playing Thebes, and I told him to hold a place for me. One of the girls was holding Clue in hand, and I wasn't going to get stuck with the short end of the stick tonight if I could help it.

Indeed, they did start playing Clue. Praising myself for my foresight (this game playing is really paying off!), I joined Don, Kelly, and Nate in a game of Thebes.

Don was collecting shovels and assistants. I freaking love those shovels, and wish I got them, but (this being only my second time playing the game) I haven't yet acquired any. My special card was the car, which I tried to leverage.

It surprised me to find that the greatest distance traveled on the the board is 4. The car can reduce a 3 to 2, which is pretty sweet. And yet, 2 is often enough, especially when you're going from town to town (though it can be put to use quite a bit). Plus, you have to chose an inefficient target city to really put it to use. I guess it simply makes some of those things more appealing, and opens up your choices.

The first time I'd played I went overboard on the Congress cards, and got 7 of the 9. That was pretty sweet, and a good payoff (it's a 2:3 base VP conversion without travel time). This time, I wasn't quite so fortunate, but I did acquire 4 of them for 10vp (or a 4:5 base conversion).

I was the first one to start digging that first year. I didn't go after my strong suit, but my second strongest suit, because I wanted the “first time” VP excavation. This kind of backfired on me though, because it was Nate's strong suit, and out of pure unadulterated malice he went and did the same thing to me (that bastard!).

Nate and I often found ourselves in a conflict of interest on the board. During the game, I commented on how very little direct screwage there is in the game. Still, it's by no means multi-player solitaire.

Kelly had an overly diversified strategy going. She had a little bit of everything, and she often would do little digs with not a lot of total knowledge. Even so, I don't believe she got crushed or anything. She picked up both of the blimps. Nate and I had the cars, and Don had both shovels and assistants.

Nate had an AWESOME dig this one time, I think in purple, and he got the 7 and 6 and 4 out of it. Totally sweet and unbelievable. I believe Don ended up picking up the 5 in there.

I was able to get an early exhibition going, and that helped out. I wasn't able to score a late one though; I think Nate did.

I found myself in the enviable position of making the last move in the game. I looked around the board. The dig sites were pretty much gutted. I had a majority in two of the 5 site knowledges, and I was able to pick up a third (from Nate bwahhahaha!). This put me over the top. I think I won the game with like 55 points. Don and Nate were in the lower 50s as well (so that last move must have stolen the game from Nate in a 10 point swing), and I think Kelly had in the 40s.

Balderdash

As an afterthought, I'd brought along Balderdash. I'd gotten this for like a buck thrifting, and it was completely unused from 1983 or so.

I continue to enjoy playing this game. No exceptionally silly stuff going on here. There was one about Cher that I had a hard time Dashing. I just cracked up, because it was about Cher's final concert somewhere, but the game was produced in '83!

Nate kept on guessing my definitions. There was one near the end where everyone guessed mine. I think it was fairly close at the end, but I won it with two people guessing my definition (and one of them requesting they change their answer from what they'd originally chosen to mine! bwahahahah! Thanks Kelly!).

I also discovered that I can't spell anymore.

Nexus Ops

Let me first point out that we finished up our game of Nexus Ops at 2:30am the next morning. We'd started gaming at 6 (though I think Thebes started at 7, my first game), so that's a goodly amount of time. I'm not sure how long Nexus Ops took.

At the end of the night it was just me and Don and Lori and Nate. Lori wanted to play another game, and of course we were all up for it, so she looked at my motley selection of euros and asked me a little bit about them. I started commenting on Ark of the Covenant, China, and Samurai to name a few.

However, my enthusiasm for Nexus Ops won her over, and so we set it out. I'd played once before with Don, and so it was him and Nate vs Lori and me.

I went first, and abandoned one of my 2 mines to go and check out more territory. This was good, because I found a 2 mine outside, as well as a spider (mmmmmmm spiders).

Nate was to my left, and he began some expansionism as well, slowly moving out with his forces. Lori did the same, and before too long she and Nate got into it (lover's spat?). Don had a ton of Rubium to work with and he put it to good use. I believe he made it on to the Obelisk before me (no rock in front of me). I kicked him off though, and maintained the Obelisk for nearly the entire game.

Lori and I pretty much crushed those guys in the early game. I'm not quite sure how we accomplished that feat. She had more points than me! We had like 12 points together and they had like 2.

I'd established a nice perimeter to my right, blocking Don's forces. He decided to bring out a Rubium Dragon, however, and so I began my master plan to put my secret “Dragon Slayer (3)” mission into play. Spawn a couple of lava leapers, try and get them in there.

I made a fatal mistake, however. Freaking Don. I'd moved too early, before my Leapers were ready. I consolidated all of my guys into a single, massive stack and crushed one of his puny little stacks. Then Don did the same thing, and we kind of had a standoff. Until I backed him into a corner, and then weakened myself to (for some reason?!) put 1/3 of my force on another hex. Don leaped in and killed everyone on my stack except my 2 leapers. Bastage.

It gets worse. “Critical Objective!” he exclaims. Double bastage. What sucks about this is that even though I could have killed his dragon with my leapers, I chose not to. Well, I didn't roll high enough, which was good, because I didn't want to show my hand.

You see, I had a +2 to 2 of my guys rolls. I could have stuck those on the leapers and wasted his dragon when he attacked. But I didn't, because I didn't want to kill the stupid dragon because I wanted my 3 point special mission and I couldn't play it on his turn. So I saved those cards (and his dragon for later). Then he plays Critical Objective and the jig is up. It's my 2 leapers against his massive stack, and his dragon wastes one of them. My other guy is going to die (and I knew it before we started the round), so at the beginning of the round I do the +2 to 2 of my guys (the leapers) and am able to kill his dragon off. It sucked, but it's the best I could make of a bad situation.

Fortunately at this time, Lori had been making her own inroads, and we had 18 VP. Only 2 more when it came back around to me (like next turn after my defeat at Don's hands). So I look around the board, and find some weak stacks I can defeat for an easy 2 vp.

I used an energize card to fly my own rubium dragon over to Nate's side and took out a single human there. Neener! One vp.

On the other side, I took the 4 fungoids I'd broken from my big stack and went after one of Don's human singletons. I juiced them with another 2×+2, and killed him for the second vp and the win.

Everyone really enjoyed Nexus Ops. Nate was already a designer convert, but now I think we've got Lori turned on as well.

Where did I put my shades, anyway?

Before we left, Lori expressed an interest in trying some two player games, and so I lent them Ark of the Covenant. A nice gateway selection!

Church & Hiking

Well, I didn't get home from gaming until like 3:30am the next morning. So I slept late, and went to the second service at church (held at 11:30am). After that, I was feeling a nap. But it was such a nice day, I decided to head to Black Pond and take the trail up to the overlook up there and sling up.

I went up barefoot. Let me just say that that's not exactly a barefoot friendly trail. Lots of small, pointed rocks. It wasn't so bad going up, but coming down was another matter. Note to self: bring flip-flips or birks next time.

I got to the top and set up my hammock alongside the trail, past the overlook, and tried to take a nap. Unfortunately, it ended up a little unbalanced and the foot end was lower than the head end and so I didn't quite feel as comfortable as I should have. Without weight the thing was even; I think it was a weak tree on my foot side. I did get to lay down and rest, and the hammock is comfortable enough anyway, even thus. Before too long though, I unslung and packed up. There was a small ledge near the edge. I got onto it and laid down, staring at the water and the horizon. I felt calm enough, which is unusual of late. Usually if I put myself in a position like that (near the edge of a cliff) I feel the urge to jump off. A pull, a tingle. Frightening, eh? As I started to wonder at it's lack, it came, and I removed myself from the edge. Always under attack =p

Worship

I got home and napped a little, but 6pm came and I headed off to church. We were going to do a special night of worship. Only two hours, but I take it where I can get it.

We started in prayer, and then song. Praising the holiness of God.

Events like this are somewhat different than a normal church service. Firstly, no time is spent on “preaching”. It's all worship, public prayer, small group prayer, and (hopefully in the future) exhortation. I spent a lot of time with my eyes closed, arms upraised, singing and “speaking in the spirit”.

I'm not a fan of ambiguity. I suppose it's an attribute of INTPs in general. “Precision in communication”. “Tongues” in the bible is ambiguous terminology. During Pentacost, people spoke in languages known to man, but unknown to the speaker himself. It'd be like if I started speaking German.

There's another, more common (obviously) behaviour also referred to as “tongues” (eg Paul saying that he speaks in tongues more than them). This, I believe, is the practice of “speaking in the spirit” as I have mentioned above. It's when you speak, but the words don't make sense to you. So why do it? What is actually going on here?

The spirit of God lives in me. I mean, the maker and creator of the universe, the one who holds all existence together, has infused my soul with himself. I am here, and he is here, in greater or lesser measure. And this manifests itself in a variety of ways. One of the ways it manifests itself in me, according to my need and his will, is that he will pray through me, using me to manifest through the spoken word either the desires of my heart I could not speak myself or the desires of his heart for another.

One of the interesting aspects of this is that sometimes I will actually recognize words I speak like this. “Eloi” is one of them (meaning “My God”). There is also some word that I take to mean “the glory of God” – that glory which falls like a blanket in a locale; manifest heaviness. Often described as “the presence of God” by Christians.

While singing in worship of God, I usually close my eyes. I will often raise my hands. A lot of times my worship is somewhat interpretive, my hand gestures lifting the praise of men before God, or somehow relating to the words of the song we're singing. The songs themselves, proper worship songs in my mind anyway, are prayer. A communication with the Father of lights. Other times my hand and arm gestures mean nothing to me, but I find myself making them regardless. This can be viewed as another manifestation of the spirit. And by this I mean that God will move my hands as he sees fit, for whatever purpose he has in this dance of life.

But I will open my eyes, especially if I don't know the words to a song. I can sing along well enough if I can see the singer singing the words. I did so, and saw a wondrous sight. Our keyboard player is a beautiful young girl about 16 years of age. In the midst of this reverie, I wake to find her dancing with abandon before the Lord. It was indecent. It was beautiful. It was intimate, and public.

“This is indecent,” I say in my heart, averting my eyes – feeling drawn. Like a concubine dancing for the pleasure of her king. Yet I knew it was pleasing to the Lord, and that the only thing that made it indecent was me. The distance between us, that I should see something so forthright, and so alluring. This is only exacerbated by the fact that she is so … innocent? Young, and unscarred by the travails that life brings? Shall I turn the eyes of my heart from the worship of my creator and shift them to the beauty of his creation, acting as it should? Truly, it was the highlight of the evening.

Our youth pastor, Rob, praised her publicly. As we were closing, he said, standing not 10 feet from me, “We could do this every Sunday”. I lifted my hand and pointed at him. I was thinking the same thing. I was thinking that this is what a true church should be. Not sitting in a pew listening to some man speak scripted words he'd spoken before, hoping for a laugh or to impart some insight he'd carefully prepared, week after week. So safe. Our time of gathering, the congregation of the saints, should be full of this – of this worship, of this time of public prayer and repentance, of this intimacy with each other and the Lord. This is the model that scripture gives, that the common church in America has fallen away from. Fallen into an easier, and less life-fulfilling, mold. A safer mold. “That's what I'm talking about!” I say, trying to impart some of this thought into words another might understand. At least he knows that I agree with the sentiment just voiced.

And amongst all the good things in my weekend, the beautiful hike, the pleasure of the weather, the wonder and uniqueness of the cave experience, the struggle in Nexus Ops – this was the best part. This worship. This time before the Lord.

It was good.