| We all had a great time.
We left early on Friday, but traffic from Detroit was awful. I
don't know how many times we were stopped dead. I must have drank 10 Cokes
on the way. Dave and I rode in my company van and we were following
Carl in his monster Ford van. We met Don where I196 meets I94 in
Michigan. Don ended up waiting for us for almost 3 hours because we
made such poor progress. When we were
within 50 miles, I got a flat tire. That was fun. Read about it on the Van
page. We went straight to the preview. I could hardly believe my eyes.
After several years of auctions with very few EM's it looked like we had hit the
motherload. Price would be the only question. We were wishing we had brought
more vans or a truck. We would have to be careful.
Carl made arrangements for us to stay in a nice
hotel. We had a suite. After the preview, we checked in, went to Sears to make
my tire arrangements and then went out for a good dinner.
Back to the hotel, a few beers,
and a good night's sleep.
Picked up my van in the morning and hustled over to the
auction. Made it in plenty of time. We took lots of pictures as
you can see from this website. We were dressed up in Pete's Excellent
Home Page T-shirts that I made up Thursday night. I didn't have enough
shirts to make one for Carl. I think he was relieved, but he
won't get off the hook next time. My T-shirt
paid off when I met Mike Ostradick. We had made a few trades, but we never
met. He found me thanks to me wearing the T-shirt.
We all talked to Herb Silver for quite a long time.
It was just before the Dead Zone bodies were sold. He had already got the Twin Win
backbox. I must have talked to him for 10 minutes before I realized who he
was. It was kind of fun. Don and Herb kept talking about the Wizards and
Fireballs. They were sparring a little getting ready for the big battle. Herb
won them all, but I think it was fun for everyone.
When it was over, both vans were full. Don went home
empty. If we had got one more machine, we would have had to store it at Don's.
We got out of there very late and drove for 2 hours before crashing at a Motel 6.
The light was on for us. Woke up early and drove home. I hope we can do it
again next year. Hopefully Gene will need more space (and money!). |
