Wargames and Railroads: ReaperCon 2018 Day 4

Day 4, worn down and pretty tired at this point, but its still the highlight of the convention for me because its auction day! We have been ending the convention with the auction for quite some time now and it gives me a chance to get up on stage. The only time I enjoy being on stage! At this auction you can only use Reaper Bucks which you earn by taking classes, playing games and in general just participating in the convention. While the issue of people pooling their resources always comes up as a sore point each year there isn't much I can do about it and when it comes right down to it everything is free anyway. There was plenty of stuff on hand as well, from the slightly used classroom paints, to miniatures and airbrushes. Overall I would say it was quite successful this year. I know the room was certainly packed to the gills. It was so big that I had problems seeing folks in the back they were so far away.

We were already packed up to slip away and head home right after the auction and so we did with a few quick good byes. It was time to hit the road for the roughly 750 mile trip home. Our goal, once again, was to get to Amarillo that night and make back to Denver early in the afternoon on Monday. That didn't quite work out as planned.

About 65 miles out of Amarillo we blew a tire, lost the whole tread. That required changing a tire, at night, on the side of 75 MPH highway. Fortunately we lost the right front tire so I was away from traffic, but its still a little nerve wracking. The Volvo C30 naturally features a small spare so I had to limp the car into Amarillo at 50 mph which took quite a while and made us a hazard on the highway to boot.

We arrived safely at the hotel, and then ran into more difficulty on Monday morning trying to get a new tire. It was Labor Day and everyone but Walmart and Firestone were closed. It took about four hours at the Firestone and we were finally back on the road, albeit with two new tires there were not the right size. It was the best that could be done and it got us home late Monday night. Yesterday we replaced all four tires. The Volvo only gets driven about 8 miles a day back and forth to work and the 45,000 mile tires only had about 20,000 miles on them. However, they were six years old and that's what made the difference on a dark night in TX!