Styker's Spring LAN

While the site was down last weekend a few of the fine folks at Old Man Mafia got together for a LAN in beautiful Indianapolis, IN. 3-4 times a year Stryker927 will open his home to a bunch of smart a$$ guys to come take over his domain for a weekend of shenanigans. For a time only local guys would get together for a little Halo2 on Friday night. Now with the growth of 2old2play.com and the Old Man Mafia, along with the development of friendships and bonds that go with that, we have folks from all over joining us for a weekend long event.

This time around we had Stryker (of course), myself, CMA, GrimReaperBTB, Webmonkee, MTK005, Castlemonser, Darby, Sum1btr, JRock, Trinity71, and Mrs. JRock, Mrs. Castle and Mrs. Stryker. Also DKHodz made a brief “special guest appearance” on Thursday night. It wasn’t the biggest crowd we’ve had so far but this group definitely is the most diverse in terms of geography we’ve ever seen attend a “local” LAN. New Jersey, Arkansas, Cleveland, Toledo, Washington D.C. and Chicago were all represented here. It amazes me to some degree still that people would be willing to drive 10+ hours or spend the money to fly in to attend an event like this. I’m uber-grateful that each and every person took the time and spent the $ to do so. Whenever folks come from some distance I always feel a sense of responsibility/dread that people have a good time. I think in this case everyone did.

The weekend actually started on Thursday with a few early arrivals. Mrs. Stryker made lasagna for dinner and we dug in like a bad Garfield cartoon strip. Grim, Castle and the Mrs., and CMA all came in Thursday night and we had a chance to make some formal introductions at that time. I have had a chance to attend several LANs at this point so I had already met each of them before. Seeing them again is like seeing a favorite cousin once again though. Grim and CMA stayed with Stryker that night and Castle and his wife stayed with Trinity and me at our house. The Castle’s make excellent house guests, not even complaining that I only had a tiny double bed for them to share. Of course maybe he didn’t mind that so much. ;)

The next morning we all headed to The Original Pancake House for some breakfast. Stryker was a little leery of such a “high falootin’” place for breakfast but once I ordered the Apple Pancakes everyone quickly saw why it is a favorite of mine. Afterward we headed back to my place to load up a few TVs and then were off to Stryker’s to set up. Next was lunch at Buffalo Wild Wings were we met MTK, JRock and Mrs. JRock. We told JRO that after lunch we were planning a “field trip” to Fry’s Electronics and you would have thought he was going to the Holy Land. We met Monkee at Fry’s and then headed back to Stryker’s to start getting our game on.

I guess before I get into a bunch of detail about every waking moment of the weekend maybe I should just give some of my highlights. Stryker has a much more detailed write up at his blog (http://www.2old2play.com/Blog/Stryker927 ) complete with tons of pics.

My Highlights:

I could probably go on for a while but I’m supposed to be working not bloging. I will say that if you ever get a chance to attend a LAN event hosted by one of the 2o2p folks, don’t pass it up. I’ve been to several now and they never disappoint. Thanks once again to the people who traveled so far to get here. I hope everyone had fun and will come back again. I’ve included a few pics below that weren’t in Stryker’s blog as well.