Rivendell.

‘Rivendell!’ said Frodo. ‘Very good: I will go east, and I will make for Rivendell. I will take Sam to visit the Elves; he will be delighted.’ He spoke lightly; but his heart was moved suddenly with a desire to see the house of Elrond Halfelven, and breathe the air of that deep valley where many of the Fair Folk still dwelt in peace.

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

Sid: Hang on, I have to take a picture.
Karli: Blog posting?
Sid: Yep.

For our anniversary this year, Karli and I decided to spend a few days on Bowen Island, located a brief 20 minute ferry ride west of Vancouver's Horseshoe Bay ferry terminal. We stayed at a pleasant lower-level Airbnb apartment conveniently located near Snug Cove - an Airbnb, which, to my intense satisfaction, was located more or less at the corner of Elrond and Rivendell.  

For those of you not in on the joke, we first meet the seemingly ageless Elrond Half-Elven at his home of Rivendell in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, but it's not until The Lord of the Rings that we learn his full story, and of his involvement in the first War of the Ring.

The face of Elrond was ageless, neither old nor young, though in it was written the memory of many things both glad and sorrowful. His hair was dark as the shadows of twilight, and upon it was set a circlet of silver; his eyes were grey as a clear evening, and in them was a light like the light of stars. Venerable he seemed as a king crowned with many winters, and yet hale as a tried warrior in the fulness of his strength. He was the Lord of Rivendell and mighty among both Elves and Men.

Fans of both the books or the movies will recall that it is at the Council of Elrond* that Frodo volunteers to take the ring to Mordor, though he does not know the way.

I actually spent about an hour one morning** searching through the internet for some clue as to who the fantasy fan in the Bowen Island Planning department might be, without any luck.  Whoever was responsible, I can see why you made your decision: after four days of exploring the deep valleys and dark forests of Bowen Island, it's easy to imagine stumbling across a hidden mountain fastness, surrounded by trees and waterfalls, where Men and Elves rest and take council.

- Sid

P.S. In our travels we also discovered Eowyn Lane, but I'm not certain that it's part of the official street system.

* The council is being held at the court of Elrond - as per the sign, Elrond's Court.

** I often get up earlier than Karli, and it seemed like a quiet way to pass the time while I drank my tea.

"You faded into the Long Dark."

“On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.”  

― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

In spite of preparing to move to a new apartment last month, I managed to find time to complete the Winter's Embrace gaming challenge in The Long Dark by surviving for 25 days, but couldn't dedicate the time to earn the achievement badge for eating 25 bags of Ketchup Chips and 25 bottles of Maple Syrup before the time ran out.

Since then, I've taken the occasional break from unpacking to try playing The Long Dark at the aptly named Interloper level, the most challenging option in terms of game play: the player starts with a minimal set of resources, and must craft almost all the essential tools for continued survival instead of salvaging them from the wreckage of civilization, with the environment becoming progressively more hostile as time goes on.

To illustrate the relative level of difficulty, until now I've only played at the second level, the Voyageur setting.  As a Voyageur, my longest run in the game has been close to 180 days. At the Interloper setting, I have yet to survive longer than eight days, and there have been lots of attempts where I haven't even made it through the first day without dying.

It's not an accident that all the locations on Great Bear Island where you can forge knives, hatchets and arrowheads are exposed to the elements to a greater or lesser extent, which has made the simple task of equipping myself for survival a fatal one in all of the attempts to date  - when I've managed to get that far, that is.

Karli asked me how much longer this would continue to be fun, and I can see her point: part of the enjoyment of gaming is in overcoming the challenges offered by the game, and if that challenge is insurmountable, why bother? There are a couple of games in my past that I abandoned because of exactly that problem: for example, I never did manage to defeat General Deathshead in the final boss fight of Wolfenstein: The New Order, and I finally got tired of trying.  However, I haven't reached that point yet as an Interloper.

In fact, I'd actually like to see the Fallout series introduce a similarly grueling option. The Survival setting in Fallout 4 is initially demanding, but after the player levels up a few times, it becomes easier and easier to stay alive, and ultimately ends up being very similar to the standard gameplay, whereas the Interloper option in The Long Dark is unrelenting in its assault, requiring constant planning, ingenuity and determination on the part of the player as weather conditions become worse and worse, and resources more and more rare.

Eating ketchup chips was a lot easier.

- Sid

UPDATE: After 30 attempts, I managed to stay on my feet long enough to successfully complete the trip across the challenging Forlorn Muskeg map through a howling blizzard to the Old Spence Family Homestead, survive the 24 hour hypothermia attack that resulted, forge a hatchet, knife, and four arrowheads, and return to the Camp Office beside the lake in the Mystery Lake map, one of the more forgiving locations in the game. Now I can finally harvest the maple sapling required to build a survival bow - provided I can stay alive for the six days that it takes for the wood to dry out first...

 

Perseverance II: Explorers

NASA's press release for the Perseverance launch mentioned something that I’d forgotten about completely - this was the mission that would take my name to Mars, etched by electron beam onto three silicon chips along with the names of 10.9 million people.  It's both surprising and gratifying that so many people would have discovered an obscure link to an odd opportunity, and then decided that they wanted to be involved in a trip to Mars - fellow explorers, I greet you.

Just out of curiousity*, I clicked on the link from my previous posting to see if the sign-up site was still live (and to see if there were any other opportunities to add to my travel reward points).

I was pleased to see that, in an admirable demonstration of attention to detail, NASA had updated my boarding pass to say NOW BOARDING:

The joke is that. what with the current situation, this is as close as I'm going to get to travelling abroad for quite a while.  The good news is that it certainly looks like we** have seats with a view for when we make our landing.

- Sid

* No Martian rover pun intended.

** Yes, we - because Karli is coming too!