BRING THEM VICTORY OR BRING THEM DEATH

The mighty Imperial Fists march to war this weekend, resplendant in their new colour scheme. Led by Forgemaster Dr. Octavius, this brave band of men, with their allies the Mantis Warriors (who are much more dubious and much less glorious) will attempt to destroy the alien menace. How many will return? Will any? Find out next week, and wish them good luck and Godspeed!

Can I put those points into shooting please?

As most of you know, I've spent my weekends being a terrible tourist here in California. However, rather than spend my weekday evenings like a terrible business traveller getting drunk in my hotel room/at the hotel bar, I've been pootling down to the local Games Workshop at Stoneridge Mall in Pleasanton. By pure coincidence, this is a five minute walk from my hotel. The staff there are a great bunch of guys, with manager Greg, and Eric, Kev and Chase. Basically, all GW's around the world are pretty much the same, same layout, same stock, same kind of people frequenting them, same quotes being bandied about. The only difference is the accents. Or as Eric put it (referring to the staff's love of Monty Python and Eddie Izzard), "It's either British accents or bad British accents".

Anyway, as it turns out, staff member Kev, who I got on really well with, is a former US Marine. Also, one of his roles was as rifle and pistol instructor. On hearing that I'd never fired a hand gun, he offered to take me to the local range and "Teach me how to shoot like a marine". How could I pass that up?


So we went to 'TargetMasters' (wow, the Transformers references are coming almost one a post) shooting range in Milpitas and Kev picked a .357 Magnum (yes, the Dirty Harry one) and off we went. Apparently I did pretty good for a beginner.



It was all very GURPS - how can I up my gun skill? You mean I can't live in a skip filled with guns? Ooh, tenuous method that's allowed! Now I know what it's like being Bob's character in an RPG.

Boys vs. Robot

My latest purchase from GW - a Space Marine Scout squad, led by Sergeant Telion, equipped with Camo Cloaks and Bolt Guns. I've modified the original sniper rifles to look like Bolter/Assault Rifles with Suppressors. These chaps are going to be Imperial Fists, but with a reversed colour scheme of Carbon Black body armour with very small amounts of yellow trim. Sergeant Telephone has had all his Ultramarines markings removed and will be painted as a Fist also. Might take these to the Doubles Tournament, but they come to a lot of points. But hey, the alternative was a single clanky robot with a giant death hammer. Hang on, what am I thinking?

SOCAL

So it's a bit delayed; I meant to post this over the weekend, but I was lazy. Anyway, what with some celebration or something in the States called Thanksgiving, I had four days to play with. Now, I could have just done nothing, or spent each day at the local Games Workshop, but I decided it would be much cooler to go to Los Angeles instead. It's an... interesting place. I'm glad I went, but I don't think I'd want to live there! Bit too crazy, bit too driven and a slightly warped sense of priorites. And the closer you get to the epicentre of all the weirdness, Hollywood, the stranger it all gets. This is a place where building a five story mall modelled on an Assyrian temple makes sense. As a tourist I just gawked a shook my head; much like everyone else there that wasn't local. Yes, as usual, I was a terrible tourist, but with a slightly geeky flavour - I made a point of visiting the scenes of movies I like.

Proper terrible tourism. It kinda had to be done.

This is me at Griffith Observatory, a prominent location in Rebel Without a Cause, but more importantly, it's the building Timothy Dalton's Giant Nazi Zeppelin emerges from behind in The Rocketeer.

I hunt for Replicants at the Bradbury building in Downtown LA. This was J.F. Sebastians's apartment in Blade Runner, where Roy Batty and pris hid out.

Does this need any introduction? I stand in front of Nakatomi Plaza, otherwise known as 20th Century Fox HQ.

I took I-5 down from the Bay Area to Los Angeles. This is the most direct route at five and a half hours drive, but very dull. On the way back, however, I took the scenic route up Highways 1 and 101, following the coast. The scenery from here was beautiful, and the roads were a bit more interesting than straight freeway. A little too interesting at times...

I nearly write off the Pontiac by missing the corner and putting it sideways into a ditch. I'm sure Ben would argue that would be an improvement.

And finally, I saw this in a car park in Hollywood and had to photograph it. If it doesn't immediately make sense to you, it probably never will.

Hopefully my next post will be sooner, and include more toy soldiers. Yay!

Do It With Style Or Don't Bother Doing It

Work has been pretty predictable this week, all a bit dull.

However, I have nearly finished the Tech Priest for my Imperial Fists (photos will follow as soon as he's done), I've visited some new places, and I have a new rental car!

On Saturday I climbed Mount Diablo in Contra Costa county and despite warnings of rattlesnakes, tarantulas and black widows, managed to reach the summit without being poisoned. I walked a fair bit of the way, but this being America, there was a car park at the top. The view was remarkable, being able to see the ocean and the Golden Gate Bridge on the west and the snow on the Sierras to the east. The Sacramento valley is behind me in the photo below.

Given my previous blog posts, you could be forgiven for wondering why I hadn't mentioned my hire car yet. Well, here's why, in all of it it's flat white glory, the '08 Mitubishi Gallant:

Boo! Although it did make cool tyre screching noises on the way down the foothills around Diablo. Or at least it did until I had to hurredly brake rather than hit a disgruntled looking family in an SUV.

However, today I drove back to Avis and demanded a more interesting vehicle. What I got was this, the Pontiac Solstice, a two seat sports convertable. Damn sight more fun that the Gallant, but could do with a little more power (but couldn't we all?). All the pedals are quite heavy, which I normally consider to be a good thing and visibility's nowhere near as bad as you might expect. It's a little small though, certainly compared to the Dodge Rams and Ford Excursions you see on American roads. Also , the roof mechanism is a little primitive. But then, as you may have heard, GM are a little strapped for cash at the moment.

Finally, I had such a good response to last week's war porn, I decided to photograph the following for all of you. This is a US army Nike missile battery, stationed on the US west coast to protect it from communists. Mmm... phallic. Enjoy!

P.S. A pint (or drink of your choice) for the first person to guess the geek reference (and source)in this blog post.

War Porn

Death machine manufacture was a bit slow this week, so had to remind myself what it's all about. I therefore visited Alameda Naval Air Station and their floating museum, the USS Hornet. Run by friendly and cheerful veterans of various American wars, it's an old aircraft carrier that in addition to its military duties found time to pick up the crews of Apollos 11 and 12. The best bit (for the eternal child in me) was getting to ride the aircraft elevators up and down.

I know Ben prefers to keep it to one picture per blog post, but since Sam's hat wish list crashed my computer, I have no compunction in posting the following:



The USS Hornet moored at Alameda in the East Bay.



Douglas A-4 Skyhawk in Soviet colours, used for Agressor training. Just like Jester and Viper's jets.



Apollo and Gemini capsules. Cold War rather than proper war.

Everyone gets shouted at by ex-sailors before the lift begins. The heliopter behind us provides a helpful hint of here we're going.

You're still dangerous, but..... Wow, that thing's cool.

Oh, and I can't believe no-one blogged about our pub quiz team fan club!

Geeks Abroad

'Twas my birthday last week and I don't normally make a big thing of it, but was very pleasantly surprised when Dom and my lovely girlfriend Laura organised a surprise birthday party for me. Well I say surprise, but I was beginning to suspect someting was up when whispered mutterings were going on behind my back. The final straw was on the night itself when my housemate Jason had seemingly vanished. "Maybe he's gone to the shops to get chocolate milk?" suggested Laura. "He's been gone an awfully long time just to go to the Co-Op to get chocolate milk," I replied. "Um.... maybe the Co-Op has run out of chocolate milk and he's had to walk all the way to Tesco to get it...?" Now, anyone that knows Jason knows that he has an almost instatiable thirst for the sweet brown stuff that is Frijj chocolate milk, making this story far from impossible, but I knew someting was up and didn't push the point. As it turned out, he'd been with Dom sorting out the last bits of my party and both drinking a fair mount of beer. I had a great time and thanks to everyone who attended, thanks to Laura and Dom for organising and thanks so those that sent messages - Alan sent a very blurred video from Iceland and Dom read out a very entertaining message from Bob, Bex and Fuzz. Thanks to all of you guys and girls!

Anyway, I'm now in the States again - what can I say, America needs me.

This nearly didn't happen, following the litany of disasters that befell this trip, including, but not limited to:

• Our supplier cancelling and uncancelling the trip four days before departure, thus ensuring that nothing was booked with more than four days' notice.
• The Company cancelling my passes (apparently this is policy - every birthday as a special treat they reset your passes and stop you going to work). This necessitated meeting my boss on Sunday night in a dark car park so he could let me in to get everything I needed - inluding my flight times.
• Nat West's corporate card division failing to send me a replacement credit card, meaning I'm having to put everything on my own.
• Amex and Europcar failing to book me a car to get to Heathrow airport which meant that Laura (who is fantastic and I owe big time) had to drive me to Bristol Airport so that I could pick up a hire car to get me to Heathrow.

On the other hand, I've been in the States for five hours now, and I already have a game of Warhammer 40,000 arranged for Friday. This either makes me very powerful, or very sad. Or both.