2012 WBC Day 9 Summary

The last Sunday of WBC is getaway day. The game schedule is rather light with only a handful of heats and some finals in the morning and nothing scheduled to start after 12am. For those of us from Canada this is a good things since we have 12ish hours on the road after the hassle of packing up the room and checking out of the hotel. The drive back isn't any different from the drive down at first glance but there are a few factors that make it worse:

• Pounder (driver of the car) is more likely to have had regular sleep prior to the ride down as opposed to the ride back (mostly thanks to super late night Waffle House/games). Personally I get more rest at WBC than I do in a regular work week since I'm able to just sleep in a couple days when I can't do that normally because I have to wake up in the stupid morning for work.
• The ride down is filled with anticipation for the coming week. What games will we focus on? What will we win? What WBC friends will be around this year? Will I ever get onion free hashbrowns at the Waffle House? The ride back is filled with anticipation for fixing a week's worth of problems at work. Lamenting about misplays that cost games. Wondering how I managed to go another year without playing a crayon rails game.
• Waiting at the end of the trip to Lancaster? Texas Road House and a big steak. Waiting in Toronto? All the no-food I left behind 9 days earlier. 
• Waking up super early before WBC is feasible and results in getting into Lancaster while the sun is still up. Waking up super early after a week of hardcore gaming? Not going to happen. The sun is long gone by the time the ride finishes.
• All of the above is worse for Pounder and Robb since they get the ride from Toronto to Waterloo after I've already gotten home.

Now, in 2008 I made the Puerto Rico finals so we didn't leave Lancaster until after 2pm. In 2009 Pounder made the Puerto Rico finals with a similarly disasterous late start to the trip. Since then we haven't played PR. I'm actually not sure I'd really play anything with a final Sunday morning anymore. I understand why these events exist because a lot of people who go to WBC are a couple hours drive away. But for us it's pretty terrible.

At any rate, we didn't get up to play games on Sunday. We barely got up in time for checkout at 11 as it was. We went to Miller's for a big buffet meal before the trip. Robb had stayed up all night playing werewolf so it fell to me to navigate our way home. We got here so I guess it worked out. I did cheat and use Robb's trick of only taking highways divisible by 15 like 281.

After about 5 hours or so we stopped for food at an Appleby's which featured multiple people having birthday celebrations. Happy happy birthday! *dance a little in your seat*

A brief stop at the duty free shop followed by a 2 hour wait at the border and eventually we were free and clear. Another successful WBC! This time with no car malfunctions or anything!