Day one - Flight time

11:21am Local Time 09/08/2005. (5:21am Dallas Time)

Currently I am headed for Dallas, or more precisely Grapevine, Texas for a once a year extravaganza of iD software orientated goodness. The flight map in the headrest in front of me reliably informs me that we are just flying over the southern tip of Ireland and that our current altitude is 40,000ft with 4508 miles of the journey remaining. Can you tell im bored already on this long flight? its -54 degrees centigrade outside right now and thats perhaps because this 777 is travelling at nearly 600mph. All pretty impressive stuff of course, but it still means I have over 8 hours left of my journey. Im about to install Q2 on this laptop to while away a few hours... In the time it took me to type that we've actually covered a further 50 miles, either im a god damned slow typer, or this thing moves fast.

18:38 Local Dallas Time 09/08/2005. (00.38 UK time)

Finally arrived at the Gaylord hotel and resort and I am now settled nicely into a very comfortable room. The flight was just fine, despite being over 10 hours, but the customs area was a nightmare. First of all it took an age to get off the plane and get to immigration. Once there, it was a further lengthy cue, before being hustled off by Immigration agents into a small side room to be interviewed. The reason? They felt I should have had a different type of visa, but after a further 20 minutes of arguments (between themselves) I Was finnaly given my green card and my passort returned.

The luggage was late coming off the plane as well, so in all I was nearly 2 hours later than planned arriving at my exit gate. Luckily, I didnt have to wait long for Blankz from iTG to show up looking for me. A short ride with him and Toss to the hotel (despite blankz having a sense of direction akin to my wife, i.e. terrible), we are finally in here. Ive phoned home (much to my wife's annoyance as its like after midnight there) and sampled the Texan beer and seen a little of the immensly impressive Gaylord Resort (ive sampled about 2%).

I was supposed to meet up with blankz and have some food, but we have lost each other in the resort, so time for me to just chill and update thise journal and grab some Simpsons on WB channel. Its about 90 degrees here right now and there are some rather nasty thunderstorms due tonite, but apart from that and the stressful airport stuff, its actually great to be here, if just a little surreal right now.

I've spotted a few "quakeconners" but no one of any real note, but the resort is starting to fill with people attending this years Quakecon. Somewhere in this huge structure is a person with a disk labelled "Q4 MP demo" I just havent found him in the 10,000 rooms yet... Only two more days to wait anyway. I am going to chill for a bit then head off for some food and finally try to find some net access and upload some early pictures.

23:00 Dallas Time (london 4:50am)

Phew, a hectic couple of hours, with food and coffee and a visit to the halls where quakecon is starting to take shape already. An incredible scale already, this promises to be huge. I managed to meet up with a few more guys and we are currently sitting in a hotel room eating pizaa with myself, Trillian, miles, blankz, niceguyed and tosspot. We are also joined by one of Wheat's old mates from 5-19.

Much merriment to be had, so for now, its sign off time from day one of the quakecon trip, ETA : -1 day.