After we left Illinois, we drove a much shorter day. I think it was only 6 hours to Dayton. I forgot about the time change though and was surprised at one point to see that I had driven longer than I thought. :) We checked into a hotel and decided upon a meeting place that was only a 10 minute walk away. Why? Because I wanted a glass of wine too. It's not fair that I have to drive all this way and not get a drink during a puzzle meet up. Besides, if it were a late night, I didn't want to drive far in the dark. On the walk over, George got a bit too close to the Canadian geese and they gave chase.
We met up with three gents from the Mechanical Puzzlers Discord and had a great time. I'm terrible at names, so I'll use their discord names here. Tacroy brought along a puzzle game he had made and gifted it to us. We played a round (sorry about the wait guys) and it was really fun.
After we finished, a couple came over and asked the name so they could get a copy. It is available on Amazon.
TheRigaletto was there as was Piker B. We played with quite a few puzzles that they brought along, but mostly just chatted. In the end, I bought a few puzzles and was gifted a new prototype that is pretty cool. It was getting late, so we all took our leave. The guys very kindly drove us back to the hotel so we didn't have to deal with those mean geese again. Which reminds me, I was told a joke. "Why are Canadians so nice? To make up for their geese." Sorry folks, I was having so much fun I forgot to take photos.
The next day we were to meet Tom Lensch at his house. I got crossed messages and thought we were to come after 1. Turns out poor Tom was up since 7! When he texted me, I was out running errands. I hurried back to the hotel picked up George and we drove the 5 minutes to Tom's house.
We spent the day enjoying our friends company, doing a bit of playing of puzzles, and just chatting away.
Of course, no visit is complete without heading to the workshop.
The next day was Saturday and we spent the day sorting through puzzles, fixing puzzles, solving puzzles. You name it. It was a puzzling day. Why all this you ask? Because on Sunday...
Tom invited us to go with him to Cincinnati to a woodworkers meeting where he was giving a talk on puzzle building. I recorded it and it is available for your viewing pleasure on my youtube channel. I will warn you, there are a few spoilers on there, and you may notice a few plants in the audience.
After we finished our visit with Tom, we then drove to Bexley where we met our friend John Rausch. Here we spent a bit of time looking at the puzzles he has on display.
He also told me of a few that I should look for in the future. He's a wealth of information and I picked his brains when I had the chance. John very nicely gave us a book on puzzle vessels that we didn't have along with a freaky optical illusion and a few of his rope puzzles. We went to a local sushi place for and early dinner and it was another way too short visit with friends.
On to Ithaca New York followed shortly there after by a visit to the Rochester area and finally on Thursday we will be in Boston. If any of you are in the area, at 2 pm on Thursday there will be a bit of a puzzle gathering at Eureka Puzzles shop. Stop by and say hello.
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