27. Describe the most unusual circumstance or location in which you have gamed.
First week of January 1995. I’m moving from the San Francisco Bay Area to Arcata in Northern California to start grad school at Humboldt State University. My future husband Edmund, my friend Paul and I moved my furniture and now we’re on the return drive, six or more hours to the Bay Area, so Paul can go home and Edmund and I can clean my apartment in the hope of getting the security deposit back (spoiler alert: it never works.) It’s the middle of the night, very dark somewhere between Leggett and Laytonville, and it’s pouring rain.
I drive a 1991 Volkswagen Golf, a car I love for its lovely handling but which is actually a lemon. I bought it as a used demo from a dealership and it has an intermittent ghost problem in the electrical system. Several times it has been pronounced “fixed” only to recur later as a short-circuit.
The rain seems to be a factor, right now, and the car loses all electrical power. We can’t get it to revive. We’re stranded on a two-lane highway, dark, windy and wet, late at night. We have no cell phones and if we did, there would be no signal so we can only hope someone will drive by and stop.
What else are you going to do? Edmund ran a superhero game for us, one of those where some people mysteriously start getting powers all at once and for the first time.
(If you’re wondering, that was only the beginning of our adventures that night but we were left with plenty of stories and strengthened friendships!)
The Reef 