End of an Era

Sometimes, things come at you very quickly. This summer has been one of those times for me. My 84-year-old mother has had some major life changes this summer, and as we were planning to move next spring anyway, my wife and I have decided to sell our home and move to Wilsonville, very close to where my mother's retirement community is. For those of you not familiar with the Portland Metro area, Wilsonville is as far south as it gets. While it is served by the major arterial in the area (I-5), traffic in the area is notoriously bad as it's the only real way to cross the Willamette river in the area.

In addition, because of the recent insanity in the lending market and it's effect on the housing market, we have decided to sell Right Now. This means that the house has to become showable within about two weeks, and we hope to sell by the end of October. After that, we are looking at a collapsing housing market in the traditionally slow part of the year, and we would almost certainly pull our home off of the market until next spring with no guarantee that we will be able to even get a mortgage at that time.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank our Glorious Leader, GWB, for his brilliant economic strategy of borrowing vast sums of money to finance his business interests in "rebuilding" Iraq. The current crazy market is a direct result of nearly a trillion dollars of taxpayer money thrown into an Islamic civil war that we never needed to start. At least Gonzales resigned today, too bad Bush and Cheney didn't make it a trifecta. But let's talk about me...

Because our group has had such difficulty attracting attendees for sessions on the periphery of the city, it is with great sadness that I have to announce that I am unlikely to host more than one more Tuesday night session, at least in the current rotation. I have been hosting regularly for something like 10 years, and I will miss it quite a bit.

I have no plans to get rid of many more games in collection (Tide of Iron and Age of Empires 3 excepted), as I expect to move closer to the city core in a few years when my mother no longer needs someone nearby. I also plan to continue attending Tuesday sessions, although I'm likely to go not much further north than Tigard on a regular basis. I have some fear that as the one person hosting in relatively central location with a decent game library that my departure will have a detrimental effect on Rip City Gamers. However, there is no question that making this move will ensure that my mother will be able to avoid an assisted living situation for at least a few years.

I will still continue to host an annual eurogaming retreat at Sunriver in the late spring, as well as WBC West in late August. WBC-West in particular was a very satisfying experience, and I'm hoping that I can set up a good gaming room in whatever house we end up living in. However, our target neighborhood has very low inventory right now so I may not have a lot of choices.

Thanks to the members of Rip City Gamers for their patience and understanding during the coming weeks, and I hope that we can find a regular site for gaming that will provide both a central location and a good library of games.