A Visit With the Uber Geek

Last week my academic travels took me south of the border to Baltimore, and the lair of the Uber Geek Miles Ready.  I always enjoy my trips south of the 49th parallel safety line, America would be a fine country if it wasn't for all of the Republicans (maybe the administration can build a wall of something to keep them out).

Highlights of my trip included

• Meeting Miles and his lovely wife Marybeth (no pictures, they move to fast to be recorded on camera)
• Eating Marybeth's wonderful food (including the crab above and others that Miles didn't want to eat) 
• Meeting Mile's friend Ed from York and his wife Theresa, and eating the crab that Ed didn't want to eat
• Staying at their Bond Villain lair in St Michael's MD

  

  Miles Fig tree.  I'll be interested in the AAR reports of Miles vs the local rodents and Raccoons

  
  
• A visit to the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum.  A great museum complex with charming gate staff, blow hard tour guides and a fine collection of traditional wooden boats.  The young lady at the ticket booth won Miles heart over by asking "perhaps you could check the board to see if you qualify for any of our discounts"  instead of "are you old enough to be a senior?". No pictures because it was raining.
• A game in Miles game room in his "closer to town" house, AAR with lots of pictures in a post to follow.
• A visit to the Radio control yacht racing shop close to Annapolis MD where Miles' banker friend Bob tempted him with a new form of crack.  It looked great fun, but I am already at full capacity on geek projects with my budget fully allocated.  Besides I couldn't fit a ten foot replica J class sloop in my luggage.
• Watching high finance unfold as Miles and his friend took conference calls in the front seat of Miles Tesla.  I quite enjoyed watching them as they essentially played buzzword bingo put the with the on mute.

Apparently this was a test weekend as Ed and I were the first gamers to stay overnight while MaryBeth was on site - always a stressful event.  We seemed to have passed the test, being judged as "not nearly as creepy as I expected".  I guess I'll have to try to be more creepy next time.  Of course, if Miles gamer friends are so sketchy that I was considered a safe bet, that's his look out.