Meeting Elly. Wow. I don't know what was more shocking: the dangerously low-cut tops she kept wearing or how she kept hitting on every male present and Stephen, too. However, Elly-TEMPTRESS's wiles weren't working on Stephen as he took every opportunity to slip off with litte Miss You-Know-Who.

I finally got to meet Clan B4K3R. Everyone in Ticia's family looked much younger than they really are. Ticia is about 23, I think, but she looks like she's 18. Mia is 18, but looks 12. Sarya was there, but she looked like a fertilized egg. THAT'S HOW YOUNG THEY LOOK. Ticia and Don didn't stay at the hotel but were out camping, which meant that young innocent sister Mia got to share a hotel room with Rivikah.

Rivikah was fun to meet. She spent the entire weekend building a mobile and managed to pass herself off as American quite convincingly. I don't think she ended a single sentence with the word "eh?" However, she gave herself away at The Flume when she went on a tirade about American money and how it looked all the same. I swear, I never heard anyone curse as much as that lil' valedictorian. Even her hotel roommate Mia was turning beet red. Anyway, I managed to convince her that a twenty dollar bill was worth twice as much as the one-dollar bills and managed to profit from the whole experience. Matthew volunteered to show us some crazy-colored British money but didn't have any as I had picked his pocket a few minutes earlier.

Speaking of Matthew, Ayako was probably the only Rinky that looked exactly how I pictured. That Sam guy looks sort of like those photos he's posted of himself except he actually has a jawline. In all of his photos, Sam looks like a big, roundish, goofy-looking guy. In real life, he's a big, angular, goofy-looking guy.

Leen looks nothing like her pictures. If, in fact, the woman who was at RinkUnion II was Leen.

Other people who didn't look like what they were supposed to look like:

I expected Stephen to be a scrawny bespectacled teenager. Maybe five-foot-five. I was going to go up to him and say, "You're the Supreme Dictator? BWAH-HA-HA-HA-HA!" but it turns out he's much larger than I am, and I thought he'd punch me.

Mousie does not look like this one stuffed mouse I own. She is actually a short, balding, cigar-chomping guy named Burt. I guess you really can pretend to be anyone you want to online.

Neither Mister nor Missus Grishny looked orc-like. Their son was so CUTE CUTE CUTE. They couldn't keep Burt away from Lil' Grish even with the restraining order. In addition to being super-cute, we also found out that Lil' Grish makes an effective emergency siren.

One time in chat, we were discussing who different Rinkies would be if they were played by movie stars (or if we were movie stars or movie stars was us or something). Burt said that Issachar would be Pierce Brosnan. It turns out that Issachar IS Pierce Brosnan. I was shocked, too. I found out later that this RinkUnion's IABBBBM showing was going to be The Lawnmower Man, but Sam wisely decided to change it.

Darien and Mina showed up, bringing lots of cool board games, but then they hid them and ran away just before everyone wanted to play them. So we were forced to play some silly slapping and bottle-passing game that I messed up every single time on purpose -- a statement that I will defend to my grave. For some reason, Sam decided this was the only thing at the RinkUnion worthy of immortalizing on video tape. I shall never run for office in fear of that tape surfacing.

Back to Sam again. Wow. What a weird fellow. During the course of the first day's meeting, he cried out "DOG!", to which a good three-quarters of us responded in kind. Later, I found that he had a sheet of paper with that day's activities. Just above "Do My Robert De Niro impression," he had written "DOG! (See how well the conditioning has affected them. Break their will with Sinbad and the Seven Seas. Destroy all who resist by making them drink Moxie.)"

The second day, we all piled into two vans once we could locate Stephen and wink-wink and were off to see the aforementioned rock formation. Elly-TEMPTRESS probably did the best job of feigning interest. Sam's brother, Jake, took us all aside and said he didn't see what the big deal was either, but we should humor Sam and Leen. Both Matthew and Rivikah said we should humour them instead.

However, the Old Man in the Really Big Hill wasn't the only rock we saw there. We all went around to look at another bumpy rock that they called the Old Woman in the Really Big Hill. After that we saw the Old Boy in the Really Big Hill, the Not-So-Old Man in the Really Big Hill, and the Old Rock Formation in the Really Big Hill. New Hampshirites like rocks, I guess. "Yep, that's a rock, all right," someone said while we went looking for Stephen. I think Cynthia said it.

So then we went off to The Flume where Team H4RDC0R3 was almost arrested when a bus driver saw that we were having fun rather than dutifully walking along the trail like the other people that paid to look at trees. C'mon! There are trees everywhere in New Hampshire. Why did all these people decide to go here and pay money to look at more of them? Some people. Anyway, everyone but Team H4RDC0R3 wimped out and took a bus to see the trees and back. The REAL MEN AND WOMEN went on the Ridge Path and saw the most amazing things in the whole world that you non-REAL people missed out on. Wimps.

Anyway, we piled up and drove back to Base Camp #1, where Tamara and I said our goodbyes to everyone, and the RinkUnion was more or less over for all concerned because we had to leave.

I understand they ate dinner that night in silence, save for the weeping.