ACT ONE
FRIDAY

My mom picked me up from school early and took me to the train station, where I got on the train Cynthia and flyingcats were taking down to the RinkUnion. We giggled a lot and eventually arrived in San Diego. gremlinn drove us to the hotel (which turned out to really be a motel), but before she got in the car Cynthia made sure that gremlinn was not a psychotic killer (she made sure by asking him).

We got to the motel, where Sosiqui and Ria were hanging out; about ninety-four people had already arrived but were at a movie (Signs, 2002, directed by M. Night Shyamalan, starring Mel Gibson, musical score by James Newton Howard, cinematography by Tak Fujimoto, costumes by Ann Roth, and also featuring Lance Gilbert as Mel Gibson's uncredited stunt double), so me, flyingcats, Ria, Sosiqui, and gremlinn sat around in flyingcats' and Cynthia's room laughing and making jokes. Ria's mom called her like thirty-four times, and on the thirty-fifth time she answered the phone with "WHAT DO YOU WANT?!" in giant red bold letters. And it turned out to be Lynette.

At some point I drank a glass of water, and at a later point I drank another.

Everyone came back from the movies, so our room was soon filled with famous, Lynette, Marvin, Mia, Sarya, and Stephen, and a little bit later by ahmoacah, Faux Pas, his wife Tamara, and Sarya. The format of sitting around joking about seemed to be working, so we continued doing so with the help of the recently returned Rinkies, with Faux Pas translating RinkWorks into English for Tamara. I sat in a chair. Some other people did, too, but not in the same chair as me.

Eventually it was decided that we were hungry (those who disagreed were promptly shot). We all piled into various cars, except for famous and Sarya, who stayed behind in case more people showed up (this was really just an excuse not to get shot). Also, Ria's mom showed up and came with us, too; I guess she'd been waiting in her car for the past day or two waiting for us to get hungry.

We drove to some seafood restaurant. I was in Stephen's car; Mia rode shotgun, gremlinn sat in the back left, I sat in the back middle, and Marvin sat in the back right. We eventually got to the restaurant, although we were a little later than the other cars because Stephen turned left instead of right and ended up in Milwaukee. When we got to the restaurant, a man who apparently had just stepped out of a television commercial informed us that everything was great, and they were shoving tables together for us as we spoke. It turned out, amazingly, that he was telling the truth, so we were seated. I think the total number of people in our group turned out to be a hundred sixteen, so we needed at least three tables. I was in the corner at one end, and I could almost never hear the people at the other end, but I could kind of sometimes hear the people in the middle. I had a slice of bread, fifty-two glasses of root beer (no ice), and much of a cheeseburger ($8.45 plus 7.25%*** sales tax plus a 17% tip which the restaurant required because we were a group larger than eight people) (I am completely serious about that). People kept taking pictures, mostly Ria and Sosiqui, and I think she may even have one or two of me in a ponytail (I put one in before I got in the car because it was kind of hot and my hair has a total mass of about eighteen pounds). She has a digital camera, though, so at least they can be erased. Stephen went around at the end and wrote down what everyone had so he could tell Mousie so she would be able to write her report.

Then the check came and the total was two hundred thirty-eight dollars and something cents. I spent roughly ninety minutes figuring out how much I had to pay, and then when I realized I forgot to factor my root beer into the calculation I broke down and cried, so I just took fifteen bucks out of my pocket and hoped it would be enough. At one point I asked gremlinn to help me with it, since he's supposedly good at math, but it turns out he's a big fake. He can't multiply two numbers together if either of them has more than sixteen digits.

They didn't even give us after-dinner mints.

Then we drove back to the hotel/motel (which Stephen informed us was called a "homotel"). Mia sat shotgun again, gremlinn was in the back left, Marvin was in the back middle, and I was in the back right. We finally found a parking space; it was conveniently located near the stairs up to the room we'd all been congregating in, and as a further bonus it was not flat. This was OK, though, because neither were the homotel balconies.

When we got back we were greeted by Ticia and her husband Don. They had their baby Rose with them. Stephen jokingly asked permission to malform Rose, and Ticia playfully responded by kicking his head in. Beasty showed up; I can't remember if he was already there when we got back from eating or if she showed up later. He gave us British candy. The candy I got was a Mars Bar - a "man's candy", as he put it - except it was really just a Milky Way. We didn't have the heart to tell him, though. Faux Pas busted out his mad 733t RinkChat game, which was exceedingly simple and easy to follow, just like the Pacific Ocean is exceedingly dry. My mom was coming to pick me up at ten, and he started explaining the instructions at 4:30, so I didn't have time to listen or play. Maybe tomorrow, though.

At some point Leen called Stephen, and he held the phone up to us and told us to say hi to her. We all yelled "HI LEEN", and I heard a pop on the other line, which I think was the sound of her eardrums bursting. Sam and Leen were at a horse show about six thousand miles north, so they wouldn't be here for at least a few hours. They also apparently had Dave, Brunnen-G, Ellmyruh, Jaguar, and Mousie with them, so we didn't see any of them, either. Maryam and Matthew were nowhere to be found; it is believed they flew too close to the Bermuda Triangle and are stranded in a time warp not unlike the classic episode of Rocko's Modern Life where all the young people on the cruise ship turn old and all the old people turn young. They never did explain what the middle-aged people did. That episode was great; instead of being a fifteen-minute thing (the show was a half hour and usually had two fifteen-minute things per episode), it was a full half hour split apart by the commercial break. I don't think they run that show anymore. I wish they did, though. It's a lot better than anything they play on Nickelodeon now. I'm hoping they'll at least release it on DVD. I'd love to have it, especially the first two seasons. So Maryam and Matthew hadn't shown up by the time I had to leave to go home. Maybe they've shown up by now. I left like two hours alf ago, and all sorts of things could have happened since then. Some people thought it was better to stay at the motel overnight and participate in all the fun stuff, but they're just saying that because they're bitter that they're nowhere near as cool as I am.

All of them turned out to be pretty cool, though, some a lot cooler than I expected. A lot of them were hot, and I was surprised by how tall most of them were, except Cynthia, who surprised me by how short she was. So did Mia. I was expecting Mia to be twenty or so, but she's actually nine and a half. With Ria it was the other way around: I thought she was like twelve, but she turned out to be thirty-seven. Brunnen-G was pretty cool, especially her powers of invisibility. Stephen was still hulking and psychotic, but he wasn't as big in comparison to me as I remembered him. I knew him a little when I was in sixth grade, and he towered over me, but now that I'm a big studly man Stephen's all tiny and wussy in comparison. In fact, Stephen's all tiny and wussy even in comparison to Rose. I could so take him.

Also, Cynthia hit me.

STAY TUNED TOMORROW for RinkUnion Three: A History in Three Acts (Act II), when we feature many classic episodes, including "Brunnen-G's Accent", "Brunnen-G's Name", "Brunnen-G's Hair Color", and "Brunnen-G's Accent II: The Wrath of Khan". Also, as a special bonus, we'll be airing the seventy-nine hour episode "Ellmyruh Writes Stuff Down".

-Eric Sleator
Fri 16 Aug A.D. 2002

***I have just been informed that local sales tax is now 7.75% again, rather than the 7.25% which I had thought it was at the time I performed these calculations in the restaurant. I am deeply and profoundly sorry and regretful for any inconvenience this may have caused you.