I spent quite a bit of time preparing for Wednesday’s expedition. I had hoped to lead an adventure party further into the northern sims of Sansara, nine sims in all. The plan was to begin at 10am, but I decided to leave early to take a closer look Darkwood, because I hadn’t really gotten a proper look when we were through there the other day.

I landed at Amulius Lioncourt-Forge and Weap and immediately found lovely community with Darkwood Cathedral, elven gardens and even a smugglers den. I spent quite a bit of time just wandering around on my trusty slug, who I’ve named “Arrow”. Along the way I met several avs who seemed to be invloved in the elven-avatarian way of life. I also noticed that in this lovely community there are spots where you can get killed, so a sense of danger added to the adventure.

Kurt arrived just as I was entering Ahern to begin the day’s expedition. Kurt looked great, and I gave him a backpack and a slug. I thought Kurt might find the slug a rather silly way to travel but he took to it right away, and we travelled together into the Ahern Welcome Area. For awhile we hovered about the crowd of noobs and WA regulars, but Kurt thought it would be fun to descend into the crowd and get a closer look. In the past, when I’ve worn my Dorothy outfit I was overrun by sex crazed fiends, but Kurt’s appearance seemed to have a dampening effect on all of that. Hehe.

After a goodly time in Ahern, we made our south throught the Morris part of the Welcome Area and deeper into Oak Grove. Morris is where the WA’s sandbox is and Oak Grove is one of the growing number of more or less forgettable sims with themes that are lost in time. And speaking of forgettable, from there we journeyed east into Murray and Smith. Both of the sims are substantially covered in water, a lake, but so barren of theme we spent some time journeying underwater. And, alas, that was where both Kurt and I decided to take a break for lunch.

Kurt was not able to return after lunch. So, I headed on alone, still in my Dorothy outfit riding my trusty Arrow. Oh, Kurt was really impressed with the good ride that the funny looking slugs provide; at one point we took the slugs up to full gallop and Kurt was truly a sight to see — scarey black werewolf racing across the terrain on a plump, four-eye slug!! Anyway, I continued the journey north from Murray into Rizal. The Rizal sim had a game theme with it’s Rizal Games Stadium, a Hedge Maze, sandbox and a place to rent bumper boats.

I doubt that I’ll ever return to Oak Grove, Murray, Smith or Rizal but as I headed north into Lusk, I found a much more interesting sim. I entered Lusk through Lusk Estates, a sort of an early stage SL planned community. The Lusk Estate was cute and I was enjoying myself exploring until one of the truths of SL confronted me. What I mean is, in SL, the best laid plans for a community are usually doomed due to a lack of covenants or enforcement of covenants. On the edge of the Lusk Estates, a land owner constructed a structure that was marginally creative and but completely out of context with the theme of the Estates. The structure is a really an insult when considering work of those who built the Estates.

It would be presumptuous for me to say that the monstrosity caused an end to progress in the Estates. If you look at the buildings and furnishings of the plots in that portion of the sim, you can make a case for yourself that the community is sort of lost in time. I can speak to the sense of hopelessness that overtakes some people when they have a self-centered neighbor who shows no consideration for others in the community. NTL, this is SL and it happens alot. [End of sermon]

Lusk is really divided into two regions, the Luskwood Estates and on the other side of a nicely built and forested hill, a colony for furries. I found the colony to be consistant in it’s theme and was delighted to discovered, the Luskwood club for furries. At point, the adventure party’s premier furry, Tea, joined me and before we changed into furries ourselves we snapped a photo aboard our handsome steeds.

After running around in our furry outfits for awhile, Tea and I said goodbye and I returned to the real world. When I returned to SL later in the day, I chatted with Ima Flannagan about auctioning myself off in the Toby’s Juke Joint “Female Auction”. I got Ima’s assurance that she was in the auction as well, so I signed up. That night, WT was a bit surprised at my rash behavior, well, sort of shocked. We went shopping together and later made the rounds to our favorite clubs. I’ve stopped discussing the coming Spring and Summer with him, it just frustrates him and makes me unhappy.