Rough summer

Yep, that's what has been happening to me since mid-June. A double-move into a not-so-new place that needs to be given a lot of love has been keeping me not only away from EVE, but also away from family, friends, drums, my new guitar, as well as other games and sims that I like to play. Add to this the fact that Montreal is having one of its worst summers in terms of weather, and yeah... this summer blows chunks!

Things are not all gloomy though: I am just over a week away from switching jobs. I'll be leaving the Municipal Court and all its crazy denizens and going to LaSalle's Technical Services, the place where they fix trucks, snowplows and whatnot. It's also the place where we order and buy everything from pens to tons of gravel, and it's also the place where we deal with contractors for various jobs in and around the LaSalle burrough. Not only all this will be a nice chance of pace, this place happens to be just about 10 minutes BY BIKE from my house! This will rock !!!

Now, this blog is not about the inner workings of the city of Montreal, and in the midst of all the crazy stuff going on in my life I have been able to play some EVE here and there, but apart from a few Sleepers I haven't fired my guns in anger in a much too long time. I did get to see the Vagabond in action though and those Sleepers, even if they decided I was primary a few times, just didn't have a chance. Having now seen the ship's effectiveness when orbiting at optimal range, now I can't wait to apply those Barrage-hungry 220mm Vulcan IIs to some poor schmuck who happens to be red to me, or a pirate, or trespassing thru AMC-held W-space. I unfortunately don't know when this will happen, but dammit it WILL happen!

Speaking of trespassers, yesterday was one of those times when action started happening as soon as I logged in my trade alt. I barely had time to start checking buy/sell orders when over EVE-voice I start hearing about multiple battleships in one of our colony systems. The PvP started singing its sweet melody and the market was promptly forgotten as I switched characters, got into my Broadsword and started banging the war drums in Alliance chat. Of the 3-4 battleships being scouted at first, one was an Amarr Navy Apocalypse, so of course everyone who was making their way to the K-space entrance system was starting to smell Amarr blood. Unfortunately the closer we were getting to our destination, the more battleships were being called, and our tactic was to change significantly from small-gang-pwnage to pick-off-1-by-1, and suddenly I was in the wrong ship. Well, instead of bubbling at least I could perma-point whoever we picked off, but still, a HIC isn't exactly the best ship for hit-and-run tactics.

As Letrange is working on our warp-in solution on the Navy Apoc, we now knew what those jokers were doing: they were slowly but surely putting one of our POSes into reinforced. "Oh well" said POS owner, and back to current business we were as we didn't have the numbers to counter a POS assault. Let gets in position, everyone in K-space starts heading to the wormhole, but Lo and Behold, NO WORMHOLE !!! We don't know if it died of old age or because of the battleships in there, but dead it was and a new entrance had to be found. Let launched some combat probes in the hopes of maybe causing the enemy fleet to twitch, and a few minutes Let had the new door. It took some fancy flying and some BS dodging before he could actually take a peak at the other side, and when he did the news was grim: 22 jumps away. Because I was in the wrong ship I needed to stop by HQ to pick up something better for the job (a Hurricane in this instance) so 3-4 more jumps for me. When our gang arrives at the new destination I'm still 8 jumps behind, but it's now irrelevant as the enemy fleet is slowly disbanding now that the POS bash is done. It was too late for me to do anything more so off to bed I then went.

Despite the lack of actual fighting it still felt good to at least get ready for some of The PvP again, plus because of the travel time (17+25ish = 42ish jumps o_O) and initial scouting/probing we had plenty of time to think and talk about how we were going to disrupt these jokers, and it was great to have the more advanced players explaining various little things to both newcomers and other advanced players, so the evening wasn't a complete write-off. It was a bit disappointing for me because this was my second time in a row where The PvP turned into Almost The PvP. A couple days before, I was moving some ships into that same W-space system and Let and 2 others were in another system next door, sacking and pillaging Sleeper sites, when Let called a bogey Buzzard on comms, and PvE turned into PvP in about a minute. Unfortunately that was just enough time to see the Cov Ops frigate disappear into nothingness, never to be seen again. The good thing about that particular little op was that if the Buzzard pilot had been ever so slighty slower he would've been caught in my Sabre's bubble. Oh well, there will be next times...

So here's to hoping I do get to sink my guns' teeth into a player's ship as soon as I can. This summer is already pretty rough, but going PvP-less makes it even rougher...

Fly it to lose it,

o7