After two ~11.5 hour flights, I arrived in Seattle. The first (Cape Town to Amsterdam) was made easy by 3 seats to be shared between myself and some fellow passenger; and the second (Amsterdam to Seattle) I got an aisle seat next to a really cool Dutch girl who had similar motives to me: eat a snack, drink some water, and sleep most of the flight. I met Andrey (@x3m4eg) and some of the Russian production crew whilst boarding that second flight, and we ended up standing together in the passport control queue for ~90 minutes after it.

Delta managed to lose my luggage, which seems the norm. Going to bed tonight and knowing that I’m probably going to have to go buy some clothes tomorrow is very annoying.

I arrived at the hotel around 6pm, and after just standing in the main desk queue in the lobby for a few minutes, I saw most of the Cloud9 guys and the Secret guys walk past. A minute later, Chuan and BurNing walked right up towards me, only to turn at the last second to talk to Josh (from DotaLand) who was standing a few metres away. After checking in, I saw a congregation of familiar faces in the hotel lobby restuarant area — and went over to greet them. From what I can remember it was ODPixel, Capitalist, Sheever, Draskyl, Zyori and Blitz. I then went up to register on the Dota 2 side, getting my badge and all that jazz, but sadly the registration crew was away for dinner — so I spoke with Bruno and Weppas instead (who were temporarily manning the desk). A short while later, registration-break ended and I got my goodies.

As you might see in the left of the picture above, there’s a chained box with all the players peripherals. Here’s a closer looks:

After registering, I went and had some dinner. It was a bit weird introducing myself to some of the people. I eventually sat at a table with LD (who I’d said hello to when I was getting some dinner), Tobi, Kotlguy, Charlie, Andrey and Cyborgmatt. Kotlguy had left by the time I got some dinner dished up, and Tobi left ~5 minutes after I sat down. A few minutes later QuantumPope joined the table to form The Triumvirate of Coaches (C9, EG and Secret in such close proximity!).

After the dining room started to close down, we joined the now quite diminished outside group and over the next beer & whiskey the party slowly faded. I came to check out my new home for the next few weeks (see below), had a bath and checked out my mails.

I’ll try get more pictures tomorrow- was quite a hectic day carrying my backpack and hand luggage. Hopefully my main luggage arrives later today.