Pencil Bandolier: Overloaded

The other day I'm walking along and thinking Well it was quite a coincidence running into her here because (1) when am I ever in the Mission and (2) she moved to Switzerland which would normally be enough to keep my whole brain occupied, but then in my peripheral vision there were luchador masks. I was walking past a thrift store and there in the window were luchador masks for sale. I didn't know you could just buy those in stores. I just kind of assumed the luchadores had to get those masks custom-made, uhm, face-tailored or something. So I had a moment's pang of regret: I'd played the WarTron game with Team Los Jefes, a luchador-themed team, but I hadn't been wearing a luchador mask the whole time.

But the regret passed: Even without the mask, I'd been one of the more dressed-up players on the game weekend. People had kept wanting to look over my gear. It wasn't just the pencil bandolier; I'd also scrounged up an identity disc (glow-in-the-dark Tron frisbee with LED lights) from MSPH 11. It added up to nigh-maximal dapperness:

Photo by Deanna Rubin

GC gets distracted from the triumph of their game by thoughts of things they wanted to do but couldn't quite pull off. Similarly, though folks seemed to like my gear, I can't help thinking about the parts that didn't work.

I'd tinkered together a way to attach glow sticks to the bandolier using pencil clips and museum wax. But when I unpacked my bag in Portland... my pencil clips weren't in the bag (other than I few that were attached to pencils; but those didn't have any museum wax). I still don't know where they are. I'm starting to suspect that they're on the floor of some luggage-inspection station at SFO airport. I had glow sticks, but just shoved them into the exterior pockets of my backpack.

There was a heat wave. Usually when I play these games I wear a long-sleeved shirt over a t-shirt. The long-sleeved shirt has pockets and I keep things in the pockets. But there was a heat wave and I didn't think I could tolerate wearing a long-sleeved shirt. So the stuff I'd normally carry in my pockets, I safety-pinned to the bandolier. That put more weight on the front of the bandolier. It was more weight than the subtle counterweight could counter. So the bandolier would keep flumping down and I'd periodically have to tug at it lest I end up sitting on pencils.

The ~~frisb~~ identity disc was cool, but it didn't play so nicely with the bandolier. The pencils would bump into the frisbee, get shoved off the bandolier. Well, they generally didn't get shoved all the way off. I checked up on them every so often. Some of them fell off, but mostly they just got shoved 2/3 off before I checked on them and rescued them. But it was more time spent fussing over pencils than I'd like, y'know?

Next time, no frisbee. Hopefully, no heat wave. And I guess if those clips don't show up under some pile of papers in my apartment soon, I should order some more.