Luggage woes, adamantium claws and a return to the Bat Cave

I bet that most of us have had fun and games with public transport in the past. I'm not sure how things are for international readers, but the services in South Africa are a far cry from the if-it's-five-seconds-late-it's-unforgivable mentality of the Japanese subway system. I've heard quite a few horror stories from friends who have been horrendously delayed, robbed of their luggage or even hijacked by laser-wielding dinosaurs who want to catch the next bus ride to the lost city of Atlantis.

Personally, I've not suffered too heavily in this regard (except when it comes to the dinosaurs. Stupid bloody dinosaurs), but that changed a couple of days ago when I hitched a quick ride from Grahamstown to Pretoria via our delightful domestic bus system. A quick overview of what happened: both my luggage and I hopped onto a bus in Grahamstown. But while I was safely deposited in Pretoria about fourteen hours later, my luggage was whisked away by an extremely localised space-time rip that tore it out of the nice and safe underbelly of my transport and deposited it somewhere in Midrand. And although everybody seemed to know that it was in Midrand (and, indeed, could confirm its presence with one of a multitude of buses that hopped between Midrand and Pretoria every day), nobody seemed able to retrieve the luggage and put it into my grubby little paws until a good 24 hours later, following several broken promises from the transport crew and a few chewed-off ears at 6:30am.

A picture of my missing ba- OH WAIT, I LEFT MY CAMERA IN MY LUGGAGE.

Fortunately, my renewed presence at the Bat Cave has more than compensated for this momentary setback. The Bat Cave, as you may recall, is something of a gaming Valhalla – a gathering spot for geeks to achieve something of a critical mass and explode in a shower of awesomeness.

Plastic controllers and bright colours = instant rock band success.

There were three reasons that I arrived on this particular: one, it was a long weekend. This begs people of my ilk to get together for major videogaming sessions (which, ironically, never seemed to consist of the stuff I actually wanted to play. Screw you guys, I'd do anything to play Lode Runner on the Xbox).

The second reason was the cinema debut of X-men Origins: Wolverine. This needs little explanation: the guy is a freakin' cultural icon.

A freakin' cultural icon.

Lastly, I had a score to settle with the local division of Yanky's – more specifically, I needed to finally confront one of their Monster Burgers for myself. My encounter was framed by a challenge that I levelled at a fellow geek: we had to race to see who could eat a whole burger first. Preferably without dying from gastrointestinal complications in the process.

It's bigger than my laptop. Oh dear.

I lost. Horribly. And now I have a bit of a tummyache. I'm still trying to figure out how that much physical burger can fit into such a scrawny frame as my opponent's, but admittedly the overpowering sensation of mass indigestion is blurring my cognitive processes for the time being.

This blog post is dedicated to Simon “you-never-mention-me-in-your-blogs” Croudace.