Early on in my design of Midnight on the Bayou, I decided that in order for our swamp to come alive it would have to have “real” trees (instead of just painted, 2-dimensional ones). We built some four and five-foot weathered cypresses using a guide from Monster Hunter. They came together easily enough and looked pretty good. But I’m a firm believer of moar=better! and figured a tree twice as tall would be twice as impressive.
Thanks to volume increasing relative to surface area as things grow bigger (stupid science), the couple-two-by-fours slapped together “skeletons” of our previous trees wouldn’t cut it. We needed real support for our swamp giants. Lucky for us, the talented Ben Popelar came to the rescue and built braced and reinforced tree frames.
(That looks secure. Right?)
Unlucky for us, Ben lives in south Anaheim and our escape room is located in north Brea. And the six and eight foot frames wouldn’t fit in our Nissan Murano. So Ben just tied the trees down using some fancy, Eagle Scout-level knots and sent us on our way. With the tail gate completely open. During the worst storm of 2017.
We were cautioned to go slow, so we toggled the car’s navigation for shortest possible route and crept out onto the road. The Nissan was nice enough to alert us to the fact the tail gate was open, and did so with a loud, high-pitched Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. I figured the alarm would turn off once the car’s computer realized we were too stupid or stubborn to close the gate. It didn’t. It kept going. And we couldn’t even open the window to try to baffle the sound because of the rain.
But it’s amazing what one can get used to, and after driving for a long stretch I managed to forget about the alarm. The Murano was having none of that. As soon as we stopped at a light the alarm turned off and I released all the tension I didn’t know I’d been holding. Then as soon as we started up again the alarm turned back on. There was no chance to habituate to the sound.
On the plus side, though, the shortest route took us through some really nice sections of Brea with beautiful houses and majestic old trees:
(It’s like we’re not even in California anymore! Not sure what state it feels like….just not California.)
Somehow we arrived at Red Lantern without getting pulled over, driven insane by the alarm, or having the tie-down ropes catch fire on the car’s muffler. Was it worth it?
Stay tuned and check out our very own swamp things.
