![\"Look](\"http:\/\/2b3.analogman.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/Power-Mac-8600-300.png\")
<\/a>Look at those vibrant colors!<\/p><\/div>\n
Sitting in the warming glow of our state of the art Power Mac 8600\/300, our party is forged!\u00a0 Gathered together from the far corners of the 2bridges offices, comes a team of uber-pioneers ready to face the horrors that lie before ahead: Chris, Financier of the 2bridges wagon and dapper man about town! \u00a0James, big city lawyer famous for his unbroken string of victories and his fine, velour suits!\u00a0 Byron, blacksmith to the stars!\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure what constitutes a celebrity from ye olde pioneer times, so that may mean actual stars!\u00a0 And Alex, your unnecessarily long-winded narrator.<\/p>\n
We gather our supplies and leave on a crisp, May morning.\u00a0 About 200 feet outside of town, one of our oxen takes ill.\u00a0 I don\u2019t cotton much to mystical portents, but as far as omens go, this one seems more on the dark side.\u00a0 Out of sheer stubbornness, we set a grueling pace and leave our beast of burden\u2019s health to fate.<\/p>\n
\u00a0The Big Blue River looms in front of us, big and… blue! \u00a06 feet deep and calm as a sailor\u2019s dream!\u00a0 We caulk our wagon and set sail, joking about the mild weather.\u00a0 I may have missed a spot when sealing our vessel though, as our makeshift craft springs a leak halfway across and sinks quickly to the bottom.\u00a0 Dragging ourselves to shore, we take inventory and find that we’ve only lost a single wagon axle!\u00a0 Truly, Lady Luck smiles upon our journey.\u00a0 Take that stupid oxen omen!<\/p>\n
A few more days on the road and we hit the Big Blue River Crossing.\u00a0 Crossing is right there in the name and with only a 5 foot depth, fording this river should be a piece of cake.<\/p>\n
Smooth sailing…<\/p><\/div>\n
Oh. Well, what did we lose? Another axle? Maybe a wheel?<\/p><\/div>\n
Our tears from losing Chris to the river made this picture extra blurry<\/p><\/div>\n
We curse the demon river that stole our party leader from us, but we must press on! \u00a0On the other side, we set up camp and engage in some hunting to both relieve stress and replenish the food consigned to a watery doom. \u00a0After straight up murdering 3 bison (and wondering why we can’t make multiple trips to harvest more than 200 lbs of meat.) we continue on our journey… for an hour before James is bit by a snake.<\/p>\n
But, with brave determination, he insists we press onward despite his wound. \u00a0Lacking tact, we agree a little too quickly and he shoots us a scowl. \u00a0Minutes turn to hours, hours in to days, until we stand before another stupid river. \u00a0Chris’s loss still fresh in our minds, we fork over the 5 bucks to hop on the ferry.<\/p>\n
The gentle rocking of the flowing water must have done James some good, because as soon as we crested land, he hopped out on to the shore a fully healed man!<\/p>\n
…<\/p>\n
And then was bitten by another snake.<\/p>\n
Spare us your hunger, oh foul River God!<\/p><\/div><\/div>\n
At this point, I think he’s doing it on purpose.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
With the exception of James getting bitten two more times, the rest of our journey is almost too easy. \u00a0We hunt a few more times. \u00a0We stop and chat with some other travelers. \u00a0Due to our completely justified fear, we pay for an Indian guide to lead us across another river. \u00a0Nothing else happens to us all the way to the Dalles, where it’s just a quick and easy “avoid them rocks” mini-game and we’ve completed our journey!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/a>That was close!<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n With a final score of 3486, we don’t even come close to making it on the high score board. \u00a0I bet we could do better.<\/p>\n I hear checkers is a good game.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In this, our inaugural journey through the oiled gears and dimly glowing vacuum tubes of our technologies past, we revisit an old friend.\u00a0 This companion not only shaped our collective understanding of a very important part of American history, it also instilled a generation with a healthy fear of both snake bites and dysentery.\u00a0 This week, we roll our wagon west and test our mettle against the Oregon Trail. Sitting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2212,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[201,192],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-for-fun","category-technology"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.2bridgestech.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/oregon-trail.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5AwLi-zF","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.2bridgestech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.2bridgestech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.2bridgestech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.2bridgestech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.2bridgestech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2211"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/www.2bridgestech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2211\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2225,"href":"https:\/\/www.2bridgestech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2211\/revisions\/2225"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.2bridgestech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.2bridgestech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.2bridgestech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.2bridgestech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n