HG Safari: Safari Park

Alizarine Goldflake: what does it take to get a sim here?

Wizard Gynoid: a very big ship

We still do not know what Mal Burns was doing in that garden, and perhaps it's just as well. I'm certainly not going to be the one to ask him, he is a TV personality and we all know what they are like...

Mal Burns

It was a tough night for safarying; we lost Pathfinder Lester before we'd even begun. But Ferd Fredrix showed up in this amazing avatar, apparently an Autocad freebie, which we all loved. And thanks to Mercalia Beck, we have a new Clubhouse friend, a chatty crocodile, who you are welcome to go and feed. He's on the patio.

Our first destination, the Jurrasic Park of Sarah Kline and Ada Massenberg, should have been a walk in the park since it's right here on OSGrid and is on a Var region, which theoretically should have been able to take the strain of a mere 20 avatars, and they were expecting our visit. Strangely, the lag was palpable, the brilliant and funny builds failed to load, people were frozen or found themselves at 1,1,1 coordinates. Tp'ing to other parts of the region helped a bit, but for many it was just too eye-watering.

Some struggled even to jump at all.
Cherry Manga: trying trying
Cherry Manga: ok doesn't work
Cherry Manga: don't lose time with me and enjoy the safari
Thirza Ember: this is not wasted time. This is the point of the safari. to help people make hypergridding work for them
She went to LBSA Plaza. Landmarks are great, sure, but your Map is your bestest friend. Everyone wants to make hypergridding better with a script, or a HUD, or a gate, but in the end it's about you and your map, being aware of your surroundings, and figuring out strategies to get from A to B, like jumping to the Default region of a grid when the all else fails.
Thirza Ember: put this in your map so you can see the region in your map: "Ada and Sarahs Jurrasic Park" then hit Search - it helps sometimes
Cherry Manga: I'm there after a crash, landed on a brontausaurus
Hypergridding is voodoo. Your juju is your perseverence, and maybe helping someone else stick with it is the best fun of all. People go quiet and we can't always tell if they are struggling, or just busy having fun. Not everyone experienced Jurassic Lag. Look at Fuschia, who found King Kong and is guaranteed a week of charmed life.

It's like the Via Francigena.
After the collapse of the Roman Empire, much of Europe was engulfed in a hungry, muddy, fighty period called the Dark Ages. They weren't cavemen or anything, there was still life and intellectual thought going on in Europe, and people who had the traveling bug still went exploring. The pilgrimage was your best excuse for leaving home and seeing the world, but getting to Rome was a tough proposition; the old Roman roads and cities were worn out or gone. Pilgrims got lost in marshes, on freezing mountain passes, killed or enslaved by brigands, or completely lost in the long journey South from places like Denmark and Cumbria, and back again. But gradually, the random trackways consolidated into a much more reliable route, and hospitality and security (even ancient credit cards!) trade and communication eased the traveler's lot, as documented by Sigeric the Serious in the 900s and in this pretty cool blog in 2011.
Medieval meanderings seem an appropriate metaphor for Safari. We sally out hopeful into the semi-unknown. Not all of us make it back. Anyone who wants help has only to ask. We have Sara fari back at the clubhouse always ready to get you back in touch with the group, so there's no reason to miss out even at a later stage in the event.
There are so many opportunities in Open Sim, and the period of being a hypergridding noob is really quite short, if you give it a chance. This platform is growing larger, more stable, with more lovely free content every day. Can you really afford to be an SL stay-at-home?

Speaking of opportunities, our last official destination of the trip was TanGLe grid, that rare thing, a commercial grid with its own currency but open to hypergridding, where Isambard Kingdom Brunel (no relation) organizes excellent Expos on - you've guessed it - Expo Island. Look for him in InWorldz and SL and OSGrid as Peter Veliz, if you would like to get involved with a show. About half the original group was still with us at this point, and probably 80% had crashed and had to re-make the trip from OSGrid back to TanGLe, but nobody seemed to mind too much, it's all experience.

We were there for the last night of the Fashion Expo, (next up is Air and Space!) and everyone took the opportunity to admire the underwear. Although some of us might not need it.