While everyone seemed to be engrossed in the existential conversation about the “real” world and the imaginary, a man walked into the room. He was of average height (insasmuch as 6' is only the beginning of “tall”, according to most conventions), and overweight, but he carried it mostly well, giving off an overall air of strength. The kind of man who gives off (unknowingly, and unintentionally) the vibe of someone you don't want to mess with, to anyone who does not know him.
He was dressed in shorts, a cut-off button-down shirt, and leather sandals, of the enclosed kind, much like hiking sandals. He also had on a bicycle helmet, with two mechanics' mirrors attached to either side (so accostomed to them was he, that he sometimes looked for them when hearing something behind him, even though he was not wearing his helmet at the time...)
Although he tried to be quiet upon entering, the fact that he was pulling in his fully-loaded bicycle while holding the door open on his own made for some scuffles and knocking noises, which attracted the attention of those sitting closest to the door. Before anyone had the forethought to offer any help, he had completed his entry, and was placing his bicycle against a wall, securing his brakes with the elastics that he had set up on his handlebar (shock cord wrapped a few times around, ends sown together and a patch of leather added to it to serve as an easy to handle tab), to serve as parking brakes of sort. With those on, the bike never rolled or fell, unless he had not leaned it properly.
The bicycle was, indeed, fully loaded: two bags at the front, obviously not standard bike shop issue, which were in fact old army backpacks that had been retrofitted to attach to the bike racks; two bike panniers at the back (which were actual bike panniers, but had been modified in the way they attached themselves to the bike – from velcro straps to sit atop the rack, to actual metal hooks to allow each one to attach itself independantly, rather than being forced to be used as a pair); a handlebar bag, itself also not bike shop issue, but another repurposed army bag of some sort, modified to be supported by a homemade attachment system; a small bag and a rolled up closed cell foam pad sitting atop the rear rack completed the luggage assortment. The rear rack itself, incidentally, was also homemade. A little heavier than a regular rack, but it was wider and longer than anything you would find in a store, and allowed to hang the panniers lower, though not as low as lowrider front racks would (which is what was at the front, incidentally, combined with a cheap rear rack, to offer a platform at the front as well.)
As he took off his bike helmet and attached it to the frame of the bicycle, the man, in his late forties, sporting short buzzed hair and a trimmed beard and mustache, approached the circle of chairs with a determined step, which took the form of long strides, to which he was clearly accustomed. Even without rushing, his gate led him at a decent pace, which many people would find a little quick for them. Spotting an empty chair, he pulled it back, to get around it, and stood in front.
As he began to speak, some were surprised at the tone of his voice: his was a low bass voice, the type that makes choir directors and barbershop quartet managers drool... In fact, if he were to accept all the invitations to join different choirs which he had received over the years, he would be so busy he would not even have time to work! It was a resounding voice, a booming voice, with a bit of a gravelly tone at times, but was still quite clear when either speaking or singing, to the amazement of many. It was a voice people remembered, even years later. Even if they had only heard it once before... Many a times, as people came aboard his bus (for he is a bus driver, for the city of Montréal, Québec), people would recognize him from having taken his bus before (“Say, weren't you on the the 140 bus line before? - Sure, that was three years ago...”, and so on.)
So naturally, heads turned when he addressed the group. “Hello everyone,” he began. “Sorry I'm late: the last week or so was spent getting ready for a short bicycle trip, which culminated in the trip itself, just this weekend, as you can tell from my still loaded bike.”
“I presume you guys mostly started with when you got hooked on Wapsi Square, so that's where I'll start off as well. To be honest, I can't recall when I first heard about Wapsi Square. It may have been by seeing Miss Julie's icon (Monica poiting her bra on top of her head) on a different webcomic's commments – it may have been The Dreamland Chronicles, and later finding out where that avatar image had come from. I didn't start reading it, at the time... You know how it's been said 'Come for the boobs, stay for the story'? Well, to be honest, the boobs is what made me stay away, at first. Not that I'm all that prudish, or anything, but it just seemed inappropriate to me, to be reading a webcomic that seemed to be all about the boobs. Or so I thought, at the time. Think of it this way: instead of “nobless oblige”, it was a case of “modesty oblige”... Even now, I tend to eschew the pinups, if they are too risqué for my taste...
Later on, I must have been bored, or something, and decided to take a second look at the comic. I then realized that the story was not just about the boobs, the main character's measurements notwithstanding. It was around the time when Shelly found out that Bia was not only her mom, but alive... I joined the forum at the beginning of August 2012. I tried to see if I had any posts in the comments below the comics before that, but that search might take a while, so I decided to forego it...
You know how if you listen to something in a loop long enough, you begin to associate it with whatever else you may be doing at the time? Well, it happened to me... At the time when I first started reading through the archives, I happened to have just purchased a set of Christian Bluegrass music CDs, which I played in a loop for days on end (something I usually do, whenever I purchase new music). So for the next couple years after that, listening to one of the songs in particular (one about choosing which road to go on) always reminded me of Wapsi Square, and of Shelly's time in the Time Forest.
My only contribution of note to the Wapsi Fanart forum is a
video I made of the scene where Nudge goaded Phix into chasing her, after Monica had seen Phix eating the sphinx that had bothered her.”
Having said his piece, he started to sit, when he suddenly stood again. “By the way,” he added, “my name is Claude. Not 'Clod', not 'Cloud', not 'Clyde', not 'Klaus', or even 'Cloth', like my wife's young cousin said, one time. No. It's Claude. Take the verb 'to load', put a 'K' in front of it, and you have, phonetically, Kload. My wife came up with that: I had been working at a summer camp in Ontario for a few years, and, being from Québec City and having grown up speaking French throughout, I had made a point of correcting people's pronunciation of my name, as I felt that my name was my identity, a reflection of who I am, so it was important to me to have people say it correctly. The year my wife started working at that camp, she had stayed in the city for a week or two prior to coming up, in order to canvass and raise funds for the camp. During that time, some of the camp's staff, knowing that she would work under my leadership at the barn with the horses, and 'knowing' that we would hit it off, coached her into pronouncing my name properly. That's when she came up with the mnemonic to remember the correct way to say my name.
As for my forum name, lake_wrangler, there's a story to that as well, and it has to do with the same summer camp where I met my wife. If anyone cares, I can talk about it, but my guess is that I've monopolized the meeting long enough, for now.”
With that, he sat down again.
