Circumnavigation: Leg 9.0

The Pure Blind, Fade and Deklein portion of the trip is over.

The day started pleasantly enough. Pure Blind was mostly empty until I made my way to the center of the region. My first waypoint was Servants of the Sisters of Eve space. Along the way, encounted a couple of leapfroggers, Elisabeta Knowledge and M4NOS theGREEK. Both trying to snag me on a gate jump. A fun little game for about seven systems. Neither came close to even targeting me, but enjoyed the company. Had a pleasant conversation in local with M4NOS for a few systems. Those Fidelas Constans folks are good people. Another alliance to add to my list of quality alliances.

Fade was completely dead. It has to be one of the smallest regions in New Eden. Twenty-seven systems and four jumps through to Deklein.

I had to enter Deklein at CCP-US. How could I not? (Shouldn't CCP add two more systems? A CCP-IS and a CCP-CN?) For a Saturday, I expected far more Goons in the systems between CCP-US and VFK-IV. I suppose Deklein is as secure a region as they come, so most of them were either:

• playing on SiSi
• blowing shit up in Delve Freeport (I'd like to think this is a Thieves' World reference and not someone who thought Everquest was cool.)
• ganking miners in Gallente space
• trolling SomethingAwful.com

Once in VFK-IV I decided to call out The Mittani.

Poetic Stanziel > Please call upon your leader, The Mittani. I wish to meet him to discuss the return of the 24500 ISK he scammed from me.
Radhamanthes > please hold on sir ...
Garnoo > ill contact him for 50mln
Poetic Stanziel > He promised to sell me exotic dancers, but when they arrived at my station they were fatties from Jenny Craig. I was outraged!
Garnoo > because we all used them earlier....
VinnD > lol
Poetic Stanziel > I thought the Goons ran an honest escort business. I will notify my local Chamber of Commerce about this!

It was an uneventful leg of the trip. Did have a long conversation with Tokclik of GoonWaffe which helped to kill the time for a dozen systems. Why does every Goon who requests a private conversation with me, begin the conversation with "All Goons aren't bad." Why do I have a reputation as a Goon-hater? Holy spaghetti. I'm not a Goon-hater at all. I like fucking with them on the forums from time to time, but I respect what they bring to the game. Some spice and verve. Some style (even if it's down in the gutter hobo-with-a-shotgun style.) I'm not even against the miner ganking they've been doing. I'm all for that. My only worry is that CCP might use it as an excuse to toughen up highsec. Highsec is already too safe, it doesn't need to be made safer.

(Aside: Why is Goonswarm Federation listed as a faction on EVE Gate and not an alliance?)

At some point during the conversation with Tokclik he asked if I'd been bookmarking my trip, especially creating gate observationals. That's about 90% of the bookmarking I was doing, when I was doing it. I made sure to get a few bookmarks in every region I visited, but some regions I was far less eager to bookmark than others. I have a tonne of gate obs in Delve, for instance, hardly any in Tenerifis or Detorid. Anyhow, he said people pay good money for region-wide bookmarks of gates. So I'll test the waters with what I end up with, and if it's lucrative, I may make trips back to the western regions and create complete regional bookmark lists for sale. I was completely unaware that there would be a market for bookmarks collected by a third-party. The thing they teach you in the university is "Don't share your bookmarks" (which is good advice), but it lead me to believe that no one would ever want to buy bookmarks. Anyhow, I'm not likely to head back to these regions anytime soon, so not too fussed selling what bookmarks I have if anyone is interested in them. We'll see what comes of this.

The last leg is around the corner. Forty-eight jumps from Branch (Y-1918) to Jita.