A short Mike Story about something Mike liked to do.

So Mike liked to play in or run role-playing games of various sorts. Usually the game of his preference would be Traveller or Cyberpunk 2020 when we were both at Ft. Hood.

While stationed at Ft Hood for my third time in the mid 1990's I got to play in Mike's Cyberpunk 2020 campaign game. One of Mike's sessions made a minor bit of history within that game's community, generating a story that was passed around until the game's creator heard about it and made it a canon moment. According to Mike almost a decade later he got to talk to the creator of the game at a convention and that game creator brought up the topic of:

The Gilligan's Massacre...

I was there when it happened. Not the meeting with the guy who wrote the game, rather the infamous gaming session that really stood out as a non-sequitur within the campaign.

Mike was the GM running the game.

If I recall correctly as a group we were multiple sessions into the campaign with some significant character development. The group had just finished a mission for the corporation most of the group had ties with and somehow we ended up chilling out (or laying low depending on point of view) on a small island in the middle of one of the cities parks.

The island turned out to be the turf of a somewhat friendly, or at least not hostile, gang. The gang was the Gilligan's, a poser gang. Yes, just like the TV show. Being themselves Tom and Steve started chatting up the Gingers and Maryanne's, making an effort at being *social* role-players and all. They were making nice "headway" with their endeavors when *someone* asked Mike to explain what a poser gang was...

Mike explained that poser gangs were like most other gangs we might run into but with a significant difference - their members would get themselves bio-sculpted to look like the characters of a genre or pop culture phenomenon, in this case the archaic entertainment video series Gilligan's Island. Oh and in this gang they're all male.

Yep. All male... bio-sculpted for appearances*.

The look on Steve and Tom's faces was, well, priceless in a sense. The duo effectively immediately agreed that our group needed to relocate. As the island became smaller as we left Tom called in a corporate favor to have an airstrike and napalmed the Gilligan's out of existence. (Tom had some issues apparently) The rest of us players just kind of looked at Tom.

Discussion ensued over this series of events. Most everyone present, except Steve and Tom, thought it was a bit of an overreaction to the moment since the rest of us didn't feel particularly endangered. At least not apparently so, you never always knew when Mike ran a game.

Over a good decade passed and during one of our nearly daily phone conversations Mike mentioned that he had just come home from a convention, might have been Akon** not totally sure which one, and tells me that he was talking with the game's creator Mike Pondsmith. That session's story had gotten around to Pondsmith, likely through reddit or other word of mouth, and allegedly he either made it canon or included the Gilligan's gang somewhere in the game later on.

The net of this is that one of Mike's gaming sessions had the rare honor of being talked about well beyond the small group that it was done with and got the attention and acceptance into the lore of the game by it's designer, a very rare thing statistically.

*in the movie "Escape from L.A.", the campy sequel to "Escape from New York", there's a scene where a plastic surgeon has a gang etc that is worth watching. If you're not familiar with the genre those two movies and the film "Blade Runner" are examples of the Cyberpunk genre. Coincidentally Mike and I both saw "Escape from L.A." at the base theater but I forget if that was before or after that particular gaming session.

**Akon is an annual ongoing Anime convention that is fairly close to where Mike lived. Mike enjoyed attending that event for many years.

Mike and I road trip story. While at Ft Hood, Mike, on his second enlistment as a mechanic, and I had similar interests in gaming and we decided to take a road trip to the annual Origins Gaming Convention for the SFB Gold Hat tournament when it was in San Jose that year. The projected budget for the trip was kind of tight but doable so I took leave and packed some groceries for the trip. The car for the trip was my used Saab (picked up a decade old car from a dealer at Ft Hood). When everything was packed in the car we sat and started the engine - the radio came on and the literal first thing that played was the song "on the way to San Jose" from the very start of the song. Just a moment where we both shook our heads in disbelief of one of life's little coincidences. The plan was to drive in effectively a bee-line up over the great divide and down to San Jose.
Ok.
So late in the evening we're doing the obligatory 70+ on a straight stretch of highway when we get passed like we're standing still by something that looked like a corvette. "We'll see him again soon enough" came out of me for no reason and in a few minutes we cleared a small rise (we were in a really flat section of Texas) and there was a corvette on the side of the road with some law enforcement talking to them...
Night gets later and darker when some nice friendly driver (the only driver we'd seen for hours) decides to tailgate us and shower us with all the brightest lights he could physically stick on his truck. Mike thanked this unknown altruist for allowing him to read the fine print of his book instead of sleeping since that's overrated... then it jumped in front of the car... it didn't have horns (I think) but it was the biggest Jackalope (and only one) I'd seen in my life. Seriously this jackrabbit was the size of a medium dog. Doing 70(ish) was lucky to manage taking it centerline (and not risking it tangling in the wheelwell etc). It thumped a whole bunch under the car while the tailgater's lights (and probably windshield) turned red and I could see the guts and stuff go up onto the tailgater's in the mirror... Mikey and I were both amused at the sudden lack of a tailgater after that moment and relative peace that lasted for a few more hours...
So it was getting close to dawn there was a sound you don't want to hear at 70+, the muffler pipe broke and dropped. Luckily we pulled over before it caught anything and rummaged up a brass clothing hanger from the trunk and hung it back up. Considering we had a range day the weekend prior and I hadn't cleared everything out of the trunk we also had some very needed hearing protection handy. Yay... hearing protection... First thing we tried was sleeving the pipe with a coke can. This lasted about five minutes. Yay hearing protection. So we drove on until we got to Pueblo CO. We shopped the local WalMart and or parts store and found a sleeving kit that had to set overnight. We grabbed a room for the night and set the kit in place. So the sleeving kit lasted a bit longer on the drive for the next day... not much longer though and we were back to sounding like a biker gang all wrapped up into one car. I suggested we stop at a garage in any of the fine small towns we were passing through. Mike had the opinion we'd probably be ripped off for more than we could afford and I agreed so on the way we kept a going. And going... and going... fun fact apparently biker gangs do in fact approve of the mufflerless effect and eventually we (barely with nearly getting to get out and push levels of slow) made it up over the great divide. Downhill was a lot better until we leveled out at sea level for the final leg into San Jose. Going in to California we had to stop at an inspection station and they didn't care about the muffler but asked if we had any fruit with us. I said we had no hitchhikers and the guy laughed and let us in to the state. (for the younger folk - fruit fly infestation was a "crisis" in CA at the time) Weird coincidence but the San Jose song came on again as we headed over the bridge from Oakland through the rumbling of the mufflerless Saab...
We checked in and had a good weekend with the Convention. We talked it over and decided to take a flatter route back to Ft. Hood and headed South past LA to 40E for a mostly uneventful, just loud, return trip. When we got back I took the car in to a local mechanic and he sleeved it with a good weld for like $20... Mike and I were both surprised at how cheap the fix was, but there it is.

I love you big brother. My heart breaks for all of the what ifs and wishing we could have spent more time together. I’ve enjoyed reading about who you are and things you enjoyed in your life from the people who knew you best. I hope you know how much you will be missed on this earth. Dad Mom and I love you and I’m sorry we didn’t get to connect for such a long time. Please give Steven a hug for me and tell him I love him too. Thank you for being a part of my life. I wish you peace and rest.

I bumped into Mike when I lived in Austin, and he helped me pack up for a move to Amarillo -- completely out of the blue, having driven from Nashville -- sending me an email that he was on the way.

I don't think I ever imagined Mike being as young as he appeared in this photo...he'll be missed.

I met him and Doug Howard at the rec center in 1993 on Fort Hood. I was wanting to find board game players. They were there playing Star Fleet Battles. A game I'm sure nobody had ever heard of. They refused to play Axis and Allies (THE game I wanted to play) and would only hang out with me if I learned this crazy game. You know how Mike Strain was. Only kids play a wimpy beer and pretzel game (his very words) like A*A. The two of these guys got me instantly hooked and I've been playing SFB ever since. I never did get that game of A*A together on Hood. Hanging out with Mike from 1993 - 1996 were surely among my most fond memories. 

I didn't own a camera back then. It was before social media. I know Mike would never get on Facebook. To my great frustration. He was one of those reasons I kept my old email up and running. No photos of those days for me. I really appreciate the photos of him I see posted already. Such a huge loss. 

You'll be missed Mike. Mike probably wouldn't believe those words from most people but there it is. We met in the 90's when we were both stationed at Ft. Hood, Texas. After separating from the active service we talked on the phone for decades about nearly everything and anything until he passed, sometimes weekly, sometimes daily depending on where we both were in life. Hard to find the words to say goodbye or offer remembrance when someone that close passes. Some of you reading this may remember him from the various SFB discussion boards, reddit threads and god knows where else and remember him being, to say the least, a bit passionate about topics that he was concerned with. A lot can be lost or misinterpreted in the intent of writing in those threads, but in talking things out all things got their moment of clarification, reasoned discussion and rest. We didn't always see eye to eye on the things we discussed but we could see where we each came from of the ideas. Mike was a great guy to pass the time with, even if he tried to pass himself off as inconsolably grumpy at times. Hopefully wherever you are now Mike it's a better place where you get to see how the people close to you felt and realize the rest don't matter none at all.