Conversations in Reno

[needle]

The crowds in Reno Hilton mostly consisted of fencers, gamblers and rednecks (there was a big gun show taking place there at the same time with the NAC).
Here's what I heard at breakfast on Saturday:
Two obvious rednecks, father and son, or grandfather and grandson ... or both ... I'll just call them Old Redneck (OR) and Young Redneck (YR) were in line to get breakfast next to me.

OR: Hey, did you know there's a fencing conpet ... fencing comptet ... (took him three or four tries to get it right) ... fencing competition here today?
YR: What the f$&k's a fencing competition?
OR: It's when they fight with swords.
YR: If they use real swords, I wanna see that
OR: No, they're not real, I think they are called foils, very thin blades, look like they're made of some fiber or something
YR: No sh$t!

Took some effort to keep a straight face

So, did anyone hear any interesting remarks about our event from the other groups?

[Fencergrl]

Man you gotta watch mentioning you like fencing around rednecks… I mentioned it to my brother-in-law and got handed a roll of wire, some fence posts, a pair of leather gloves and some tools…

[parrythis]

One fencer from our area flew on United to arrive on Thursday but his luggage went to Pittsburgh. The airline said they should be able to get it there by the next day. On Friday, his luggage had not shown up and he called United to complain and the luggage agent told him, "well, maybe if you hadn't lost it ..."

[Peach]

I was going through security in Philadelphia with my carry-on, and the operator said suddenly, "Can you tell me what is in this bag?"

"It's fencing equipment--a sabre mask, lame, body cords--"

She stopped me. "That's what I thought," she said. "I took a fencing class in college," and gave me a big smile.

[KD5MDK]

In order:
Heh.

Wow.

Cool.

[Ordway]

Similar experience to Peach, but going through security at Reno. I had a sabre mask in my carry-on.

Security person #1: What the heck is THAT?!

Security person #2: Oh, that's a fencing mask! It's fine.

And my bag merrily rolled out the other end of the x-ray machine and I went to the gate

[Inquartata]

Yeah, coming back from Reno Monday with mask, lamé, body- and mask-cords in my carry-on, I got questions, and the hand search of the contents as well, complete with feeling the mask bib carefully and swabbing it with something ( perhaps to see whether it contained plastic explosives! ).

You'd think the TSA people would have seen enough fencing stuff by then to know what it was and be bored by it...