On Monday, March 31, I messaged Siobhan Nolen and Alex Amann in our group chat – is this actually happening? After the many months of lead up work, countless emails, Discord messages, phone calls, spreadsheets, and on and on, it was a bit surreal to recognize that the big event was only a few days away. I think I can speak for the entire organizing team to say how much we all love the Bay Area and San Francisco, and we really wanted to show our travelers what a great place this is. For folks who arrived early, we had two organized trips on Thursday – a group of around 8 led by local player Darin Leviloff and Siobhan drove to the Sonoma wine area, about an hour north of SF and enjoyed tasting some fine wines. A second group of 16 organized by Alex and me were heading to Muir Woods. Until we hit the first snag in our plans when we found out a redwood tree had fallen in the roadway and was blocking the entrance to the park. Fortunately for us, there are tons of beautiful places to explore, and we ended up instead taking a hike in the Marin Headlands in Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Local Nicolas Schoichet guided us on a beautiful 5 mile (or as most of our travelers call it, 8 km) walk while pointing out some of the interesting old WWII military installations in the area. After a quick drive back to SF, had some time to relax before our welcome dinner. We were really fortunate to find a venue willing to accommodate around 50 of us who had arrived early. It was a really nice evening with many folks meeting for the first time or catching up with old friends. It turns out Diplomacy players sure can talk – the happy buzz in our semi-private room was probably about 60 decibels louder than the rest of the restaurant.