Magenta

[MaxJenius]

So... this new girl... Is her name going to be Magenta?... being convenient, since Linus can't speak...

Is she going to be a new regular?

[Shonkin]

The human eye senses color with red, green, and blue cones.
Magenta is the exact opposite of green. (A magenta pigment absorbs green light and reflects red and blue.)
In other words, this (so far) nameless friend of Linus is not green. Not even a little bit.

[MaxJenius]

And Evanston... Sounds like an in-joke here...

[Shonkin]

No in-joke, just a slightly obscure geographic reference. Evanston is on I-80 in Wyoming, just across the state line from Utah. It's about 85 miles east of Salt Lake.

[Shonkin]

The inexperienced traveler might have expected the driver to go west on I-70 to I-15, then north to pick up I-80 at Salt Lake. However, that's about 30 miles longer than what she did. She took I-25 to Fort Collins, took U.S. 287 to Laramie, and then took I-80 west. Shorter and an easier drive.

[Shonkin]

What I find interesting is Darren's eye for detail. I easily recognized the street scenes in Denver (minus the usual mall rats and gangs). The view of downtown Salt Lake was pretty accurate. And now a certain "Legacy" casino in Reno (name changed to protect the author) is very recognizable. He has also obviously driven the I-80 route or has researched it.
Well done!

[Gav]

Hey thank you! In fact, much of the storyline from the last three years chronicles places I've been and routes I've taken and a lot of the little details were the funny things that struck me along the way. Like the "Swetsville Family Zoo" north of Denver. And in fact I've witnessed a power outage in a Reno casino. And I once did the SF->Denver I-80 route (the other direction) in 20 hours, stopping only for gas, powered by a 3-liter bottle of Mountain Dew.

The cityscapes are all thanks to Google images, though. My memory isn't that good. It only tells me what to search for.

A popular game with Nukees might be to try to find the image that I used for each scene. Like:




It's not a hard game--very often it's on the first page of search results.