I didn't think I'd get to go to Megacon until practically the last
minute, when all signs pointed to "w00t!" So, Thursday night I made
reservations with Amtrak, and Friday morning I got on Metrorail and
went off to the station. The walk between the Metrorail station and the
Tri-Rail station had to be the ugliest four blocks I've ever walked,
seriously. I was glad to leave that landscape behind...
The
station was kinda odd. It looked very 1970s-modern, as in, made to look
all futuristic back in the 70s, and to look all horribly dated in the
'00s. I spent about 30 minutes of quality time (HA!) there watching
cruddy CNN, then got on the train when the boarding call was announced.
It took an hour for the train to actually get ready to move and do
so... which it did at about 0.01 Snail Per Hour. It took 25 minutes
just to get out of the yard and merge onto the main line!
Now,
those of you who ride Tri-Rail will know that Tri-Rail often gets
slowed down because they have to follow an Amtrak train on the line.
.... I think the one I was on demolished, singlehandedly, a few
thousand commuters' timely arrivals. Random stops were made here and
there, station stops took anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes, and... did I
mention RANDOM stops? One of them was in some area called Okeechobee,
which apparently consisted entirely of an *ABANDONED* Amtrak station
and some junk yards! The train was scheduled to get to Orlando at 3,
and got there at around 6:30... but I just thought it was so cool that
I didn't care that it took so long. I was riding coach, which is about
like first class on an airplane, AND THEN SOME! I wouldn't call the
space between seats "legroom", I'd call it "enough space that you could
put a little folding chair there and have someone else sit facing you
with few space problems at all". Each pair of seats had a 120v power
outlet next to it, which I was under the impression that the trains
didn't have, except on the Metroliner/Acela cars. I wonder what first
class looked like?
I made the mistake of getting a sandwich for
lunch in the cafe car. Only after I exited the train at Orlando did I
realize there was a real dining car up ahead (about EIGHT CARS ahead).
D'oh. The frozen/reheated Gardenburger, I declared it to be the
ultimate metaphor for a government subsidized transportation service,
but I can't remember quite why I likened it that way. Oh well. I ran
into a spot in it that was still frozen solid right as something that
looked to be the last
Tri-Rail station zoomed by at 79 mph.
Incidentally,
for anyone who hasn't tried this before - walk down the middle of a
train as it's moving at 79 mph, while looking out the windows. The
feeling of my mind visually determining that I was walking at 82-83 mph
and screaming daisies from fourteen miles away was just utterly amazing.
Once
I got to Orlando I had the wonderful privledge of sitting in many hours
of Miami style traffic. Once I got to where I thought I was going, I
had dinner at Denny's with Mel and some other people, then went on to a
hotel other than the one I was staying at, and then to one where I
actually was staying for the night. Or was that the night we went to
Universal?
I can't remember which night we went to Universal
Citywalk, if it was Friday or Saturday. Hrmm. That was a strange trip -
we went there to go to a jazz club, called City Jazz. We parked in the
King Kong section, and I associated the random passage "Remember, King
Kong died for your sins" to it. (Said random passage being from the
Principia Discordia).
They were only letting people who were 21 and up into Citywalk for some
reason, even though the whole place doesn't serve liquor... my guess is
it was a crappy anti-mallrat measure? Anyway, we managed to subvert
their system for those of us who weren't of age, and went in. I somehow
managed to use my FIU student ID which does not list my date of birth
to get in... but I guess my feeling of "I should be here" was indeed
strong enough. When we got in there, the club was playing crappy ghetto
music off a CD somewhere, and had no live entertainment as they claimed
they would. Apparently, their last jazz performance was TWO YEARS AGO!
We left, but only after getting a refund of the cover charge!
(Hopefully this will convince them to change the name to "City Ghetto",
as that would be more fitting. They could have at LEAST been playing
monotonous trance.) They had instruments on stage, and I was tempted to
try to convince our group to just go up and actually start playing jazz
with said instruments. That would have rocked, really. Hrmmm... I know
tewibewi
could have played one of the two keyboards, someone could have played
drums, and I probably could have handled playing bass on a keyboard
even though I have no clue how to... *evil grin*
Sadly, I missed
the independent film thing that I wanted to see Friday... but Saturday
was pretty neat. I went around talking to random artists and other
people, buying stuff in the dealer's room even though I had told myself
I didn't want to buy stuff, and generally having a good time. I also
got to talk to
uzu_uzu and
merlekitty for a while. Yay. Meanwhile, stuff happened elsewhere with cows flying through the air and stuff, but I had a great day.
Sunday,
I woke up late. Then the bus didn't come on time, and it was raining. I
did the usual silly thing of turning on the TV, and found that there
were traffic accidents blocking EVERY possible major roadway into
downtown Orlando. Then I found out that
ahohesensei
was in the hospital after having an allergic reaction. I wasn't really
worried about how I'd get home, but I was quite concerned about how she
was doing... fortunately, she was out after about six hours of
observation and an intravenous blast of Benadryl. I reminded myself
that my mom's had these same sort of episodes with allergy related
asthma attacks, and she does just fine in such cases after she gets the
appropriate medication and has some time to recover. As for getting
back, I knew I'd make it somehow, so I just sat back and relaxed,
thinking of what I'd do for the rest of the day. At the absolute
silliest, I could have gone off and
taken a nap in the airport or Amtrak station until Monday morning's trains came along. Fortunately,
ahohesensei
had a space in her car. (This turned out to be "space" in the sense of
the "space" for a third person in the back of a Honda Civic, but it
worked, in a compressed manner.)
I randomly (by definition!) won
Select Start's
raffle, and they gave me a CD player. I bought their CD and used it as
a nifty alternate soundtrack for the rest of the afternoon. I hesitate
to think what would have happened if I'd used something amazingly
bouncy as an alternate soundtrack... with the amount of sugar that was
in me from various interesting snack foods, I probably would have
brought about DESTRUCTION PANCAKE upon the entire convention center.
And stolen one of the maintenance peoples' Segways.
I didn't go to the concert Sunday, and kind of wish I had... but, oh well. *shrugs*
We
went to dinner Sunday night at a really awesome, albeit expensive,
Japanese restaurant. I want to try making some of the nifty stuff we
had there at home... time to find out how to make tempura and how to
use that sushi rolling mat, I do believe. Oh, and how to avoid getting
sticky rice stuck to everything in existence all at once. Wait, that's
rather amusing, especially when you stick it to the Pope's nose. Or the
surface of the Sun.
Anyway, I made some future plans based on
this weekend. First, I've decided I seriously want to get my artwork
out there into the world somewhere... comics and whatever else. I guess
I should work on a portfolio, more or less. There were actually people
there at Megacon from comic book publishers who were looking over
people's work, interested in publishing!
Second, for future events of this sort... I want to go to Metrocon now, and not just because
merlekitty and
uzu_uzu
want to hang out with me there. It sounds like they've got some really
cool stuff going on, like the human chess game, among other things. And
it's in late June, when there's practically nothing else going on,
aside from a hurricane. or two. or three. or MULTIBALL
MAAAAAADNESS~...yeah.
Third... for Otakon, I'm definitely
quite fond of the idea of taking Amtrak, but I'm going to bring some
additional stuff like a pillow and blanket, and some materials of
monotony breaking of one sort or another. I'd also like to be able to
do something interestingly artistic for that event... hmmmm.
And, furthermore, I'm very fond of Terry's plan of getting a used
Flxible Metro
(from some agency that actually MAINTAINED theirs, as I understand if
you buy a used bus from MDTA, you most likely have to take delivery of
it via flatbed tow... or very large bag that makes rattling sounds when
shaken). D said she wants to paint on it if such comes to be. We could
so totally have the most amazingly spiffy bus in existence. Would that
not be awesome?
And that's the fun madness. Enjoyed it? Heck yeah. Anyway, I plan to be
at Jacon, and this time around, I plan to actually show off some of my
artwork... I'll be working on improving such in the meantime, until I'm
actually proud of it and ready to show things off to the world. Until
then, peace, love, and exploding toilets.