In short, Mile High Con 42 certainly was the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything.
This was really my first con. The gaming con I went to in McMinnville, Oregon around 1994 doesn’t count – there were all of ~15 people in attendance. I don’t think the Star Trek Convention counts, either – even though George Takei, William Shatner, Nichelle Nichols and DeForest Kelley were all in attendance, as I was 8 years old at the time.
I took the day off on Friday, with the intent of arriving not long after the 1pm opener to Registration, as I’d found a couple of seminar/breakouts that I wanted to attend in the mid-afternoon.
As has thus far been a theme in my life, that’s not quite how it all worked out.
I was up and awake early with Ann, who left for work around 6:30. I still had some (very) light packing yet to do, so I got that out of the way early. Next up for bid on the Price is Right was catching up on the episodes of Top Gear that I’d recorded. Around noon, I started thinking about actually leaving, and I put the bags in the car. Then I watched another episode of Top Gear, as I didn’t want to get caught in (an imaginary) rush of people wanting to all register at 1pm. Then I bought Jonathan Coulton’s Re: Your Brains and Flight of the Conchords Business Time for RockBand2. Then (naturally) I had to try them out. Now it’s 2pm, the rush is over, and I’m actually ready to go. Mostly.
I sent Kari a text and asked her if she was ready to take Noel. Only then did I notice her truckin’ down the road in their pickup. She texted back to let me know she had to run to the store first.
OK. Time for s’more RB2, I guess…
I finally got on the road around 3:45, having missed both Developing Your Writing Voice (D. Abraham, P. Bacigalupi, R. Caine, D. Hughes, S. Swendson) and Writing the Series Character (M. Acevedo, M. Bonham, K. Kurtz, B. Nickless, C. Vaughn). Looking back with the retrospectroscope at who was there, I wish I’d gotten my butt in gear a little earlier.
So, having gotten such a late start, I hit I-25 traffic early and often. I was at a crawl from right around the I-270/I-25 interchange until I got off the freeway at Colorado Boulevard, and I was fully in Zen Driving Mode. That part was pretty cool. Ann and I go back and forth about whether leaving a loooooong distance in front of you actually works. I say it does, she believes that it’ll just fill up with lane-jumpers, she’ll wind up going even slower than she would otherwise, and she’ll piss off the people behind her, to boot. She’s tried it, and had a very different experience than I have. I’m not sure what the difference is. My experience on Friday was that I could leave a nearly infinite space in front of me, and unless the lane to my right was moving much faster than I was *and* it was coming up to an abrupt stop ahead (that would lead to a couple of opportunistic lane changers switching to my lane for an 8-10 car length gain before they stopped anyway), there were almost no lane jumpers filling in the space in front of me. *smug*
Just south of I-36, traffic slowed from “slow” to “holy crap, can we go any slower?”. I could see police lights up ahead on the right.
Turns out there was an accident being reported to the CSP on the right, but there was *also*, in the very same spot, a dude and his wife in a Cavalier – stopped dead in the #2 lane. Traffic was backed up for miles because THOUSANDS of people were stopping to let the cars in his lane get out of that lane to go around, but NOBODY was stopping to, you know, perhaps take a moment to PUSH THE DAMN CAR OUT OF THE MIDDLE OF THE FREEWAY?
WTF, over?
So I did. (sound a clarion of trumpets for the hero!)
I carry my tools with me in the trunk of the car, and after we were safely on the shoulder (and I found myself to be un-run-over), I asked if there was anything I could help him with… He said that the clutch had given out, and he had a tow truck on the way. With that, I carried on my way, unsurprised that traffic had improved from fractional miles per hour, to about 25 MPH. :/
Having left around 3:45, I actually got to the Hyatt around 5. Ann had beaten me there. She had my badge and we were already in the room. Bruce and Christine (and the daughter-child) weren’t there yet (they live in another time zone than the rest of us do, I sometimes suspect), and Thor and Cece had already departed to MaJe’s memorial service.
The 7 of us had dinner at Darcy’s. Fabulous food. Highly recommended. But, see for yourself. The only complaint I had was that I got a shepherd’s pie. I expected it to be covered in mashed potatoes. Instead, the plate looked rather a bit like someone had served up some sirloin stew, and gotten a Mashed Potato Fairy to poop on it. Ew.
Spent the evening in the room, socializing. Met a couple of Bruce’s Klingon friends, etc. Good stuff.