And so the adventure begins...
My flight took off from Hartford at 6:20 AM Eastern time, ten minutes later than scheduled. That was the fault of the weather. Other than that the trip was uneventful; I proceeded to Cinncinati, changed planes, and it was onward to San Diego. There was some minor turbulance on the second flight but nothing serious. They fed us rather well, too, albeit for an extra charge. I paid, and to kill time I slept as much as possible. More like dozing or napping, at best; kind of hard to sleep on a swaying and rocking plane. Eventually we landed at 10:15 Pacific time, a few minutes ahead of schedule I might add, and after recovering my luggage and taking a few minutes to unwind I got a cab and headed for the Comfort Inn Gaslamp. The driver was a talkative fellow but he had a thick accent so conversation was difficult; I think I got about one word out of every four. Ten minutes later I arrived at the CIG, which, honestly, was a letdown, at first; it's nowhere near as nice as the Marriott, where I stayed last year. But it's livable, and likable after you get used to it, which didn't take long. So I settled in, relaxed for a bit, and after that I headed out for supplies. Supplies come from Ralph's supermarket. All good non-Con things come from Ralph's. Stars, I love that store.
Anyway, I shopped, picked up some sandwich materials and a few toiletries I'd forgotten to pack, and then it's back to the hotel where I found ORD checking in and Taranchula standing nearby. Nice to see y'all again, guys. We parted company at that point to take care of various things (my stuff being mostly Sims-related
). I probably should have taken a nap; aside from a little dozing on the plane I'd been awake for roughly 24 hours at that time and it was beginning to wear me down. Eh, whatever. I'm on vacation, I'll sleep later. Taranchula knocked on my door a little later; he and ORD and BlueBottleFlyer are going to the mall, do I want to come? A few minutes later we're all heading for the mall, a five-story, open-air structure packed with restaurants, specialty shops, and a Hot Topic. Yeah, we stopped there; had to see the Cheese stuff in person, y'know. Place gives me the heebie-jeebies. We hit a few other stores and after that we were off to the Marriott to join Sparky and Government Man, a ten-minute walk that took much, much longer than ten minutes, but I'll let someone else explain about that.
Spoiler Below Do not listen to ORD when he says "This way" or "I know where we're going".
Eventually we found the Marriott and made our way to Sparky and GM's room and a little while later we all headed downstairs to one of the hotel's restaurants for dinner. I had the fish and chips. Then it was back to Sparky's room for a little idle conversation, a little relaxing, and a little planning. It was getting late by then so the four of us headed back to the CIG, pausing long enough in our travels for a very long train to get out of our way. We parted company and headed to our respective rooms where I checked in here briefly and finally collapsed, exhausted, having not slept for over 36 hours. It had been a very long day, but a very good long day, too.
That was Tuesday. Today is Wednesday, and so far I've gone out for a sandwich and typed this post. Later on the entire lot of us will converge on the Convention Center to register and get our badges. In the meantime I'll try to keep myself entertained. Shouldn't be too hard.
For the record, I'll eventually be posting some pics of the trip on my profile page. Nothing there right now; when I upload them I'll mention it here.