So I got back from WonderCon... last week! :P
I would have posted this blog sooner, in fact I probably SHOULD have posted this blog sooner... but goddamn I was tired afterwards. Like SO goddamn tired. This drive wasn't even as long as the San Diego journey I made in 2014, but man oh man, it laid me out like crazy.
BUT! I'll get to that later! Lemme tell you about actually BEING there! THAT'S the important part.
So I arrived late Thursday night at my friend Sakura's place. She and her BF Joey were gracious enough to let me crash at their place for the event so I didn't have to toss money away on a hotel room. Thank you Sakura and Joey.
I also met their cat, Pumpkin, or "Pumpster" as they sometimes call him. That has got to be THE friendliest cat I've EVER met! Holy crap! This is a cat who will greet you like a puppy, and make instant friends with you. Within a few minutes of having walked in the door, this gato was basically in my lap. They also slept with me on Sakura's couch, so I'm certain I've made a friend for life, and I couldn't be happier.
This Large Orange Cat is Pumpkin. Appropriate, no?
I woke up early the next day, and with Sakura, hopped a Lyft to the convention center. We had to get there close to opening so we could procure our badges from Ted, the very, very kind man who was in charge of the Prism booth this year. One of the perks of being asked to speak on a panel for a company like Prism is that I sometimes get to bring a friend with me :3 and since Sakura was so kind to give me a place to sleep, she was that friend!
However, getting our badges was not as simple as I assumed it would be. I thought we were collecting them from Ted himself, but it turns out we had to get them from registry, which in itself wouldn't have been such a big deal, but for some reason, registry didn't actually HAVE our info. I thought that this year, Prism had done an excellent job of collecting everyone's info ahead of time so that problems like this could be avoided, but for whatever reason, registry didn't have their ducks in a row. After giving them every possible iteration of our info, we finally got ted on the phone, and he told them to just print us badges on the spot. No sooner had they completed that task, than the young man at the keyboard suddenly went "Wait... Knave and Sakura? I found you guys in the system".
It was a mess. A big, silly mess.
On top of that, one thing I did not realize is that for some reason, at this con, there is a big, big difference between an "Exhibitor" badge and a "Professional" badge. Professionals badges are given to people who are on panel or taking part in such events. An Exhibitor badge is for people who HAVE tables either in the artist alley or exhibitor hall. I feel like 9/10 cons I've been to, these would not be separate badges. If you're taking part in the con in a professional way, in any way OTHER than as a customer, so just get one kinda badge, and that badge opens doors to you. Sadly it was not the case here.
Shortly after receiving our badges, we went to find Ted at the booth, confirm my 4pm slot for signing autographs, and to kinda help set up the stage a little bit too (it was early yet and not everything was done), and this was something we figured we were allowed to do, given the "Professional" status on our badges. We found out, however, in a somewhat rude awakening, that since we were not OFFICIAL proprietors of the Prism Comics booth, that we weren't allowed to be in the room. not only that, but when we decided to wait outside the room until it officially opened in less than 30 minutes, we learned that we weren't even to be allowed IN THE BUILDING!
They literally had a guard escort us off premises, and made us with outside for the convention to open! Like COMMONERS!!!
Needless to say, I was MORTIFIED! I had been talking myself up to Sakura all day, talking about how sticking with me would open doors for her, and how hanging out with a PRO at a comic convention was the ONLY way to go! How embarrassing. T^T
In either case, we made it inside eventually, after a lotta fuss, and began walking the aisles. Sakura had never been to a comic convention before, and while she wasn't a huge comic fan, she was a fan of a lot of the byproducts of the comics industry, like comic book movies, games, and just art in general. I was pretty confident that we'd find stuff to see and do there that she would enjoy, but I knew we'd have to really be LOOKING for it. We stopped by many booths of people just showcasing their art. Lotta great talent on the floor this year, I gotta say. Sakura was particularly attracted to the artists who took a fine art approach to comics (paint, pastels, charcoal, etc). That's very much her bag right there. She's an avid portrait illustrator, with charcoal pastels being her main medium, although this year she's been dabbling a lot in watercolour. so she took a lot of notice to those booths, and that was great and fun, but the REAL fun began when we found a booth manned exclusively by dudes who had written books about serial killers. Sakura is a psychologist by trade and as much as art is her bag, psychology is REALLY her bag! we must hung around that booth for a good half hour, and they just shit the shit back and forth about this and that. They had a guy at the booth who was Ted Bundy's clinical psychologist in prison, and Sakura's jaw almost hit the floor.
I am SO glad we found that able ^___^
There's always some insecurity when I bring someone new to a big con like this, and they're not like, on the same level of LOVING comics as I am. I worry they'll just be bored all day and humoring me the whole time. I don't want THAT, I want people to be having fun when they're with me, and I gotta say, mission accomplished, in this case.
By the time Day 2 rolled around, I wanted to take a break from the con. One of my biggest bad habits when I go to cons like this is that I kinda overdo it, and I don't really give myself a chance to rest and enjoy my surroundings. Usually that's due to necessity, since the vast majority of cons I go to, I'm representing myself. If I'm lucky, I have a booth partner, but even then, I usually stay at the table and don't really venture out and look around that much, and I almost never check out the city I'm in. This time was different because I was there as part of a large group of people. There was no requirement for me to even be at the booth most of the time, as it was heavily manned by the many members of Prism, and the authors and artists of the "We're Still Here" anthology. I showed up for my autograph singing sessions but I didn't actually have one on day 2, and I was overcome with an overwhelming urge to SEE SoCal, a place I don't spend a lotta time in. So I lent my badge to joey and told him and Sakura to have a fun time at the con, and I called my dear friend Amanda, who lives in the Long Beach area. She showed me all her favourite little nooks and crannies in town. We went to a witchcraft shop. I was walked through casting a wish granting spell (which i tried to make as selfless as possible, as per my own personal tradition in spellcasting). We checked out a cute little place called the Library Cafe, which was exactly what it sounded like, where we got snacks and drinks and hung out and talked. She brought me to a cute little record shop, where I literally could have spent hours and hours sifting through music if I wanted to... but then we got dinner and headed back to her place where we ate and watched Mad Men until it got dark. At which pointed I headed back to Sakura's place, cuz Day 3 was the BIG DAY and I wanted to be well rested for what was to come.
Day 3 was the day of our panel. the whole reason I was there!
This one was ALSO starting early, but not as early as Day 1. I had a little bit of time to pack up all my shit so that I wouldn't have to head back to Sakura's after the con. I figured I'd take my own car this time, park it somewhere inexpensive and leave straight away from the con. The challenge however, was making it through the con traffic to actually arrive to my own event on time! Which, if you've ever been to a big con like WonderCon on the last day, you'd know is a lot harder than it sounds.
Parking lots were jammed, but I managed to find a place pretty much basically in the nick of time. I parked and RAN to the panel hall and managed to get my butt IN my seat a mere matter of minutes before they officially called for start time.
I did not have tons of time to prepare my remarks for the panel this time around, but I've done this enough times now to the point where I've learned that it's probably best left to improv. Rehearsing too much makes you sound programmed and robotic. As always, an hour never REALLY seems like enough. I wish we could talked for like TWO hours, it felt like there were a lotta people in the crowd who had questions that they never got to ask. Oh well, maybe those people will be able to catch the panel again when it comes to Comic Con?
Time flew by, it felt like. We had a small gatheration outside the panel hall, had some photo ops, shook hands with fans, and eachother. There were a few people on the panel whom I had not gotten a chance to actually meet beforehand, so that was nice to be able to say hello to everyone.
My view form the conference table at the panel. I feel so important! ^___^
With only a few hours left in the day before they started closing up, so I made an aggressive lap around the convention hall again, buying up everything I had seen on day 1 that really caught my eye, plus several OTHER items I saw for the first time that day. I showed up to the Prism booth for one last autograph session and sold out of ALMOST everything! That was good, because, you know, makin' money, but also kinda bad because it's only a couple weeks until my next cons and that means I had to place a re-print order ASAP. Hopefully it comes to me in time, fingers crossed. Went out on a high note at least, when I found out that Tara (the person who organized the We're Still Here compilation AND the panel) had room on her Comic Con panel for another person, and I SNAGGED that spot! So come this July, I'll be HEADIN' back to SoCal! Wooooo!
But, by the time the end of the day rolled along, things took a turn for the STRESSFUL!
I knew I had a long drive ahead of me to get back home, so I cut out a little earlier than I usually might, but for the life of me, i could NOT find my car. In my haste, after parking, I took note of the Floor and Row of the parking structure i was in, but neglected to actually write down WHICH structure it was. I headed to the one that I THOUGHT it was and wandered around aimlessly for for an hour or so, getting increasingly more and more frustrated as I went. I caught the attention of a security guard and pleaded for help. He didn't have much to say, except that I was likely in the wrong building. I told him the info I had jotted down when I arrived and he told me I was likely in Lot 1 or 2, since where we were, in Lot 3, did not organize its sections in the way I had described. So I left the structure and attempted to re-enter the convention center, which, in the time I was gone, had closed down. Thankfully, a very nice security guard escorted me through it so that I wouldn't have to resort to heading outside and to the street and going alllll the way around the building in order to get to the correct parking lot.
First time was the charm, and I found my car in Lot 1. PHEW!
I had gotten a text form Sakura letting me know I had accidentally left my estrogen at her house so I had to make a stop there ANYWAY, regardless of my plans. After retrieving my Titty Skittles, i realized tackling a 6 hour drive without dinner was a bad idea, so I checked on Waze for the nearest Del Taco, a fine dining institution that we simply do not have in the Bay Area.
I figured since I was in for a long night ANYWAY, I took my time eating, and texted my friend Ian, who does this drive a lot, about a "scenic" route he had been telling me about before I left. He gave me some details on it, but we found out through the course of our conversation that it had been closed down in some parts by the rain storms we had been getting in this region. I could take it part of the way, but after awhile, had to resign myself to Highway 5 basically for the rest of the way. Oh well.
After all the tacos i figured waiting for the bathroom might be a good idea, so I bided my time until The Urge struck me. I figured I was sittin' pretty, until i had been on the road for no more than 20 minutes when It took me again! By this time it was late and I knew it was gonna be hard to find a place that was open that would let me use it's restroom. I tried a gas station (which I needed to get gas from anyway) but their bathroom was out of order. Fuck. I drove to a nearby liquor store but they said their restroom was not open to the public, and pointed me to a nearby laundromat, which did indeed have a public restroom. what they neglected to mention was that it was a PAY TOILET! I could have sworn those things were illegal in California. They SHOULD be, at least. Thankfully, I happened to have a dollar on me at the time, and of course the laundromat had a change machine on premises, so i managed to make it work. I gotta tell ya though, for a pay toilet, you'd think they'd manage to keep it cleaner. No such luck. I gritted my teeth and made it happen.
Finally, I was ready to be on my way. By now it was 8pm. If I went non-stop I'd be lucky to be home by 2am. Ugh. I SHOULDA left earlier. I took to the road. It was an uneventful drive except for a lotta traffic in and around Los Angeles, but after that, occasional road construction was the only distraction from the long, long road between me and home. About 4 hours into my trip, I got pulled over by a cop who said I was going over 65 in a construction zone. UGH! On such an empty, lonely stretch of freeway so late at night, I have no idea why it even matters, but he wrote me a ticket anyway. THAT hampered my journey even more.
The final obstacle came when I was still about two hours away from home. I had been doing my best to monitor my gas gauge, knowing I'd have to fill up at least one more time before I finally made it home. I always make it a point to start looking for gas stations around the time my gas gauge's yellow light came on, knowing that signaled about 50 miles of drive time until I went dry. I can program my Wave to find gas stationed en route to my destination, so I told it to that in ABOUT 50 miles, leaving me some breathing room so it wasn't too close a shave. It lead me to a gas station in a town called Aromas, and i figured at that point, I was SAFE, but the mistake I made was that I failed to take into account whether or not that gas stationed was actually still even open at this incredibly late hour. where I'm from in the Bay Area, I very often take for granted that our gas stations are open 24 hours, but in THIS town, I guess they didn't get the memo.
At this point, my little yellow light had been on for miles, my tank showed as being approximately 95% empty, and I worried that going out to find another gas station would ACTUALLY make me run out of gas. Adding insult to injury, checking on Waze for the next nearest gas station (which was about 11 miles away) showed no indication as to whether it was indeed open or not. What a kick in the pants it would have been to get there, only for it to be closed as well?
THANKFULLY, Triple A exists, but in this forgotten little corner of California, it took them over an hour to send someone with gas. to add an EXTRA hurdle to the process, the guy they went seemed incapable of charging my account, or even a credit card for the gas. He insisted on cash only (bearing in mind, I had spent my last dollar trying to get into the goddamn pay toilet in L.A.).
He was really jerking me around at first, but as it turned out, he DID have a way of charging a credit card, just not a convenient one, like Square or Venmo. He had to call his office and manually dial in my card number in order to charge it. I know I'm not in Silicon Valley anymore, but come on, isn't it 2018 everywhere yet?
It had been a long, long night and I was finally ready to actually go HOME. The AAA driver directed me at a gas station that he knew for a fact was open 24 hours and I filled up the rest of the way there, and plowed through the final 2 hours of my drive. It was 4am before I finally collapsed into bed, but oh my god, what a feeling. Sadly, i needed to be up at 7am for work and start the whole thing over again. Those 3 hours of sleep were some of the most precious I'd ever received in my life.
I'm going to do my best to procure a plane ticket for when i got to San Diego in July. I'd do anything to avoid a fiasco like that again.
Normally, at this time in a big blog post like this, I would direct you to my Facebook page where I'd uploaded all my photos, but I CAN'T! At least not YET. Ya see, I MIGHTA mouthed off a little bit on some conservative facebook group RE: The Second amendment and caught myself a 7 day postblock. I got 3, agonizing days left, at which point I will upload all my photos. until then, enjoy this little taste, and wish me LUCK for Sac-Con this month, Fanime NEXT month and ComicCon in July! It's gonna be a GAS!
Get it? Gas? Cuz of the gas station being closed in my story?
Ahh, you don't get it.
EDIT: Hey dudes and dudettes!
I'm off my Facebook postblock and I was able to get all the pictures from WonderCon up!
Go check 'em OUT
I would have posted this blog sooner, in fact I probably SHOULD have posted this blog sooner... but goddamn I was tired afterwards. Like SO goddamn tired. This drive wasn't even as long as the San Diego journey I made in 2014, but man oh man, it laid me out like crazy.
BUT! I'll get to that later! Lemme tell you about actually BEING there! THAT'S the important part.
So I arrived late Thursday night at my friend Sakura's place. She and her BF Joey were gracious enough to let me crash at their place for the event so I didn't have to toss money away on a hotel room. Thank you Sakura and Joey.
I also met their cat, Pumpkin, or "Pumpster" as they sometimes call him. That has got to be THE friendliest cat I've EVER met! Holy crap! This is a cat who will greet you like a puppy, and make instant friends with you. Within a few minutes of having walked in the door, this gato was basically in my lap. They also slept with me on Sakura's couch, so I'm certain I've made a friend for life, and I couldn't be happier.
This Large Orange Cat is Pumpkin. Appropriate, no?
I woke up early the next day, and with Sakura, hopped a Lyft to the convention center. We had to get there close to opening so we could procure our badges from Ted, the very, very kind man who was in charge of the Prism booth this year. One of the perks of being asked to speak on a panel for a company like Prism is that I sometimes get to bring a friend with me :3 and since Sakura was so kind to give me a place to sleep, she was that friend!
However, getting our badges was not as simple as I assumed it would be. I thought we were collecting them from Ted himself, but it turns out we had to get them from registry, which in itself wouldn't have been such a big deal, but for some reason, registry didn't actually HAVE our info. I thought that this year, Prism had done an excellent job of collecting everyone's info ahead of time so that problems like this could be avoided, but for whatever reason, registry didn't have their ducks in a row. After giving them every possible iteration of our info, we finally got ted on the phone, and he told them to just print us badges on the spot. No sooner had they completed that task, than the young man at the keyboard suddenly went "Wait... Knave and Sakura? I found you guys in the system".
It was a mess. A big, silly mess.
On top of that, one thing I did not realize is that for some reason, at this con, there is a big, big difference between an "Exhibitor" badge and a "Professional" badge. Professionals badges are given to people who are on panel or taking part in such events. An Exhibitor badge is for people who HAVE tables either in the artist alley or exhibitor hall. I feel like 9/10 cons I've been to, these would not be separate badges. If you're taking part in the con in a professional way, in any way OTHER than as a customer, so just get one kinda badge, and that badge opens doors to you. Sadly it was not the case here.
Shortly after receiving our badges, we went to find Ted at the booth, confirm my 4pm slot for signing autographs, and to kinda help set up the stage a little bit too (it was early yet and not everything was done), and this was something we figured we were allowed to do, given the "Professional" status on our badges. We found out, however, in a somewhat rude awakening, that since we were not OFFICIAL proprietors of the Prism Comics booth, that we weren't allowed to be in the room. not only that, but when we decided to wait outside the room until it officially opened in less than 30 minutes, we learned that we weren't even to be allowed IN THE BUILDING!
They literally had a guard escort us off premises, and made us with outside for the convention to open! Like COMMONERS!!!
Needless to say, I was MORTIFIED! I had been talking myself up to Sakura all day, talking about how sticking with me would open doors for her, and how hanging out with a PRO at a comic convention was the ONLY way to go! How embarrassing. T^T
In either case, we made it inside eventually, after a lotta fuss, and began walking the aisles. Sakura had never been to a comic convention before, and while she wasn't a huge comic fan, she was a fan of a lot of the byproducts of the comics industry, like comic book movies, games, and just art in general. I was pretty confident that we'd find stuff to see and do there that she would enjoy, but I knew we'd have to really be LOOKING for it. We stopped by many booths of people just showcasing their art. Lotta great talent on the floor this year, I gotta say. Sakura was particularly attracted to the artists who took a fine art approach to comics (paint, pastels, charcoal, etc). That's very much her bag right there. She's an avid portrait illustrator, with charcoal pastels being her main medium, although this year she's been dabbling a lot in watercolour. so she took a lot of notice to those booths, and that was great and fun, but the REAL fun began when we found a booth manned exclusively by dudes who had written books about serial killers. Sakura is a psychologist by trade and as much as art is her bag, psychology is REALLY her bag! we must hung around that booth for a good half hour, and they just shit the shit back and forth about this and that. They had a guy at the booth who was Ted Bundy's clinical psychologist in prison, and Sakura's jaw almost hit the floor.
I am SO glad we found that able ^___^
There's always some insecurity when I bring someone new to a big con like this, and they're not like, on the same level of LOVING comics as I am. I worry they'll just be bored all day and humoring me the whole time. I don't want THAT, I want people to be having fun when they're with me, and I gotta say, mission accomplished, in this case.
By the time Day 2 rolled around, I wanted to take a break from the con. One of my biggest bad habits when I go to cons like this is that I kinda overdo it, and I don't really give myself a chance to rest and enjoy my surroundings. Usually that's due to necessity, since the vast majority of cons I go to, I'm representing myself. If I'm lucky, I have a booth partner, but even then, I usually stay at the table and don't really venture out and look around that much, and I almost never check out the city I'm in. This time was different because I was there as part of a large group of people. There was no requirement for me to even be at the booth most of the time, as it was heavily manned by the many members of Prism, and the authors and artists of the "We're Still Here" anthology. I showed up for my autograph singing sessions but I didn't actually have one on day 2, and I was overcome with an overwhelming urge to SEE SoCal, a place I don't spend a lotta time in. So I lent my badge to joey and told him and Sakura to have a fun time at the con, and I called my dear friend Amanda, who lives in the Long Beach area. She showed me all her favourite little nooks and crannies in town. We went to a witchcraft shop. I was walked through casting a wish granting spell (which i tried to make as selfless as possible, as per my own personal tradition in spellcasting). We checked out a cute little place called the Library Cafe, which was exactly what it sounded like, where we got snacks and drinks and hung out and talked. She brought me to a cute little record shop, where I literally could have spent hours and hours sifting through music if I wanted to... but then we got dinner and headed back to her place where we ate and watched Mad Men until it got dark. At which pointed I headed back to Sakura's place, cuz Day 3 was the BIG DAY and I wanted to be well rested for what was to come.
Here's Amanda's bird. I forget the bird's nae, but they dive bombed me many times during the visit.
Day 3 was the day of our panel. the whole reason I was there!
This one was ALSO starting early, but not as early as Day 1. I had a little bit of time to pack up all my shit so that I wouldn't have to head back to Sakura's after the con. I figured I'd take my own car this time, park it somewhere inexpensive and leave straight away from the con. The challenge however, was making it through the con traffic to actually arrive to my own event on time! Which, if you've ever been to a big con like WonderCon on the last day, you'd know is a lot harder than it sounds.
Parking lots were jammed, but I managed to find a place pretty much basically in the nick of time. I parked and RAN to the panel hall and managed to get my butt IN my seat a mere matter of minutes before they officially called for start time.
I did not have tons of time to prepare my remarks for the panel this time around, but I've done this enough times now to the point where I've learned that it's probably best left to improv. Rehearsing too much makes you sound programmed and robotic. As always, an hour never REALLY seems like enough. I wish we could talked for like TWO hours, it felt like there were a lotta people in the crowd who had questions that they never got to ask. Oh well, maybe those people will be able to catch the panel again when it comes to Comic Con?
Time flew by, it felt like. We had a small gatheration outside the panel hall, had some photo ops, shook hands with fans, and eachother. There were a few people on the panel whom I had not gotten a chance to actually meet beforehand, so that was nice to be able to say hello to everyone.
My view form the conference table at the panel. I feel so important! ^___^
With only a few hours left in the day before they started closing up, so I made an aggressive lap around the convention hall again, buying up everything I had seen on day 1 that really caught my eye, plus several OTHER items I saw for the first time that day. I showed up to the Prism booth for one last autograph session and sold out of ALMOST everything! That was good, because, you know, makin' money, but also kinda bad because it's only a couple weeks until my next cons and that means I had to place a re-print order ASAP. Hopefully it comes to me in time, fingers crossed. Went out on a high note at least, when I found out that Tara (the person who organized the We're Still Here compilation AND the panel) had room on her Comic Con panel for another person, and I SNAGGED that spot! So come this July, I'll be HEADIN' back to SoCal! Wooooo!
But, by the time the end of the day rolled along, things took a turn for the STRESSFUL!
I knew I had a long drive ahead of me to get back home, so I cut out a little earlier than I usually might, but for the life of me, i could NOT find my car. In my haste, after parking, I took note of the Floor and Row of the parking structure i was in, but neglected to actually write down WHICH structure it was. I headed to the one that I THOUGHT it was and wandered around aimlessly for for an hour or so, getting increasingly more and more frustrated as I went. I caught the attention of a security guard and pleaded for help. He didn't have much to say, except that I was likely in the wrong building. I told him the info I had jotted down when I arrived and he told me I was likely in Lot 1 or 2, since where we were, in Lot 3, did not organize its sections in the way I had described. So I left the structure and attempted to re-enter the convention center, which, in the time I was gone, had closed down. Thankfully, a very nice security guard escorted me through it so that I wouldn't have to resort to heading outside and to the street and going alllll the way around the building in order to get to the correct parking lot.
First time was the charm, and I found my car in Lot 1. PHEW!
I had gotten a text form Sakura letting me know I had accidentally left my estrogen at her house so I had to make a stop there ANYWAY, regardless of my plans. After retrieving my Titty Skittles, i realized tackling a 6 hour drive without dinner was a bad idea, so I checked on Waze for the nearest Del Taco, a fine dining institution that we simply do not have in the Bay Area.
I figured since I was in for a long night ANYWAY, I took my time eating, and texted my friend Ian, who does this drive a lot, about a "scenic" route he had been telling me about before I left. He gave me some details on it, but we found out through the course of our conversation that it had been closed down in some parts by the rain storms we had been getting in this region. I could take it part of the way, but after awhile, had to resign myself to Highway 5 basically for the rest of the way. Oh well.
After all the tacos i figured waiting for the bathroom might be a good idea, so I bided my time until The Urge struck me. I figured I was sittin' pretty, until i had been on the road for no more than 20 minutes when It took me again! By this time it was late and I knew it was gonna be hard to find a place that was open that would let me use it's restroom. I tried a gas station (which I needed to get gas from anyway) but their bathroom was out of order. Fuck. I drove to a nearby liquor store but they said their restroom was not open to the public, and pointed me to a nearby laundromat, which did indeed have a public restroom. what they neglected to mention was that it was a PAY TOILET! I could have sworn those things were illegal in California. They SHOULD be, at least. Thankfully, I happened to have a dollar on me at the time, and of course the laundromat had a change machine on premises, so i managed to make it work. I gotta tell ya though, for a pay toilet, you'd think they'd manage to keep it cleaner. No such luck. I gritted my teeth and made it happen.
Finally, I was ready to be on my way. By now it was 8pm. If I went non-stop I'd be lucky to be home by 2am. Ugh. I SHOULDA left earlier. I took to the road. It was an uneventful drive except for a lotta traffic in and around Los Angeles, but after that, occasional road construction was the only distraction from the long, long road between me and home. About 4 hours into my trip, I got pulled over by a cop who said I was going over 65 in a construction zone. UGH! On such an empty, lonely stretch of freeway so late at night, I have no idea why it even matters, but he wrote me a ticket anyway. THAT hampered my journey even more.
The final obstacle came when I was still about two hours away from home. I had been doing my best to monitor my gas gauge, knowing I'd have to fill up at least one more time before I finally made it home. I always make it a point to start looking for gas stations around the time my gas gauge's yellow light came on, knowing that signaled about 50 miles of drive time until I went dry. I can program my Wave to find gas stationed en route to my destination, so I told it to that in ABOUT 50 miles, leaving me some breathing room so it wasn't too close a shave. It lead me to a gas station in a town called Aromas, and i figured at that point, I was SAFE, but the mistake I made was that I failed to take into account whether or not that gas stationed was actually still even open at this incredibly late hour. where I'm from in the Bay Area, I very often take for granted that our gas stations are open 24 hours, but in THIS town, I guess they didn't get the memo.
At this point, my little yellow light had been on for miles, my tank showed as being approximately 95% empty, and I worried that going out to find another gas station would ACTUALLY make me run out of gas. Adding insult to injury, checking on Waze for the next nearest gas station (which was about 11 miles away) showed no indication as to whether it was indeed open or not. What a kick in the pants it would have been to get there, only for it to be closed as well?
THANKFULLY, Triple A exists, but in this forgotten little corner of California, it took them over an hour to send someone with gas. to add an EXTRA hurdle to the process, the guy they went seemed incapable of charging my account, or even a credit card for the gas. He insisted on cash only (bearing in mind, I had spent my last dollar trying to get into the goddamn pay toilet in L.A.).
He was really jerking me around at first, but as it turned out, he DID have a way of charging a credit card, just not a convenient one, like Square or Venmo. He had to call his office and manually dial in my card number in order to charge it. I know I'm not in Silicon Valley anymore, but come on, isn't it 2018 everywhere yet?
It had been a long, long night and I was finally ready to actually go HOME. The AAA driver directed me at a gas station that he knew for a fact was open 24 hours and I filled up the rest of the way there, and plowed through the final 2 hours of my drive. It was 4am before I finally collapsed into bed, but oh my god, what a feeling. Sadly, i needed to be up at 7am for work and start the whole thing over again. Those 3 hours of sleep were some of the most precious I'd ever received in my life.
I'm going to do my best to procure a plane ticket for when i got to San Diego in July. I'd do anything to avoid a fiasco like that again.
Normally, at this time in a big blog post like this, I would direct you to my Facebook page where I'd uploaded all my photos, but I CAN'T! At least not YET. Ya see, I MIGHTA mouthed off a little bit on some conservative facebook group RE: The Second amendment and caught myself a 7 day postblock. I got 3, agonizing days left, at which point I will upload all my photos. until then, enjoy this little taste, and wish me LUCK for Sac-Con this month, Fanime NEXT month and ComicCon in July! It's gonna be a GAS!
Get it? Gas? Cuz of the gas station being closed in my story?
Ahh, you don't get it.
EDIT: Hey dudes and dudettes!
I'm off my Facebook postblock and I was able to get all the pictures from WonderCon up!
Go check 'em OUT
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