Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="HellHound" data-source="post: 258996" data-attributes="member: 3397">So.  Thursday night, We get in the van and drive to Origins in Columbus Ohio, planning to arrive around 8am Friday.  Border Crossing, 10 pm, Hill Island Bridge. Get taken out of the van and brought into customs and immigration for a background check. No problem. Hit the road, welcome to the US of A. Watch pretty fireworks as we drive.  1 am, Friday Morning, just outside of Rochester, on the I-90 (Toll road) - mile marker 371.1  Transmission Failure.  100%. SCRAP metal. The van, she no go ANYWHERE.  Get on the cell phone, call for roadside, get a tow. End up at a Super 8 motel in Henrietta at 3:18 am. Our neighbours are enjoying a nice bout of S&M sex in the next room. "Whack! Whack! Whack!" "Mooooaaan"...  9 am, get the van to a garage. 1 pm confirm that repairs will cost about $2,000 to $3,000 (USD). Call a rental company. It's the 5th of July. Only one car on the lot, a Dodge Ram pickup with extended cab. Rent it and roll.  6 pm Friday night, arrive in beautiful Colubus Ohio. Follow direction to our Hotel on Broad Street. Broad Street is BEAUTIFUL. Gorgeous buildings, huge lawns. Turns out we are on East Broad, the hotel is on West Broad. Drive to OTHER end of Broad Street. UGLY. The wrong side of the tracks. Ghettos. Everything closes at 10pm, with only Drive-thru's and the Duke Duchess shop open. Cheap hotel (but that's what we shop for, $50 is the most we pay for hotel rooms).  8 am, Saturday morning. Arrive at the Convention Centre. Eyeball a line up of 200+ people waiting to get their badges. Almost become depressed when we notice the "Exhibitor" line has NO ONE in it. Get our badges. Set up the booth for Hal & Doug who are still having breakfast.  Have a great day, meet all kinds of big names, including Phil Foglio, Anthony Valterra, Jim Ward, Jim Butler, plus the guys from Paradigm, Alex from Mongoose, Jeff from Bard's productions and so on...  4 pm, Sunday night - tear down the booth, load all the MEG and THG books into my rental truck (we volunteered to bring all their stock with us so they would save on shipping), go our for drinks and dinner with a whole bunch of killer friendly and fun industry folk.  Finally retire to Doug & Hal's hotel where we play "Munchkin" for a while. Then back to our hotel and bed.  11 am, Monday. Drive back to Rochester. Almost flat broke. Living off Wendy's & Subway (all weekend actually, except for a sandwich from Arby's and the dinner with Doug, Hal, Jim & Co). Call transmission shop. Final estimate is over $2,700. Should be ready tomorrow.  7 am, Tuesday morning. Wake up with a fever and a cold. Go out to find a drug store. Cops ALL over the motel complex. 2 K-9 units, 8 squad cars. Stumble off with truck to buy drugs.  11 am, check out. Car won't be ready until after noon. Go to a gaming store I drove past at 7 am. Go in. It's HUGE. Also the first time I've ever walked into a gaming store and found MY BOOK on the shelf. Do a dance of joy. Hang out at game store and play IceHouse games with Denise in the back until 1 pm.  Go pick up the van. $2,763 (USD). Crud.  Return the rental, move all our stock over to the van. Drive like the wind. Cross the border without incident, nice and smooth. Get back home in time to pick up our daughters at their Irish Dance class.  Come Home. Post one message to the boards. Pass out circa 9pm. Have feverish dreams all night. Wake up in massive fever. Blech.</blockquote>

Verification