Gen Con Journal 2012: Trade Day

So, we got into Indianapolis last night fairly late and I didn’t have a chance to blog about anything. It was already late when we got in, the cab ride to our residence was far longer than it needed to be, and there were some interesting issues with our lodging. We’d also just flown for some six hours, and were pretty exhausted.

So let’s talk a little bit about yesterday, and then I’ll get into Trade Day stuff.

We got up pretty early in the morning. I was actually up earlier than N because I’m a lot easier to wake up than she is, and I was super excited to get to Indianapolis and the meat of the vacation. I got up, packed up all of our stuff, and was ready to go even before the first wake-up call came in. N took a little extra time getting up, which was fine, and we managed to grab some breakfast at McDonalds before we got going. At the airport, she started feeling a little sick, and the US Airways process proved to be entirely too much bullshit for her in that state. It’s ridiculous. You have to sign into the little automatic kiosk thing, then you have to go and check your bags with the baggage check-in people, who are also the agents who can check you in if something goes wrong with the kiosk. The line-up was insane, filled with people who didn’t get their stuff processed properly, and everyone (I mean EVERYONE) was confused and upset by the whole thing. Why not just let the agents deal with your shit? Because technology. I guess.

Anyway, after a good half hour of fuckery, we got our stuff, and then got rushed through the security line. Twice! We got randomly selected for hand-wipe-bomb-duty, and the nice lady doing that let us cut in line to the fastest security station. Then the guy in front of N killed the Radiation Machine of Death that everyone’s so upset about and we got to go through a normal metal detector. And they didn’t even touch my junk! A winrar is me!

Then I won some money at a slot machine. The lady beside me hid her jealousy not at all.

Charlotte airport is not nearly as horrible as Phoenix, and the land around the city was simply gorgeous. It reminded me of what Edmonton would be like if Edmonton sucked less at city planning. All the buildings lined up really nicely.

We ate some burgers, got our gate changed on us again, and got on the plane to Indianapolis. Like all of the flights on US Airways, this one sucked, but it sucked less by only being two hours.

There was no Big Awesome Dragon in the lobby this time around, which was disappointing. Because we’d decided to stay with some locals instead of at a hotel, we couldn’t take a shuttle-bus to get where we were going; we hired a cab, who then quickly screwed us out of $25 while taking us roughly the distance I walk to get to my job. The place was a bit run down, but there was a multitude of cats, which made me more inclined to like it.

We paid our rent. We got shit sorted, which took forever because the lady I’d made the arrangements with had forgotten we were coming a day early, and we got to our accommodations for the week. They were crap. It’s an attic. It’s barely a proper attic, even; it’s roughly a third of the attic, with a busted window and a ceiling so sloped you can’t properly stand upright. It’s not the worst place I have ever stayed, but it’s certainly not my favourite. Still, we showered, brushed our teeth, and quickly fell asleep.

This morning, we got up a little later than planned. We had hoped to be out by seven to get an early start on the day and get our badges and such figured out. That didn’t happen, because the new alarm-clock app I put on my ipad didn’t go off. So we got up fifteen minutes late, caught a bus to the Convention Center, and halfway there I forgot my ID back at the house. N tried to pick up my badge without me, but couldn’t, so I had to go all the way back to the house, all the way back to the Con, and by then the seminars I’d wanted to see early in the day were over. We went shopping instead.

N bought a hot new pair of jeans. I bought a $50 data package that won’t work in the device I brought because of our Advanced Canadian Technology. We are too Advanced. Which sometimes sucks.

We got back to the Convention and sat in on a seminar about getting games into schools by the lovely Susan Morris (a person I believe should write more games), and another about how to use games to encourage literacy. The former was brilliant, the latter a little more scattershot and strangely paced. Don’t get me wrong, I learned things, but the lacking presentation made me much more aware of it than it should have.

We met up with A and C, who are both awesome, and went out to eat some food at the nearby Steak & Shake. We headed back to their hotel for some scintillating and sinful… CARDS AGAINST HUMANITY, which N won by an incredibly narrow margin (namely, haiku). The game was a lot of fun, the company was awesome, and I finally got to meet Sarah Darkmagic and DavetheGame face-to-face. Apparently GeekyLyndsay will be in tomorrow after some interesting complications with her flights, so I didn’t get a chance to meet her yet, but it’s a long convention and I still have hopes.

Buses in Indianapolis, for the record, suck balls.