The first day of the trip to Botcon was a very long day of travel.
After getting lost on the way to the airport several times, which is standard in Boston, I made it with plenty of time to spare before my flight. I sat at my gate jotting down some notes to myself and waited patiently for my flight. After a while I took my Nintendo DS out and lost all track of time. When I looked at my phone to see what time it was, it was already 45 minutes after my flight was supposed to take off. I checked the board and my flight was had been delayed an hour and a half. Bummer. I made all the necessary calls to let everyone know that I was going to be late. When I got on the plane I got a call from Rich/Tigerpaw asking me about my arrival details because he was getting to the convention a day earlier than us and he did not know that Sam and I were not getting there the same time as him because we were stopping over at Liz/Dayla’s for a day on the way. I may have hung on him. I am not entirely sure. The plane was getting ready to leave the gate and I was supposed to shut my phone off, but it did not sound like he was ready to stop the conversation. I did make sure that he knew Sam would be the one to call and not me.
The first hour and a half of the plane ride was fairly uneventful. The plane was only about half booked so the other people in my row moved to another row, allowing me plenty of space. I listened to my Zen Touch and started reading a Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD trade paperback I had bought only a few days prior to leaving. The last hour of the flight turned out to be quite turbulent, which I was not expecting. Over the years I have managed to do a lot of flying and there were a couple points on this flight I was pretty concerned. When we finally landed, we found that we were even later than expected because of all the turbulance. This put us in Chicago during evening rush hour. I heard one of the flight attendants complaining to another that she would have to drive home during rush hour and all I could think was that at least she did not have to drive to Kentucky instead. That, however, was my plan. After what seemed like an eternity of taxiing on the runways of O’Hare and navigating my way to baggage claim, I finally found my way outside and met Sam.
Sam displayed his engineering skills by valiantly trying to make my enormous suitcase fit in his trunk in many different ways before finally realizing that it just was not going to fit and finally put it in the backseat. We were then on our way. A little south of Chicago, Sam needed gas and I was getting pretty hungry. Sam pulled off the highway and we pulled into a gas station with a Wendy’s across the street. We must have been in the ghetto or something because anytime we got out of the car at least two guys came up to us asking if we needed any help and if they could have any money. It was like the area was swarming with bums. One of them seemed to have a lengthy conversation with Sam while he was filling up the tank. I really don’t know what was said, but I know he asked for money. We moved across the street and went to the Wendy’s. I was famished since I had not eaten since breakfast and it was well past lunch time at this point. 
When I walked to the table from the register with my tray of food, some guy at a table called out, “Its peanut butter jelly time!” I had forgotten I was wearing a shirt with the slogan and dancing banana on it. Good times.
We continued on our journey after finishing at the Wendy’s and fending off more of the bums. Much of following time blends together. When you are in a car for that long with another person talking about whatever comes to mind and listening to random music, time loses all sense of continuity. Along the way, we stopped at a couple Wal-Marts and a Target to see if there was anything we were looking and also to keep an eye out for an FM modulator so we could use one of our MP3 players on his car radio. We finally found a decent one at a Radio Shack and picked it up. It made the music selection significantly more diverse, which was most welcome.
Probably one of my only regrets for the entire trip was that I didn’t take enough pictures along the way. The only picture I took on the trip to Owensboro, Kentucky (where Liz lives) from Chicago was Sam relieving himself on an overgrown island on an off-ramp.
Due to the flight delays and the traffic we hit in Chicago (and getting lost a couple times), we were running way past our original ETA to Liz’s house. We called her a few times on the way to give her updates. She also let us know that her mom was making us lasagna, which was pretty sweet. Originally we were supposed to get there around dinner time. When we finally pulled up to Liz’s house it was about half past midnight. Liz came out and greeted us (after I called her and told her to) and we came in and reheated some lasagna. The rest of the evening was kinda foggy because I was so absolutely exhausted from all the travel. We met a couple of Liz’s friends, Josh and Britney. I think I passed out shortly thereafter.
It was a long first day and we hadn’t even gotten to the convention yet.
More to come.
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