AC2018: Return Trip
And so Soggy and I got a splendid night’s blissful, uninterrupted rest that Sunday, to leave us refreshed and energized to take on the return trip home …
Naw, just kidding.
Sunday night was, if anything, even worse than Saturday, even if no further fire alarms were pulled.
And this time Soggy DID phone down to the front desk, summoning assistance of the uniformed variety to quell the noise. Eventually it must have worked, because I do vaguely recall the snatches of a dream here and there, sometime between 3am and 6am, when we rose to make our early start back to NJ (for me) and CT (for him). Of course, I might have had some trouble getting a full night’s sleep myself anyway, owing to the heavy meal the night before which did have me propped up again after Soggy’s first attempt to quiet our noisy neighbors. So, between the indigestion and the disturbances, it was not a lot of fun. I remember thinking to myself on the first day of the con how lucky we were to have landed a room on the 12th floor, low enough that we could take the stairs if the elevator lines were THAT horrendously horrendous. Ironically, I never took the stairs once, and I’m not sure Soggy did either, so we gladly would have traded our relatively low roost for a floor where the other guests were as unbothersome as we were. (Funny thing about that word hotels use, “guests” - which suggests you are there at the establishment’s sufferance, and if you do step too far out of line, you would be no more welcome there than at a friend or relative’s where you were also staying as a guest. Let’s hope the Westin has made note of our Sunday complaint, and might hesitate to allow those particular “guests” to make use of their rooms in 2019 and beyond.)
And yet, in spite of all of that, Monday turned out to be far better than it had any right to be. Running on fumes as we were, we nevertheless got everything gathered up and moved down to the car in good time, and were on the road by 7:30. I’d warned Soggy that I would want to grab a quick breakfast before heading out, but that was before I overindulged Sunday night, and between that and the poor night’s sleep I didn’t even want to look at food when I forced myself out of bed Monday. I had an unopened bottle of water and an utapped box of animal crackers to nosh on if I got hungry/thirsty during the early portion of our drive, and that turned out to be plenty. Along the way I’d pick up a couple of Hostess fruit pies at one of our gas stops (these didn’t taste nearly as good as they have in the past, with a weird sort of funny aftertaste, so I think I’ll avoid those in the future) and a bag of mini-donuts and a Snapple at the other gas stop, and these tided me over so well I didn’t even have to go into the animal crackers. I also at one point chugged a small Tropicana OJ from the cooler, although it wasn’t really that cool by that point, Soggy having emptied all the ice from the unit before taking it down to the car. Still, given that I'd skipped breakfast and that we never stop for a proper lunch on the return trip, this was a nice little caloric litany to sustain me into NJ.
At one of our rest stops, where we used the facilities but got no gas or food/drink, we saw another car with Anthrocon paraphernalia on display, and we ended up parking next to each other in the lot. The two young gents within, who were both PA locals, each wore their AC2018 T-shirts, so we stood and chatted with them for a few minutes before we parted ways. Sadly, I don’t recall their names/handles (I’m a bit Latura-like when it comes to names, I’m afraid) but maybe Soggy does? Wotever. In any event, it was a cheery little providential encounter.
And, of course, there was music, if not right away; the rather dour mood of our departure discouraged us from diving into any tunes right away, and so it wasn’t until after we’d driven almost an hour north and merged onto Route 80 heading east that we cued up our first CD: the Moody Blues’ “Days of Future Past.” Sadly, this largely-orchestral 1967 classic does not play well with road noise, and ended up being almost as inaudible as Disc One of Pink Floyd’s “Ummagumma” when we first tried to play it a year or two ago. Fortunately, the other five selections fared much better, to greater or lesser degrees: Cell15’s “Chapter One,” “The Traveling Wilburys Vol. 3,” Glass Hammer’s “Valkyrie,” the Alan Parsons Project’s “Eye in the Sky” and 3rdegree’s “Ones and Zeroes.” The last in particular fared better than expected, its bare-bones production allowing the music to stand out over the road noise much better than I’d have thought. So, a pleasant surprise to see me almost all the way home. And Soggy seemed to like it too, so that’s always an added bonus.
We did hit another traffic snag on the return trip, which delayed us for another hour or so, just as on the outbound leg, this one due to a truck accident rather than construction … and when we finally passed the wreck, we could see from the mangled cab just how serious it was. Our early start that morning still enabled us to get back to my own homestead around 3:00 or so, in spite of this delay, and so Soggy lingered a bit longer than he usually would, since I not only had several batches of new Dave Hopkins Art to share with him since last year’s AC, but also took a little extra time to show him some of my movie poster collection as well. Not nearly all of it, of course, since he DID wish to be back home himself while it was still Monday, but hopefully enough to make an impression and please his eyeballs to a moderate degree.
Leaving me with a larger share of MexiCokes® than usual - an even dozen, to wit - Soggy was back on the road by 4:00 or thereabouts … and thus did AC2018 come to an end for the two of us. But, as I always say, AC’s not *truly* over until the last MexiCoke® is gone - and since I still have seven left as of this writing, I can wring just a bit more out of the con before looking ahead to 2019!
Up next in the perhaps-final post about AC2018 (if I get around to it): the Acquisitions and perhaps some final thoughts and scattered impressions! Stay tuned. Or don’t. Either’s fine by me.