Narrativity, part the third: the post-con
Monday we slept in a little, then it was up to meet with S to send the last of the consuite leftovers to a local food bank. I just barely remembered to call my hotel contact and let her know how well things had gone. J and I were contemplating another Perkins trip, and ran into a couple of the niftiest people from the con, so we all jaunted off together for eggs and bacon and many things cooked in butter.
J and I had determined to visit the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, something I've wanted to see since I first started going out there. S (a different S) and C wanted to go to Uncle Hugo's bookstore, which is in the same general vicinity, so hey, mini road trip! Yes, it was across the Minn-St.Paul metro area *again*. I had printed out directions to the Sculpture Garden, but both my new passengers were determined to use the GPS on their phones... which worked as well as GPS always does, IME. But U-turns exist, and we got there, and found Uncle Hugo's. Which has been storied in song and legend for many a year, and don't get me wrong, it's neat, but it was rather smaller and more like my local used book store than I expected. However, I came out with an entire shopping bag full of books, so obviously it has something going for it. (And Uncle Edgar's, which is the mystery bookstore joined to it like a Siamese twin, had a sequel I'd never known existed to one of my go-to comfort books. Yippee!)
GPS and I were getting along even less well, and the blow-up on my city map didn't quite reach to where we were, but with a combination of directions from a bookstore employee, more GPS, and some dead reckoning, we got to the sculpture garden. (By this point I'm caroling "I haven't made a U-turn in minutes", but I'm amused more than annoyed, so it's all good.) S had had his fill of the heat, and I don't blame him, so he got an Uber back to the hotel, but C chose to do the sculpture garden as well. J and I wandered around and enjoyed the Spoonbridge and Cherry (which is just seriously cool) and other exhibits, as well as the pretentious descriptions thereof. We got some very dramatic views of the sculptures with the darkening sky looming behind them, and we all made it back to the car just as the rain started.
(A brief digression: Back at the last real 4th Street, after the last shots were fired and my fellow revolutionaries had said their goodbyes, I'd gone back up to my hotel room. After watching a couple episodes of something on the laptop, I was looking out my window at the pond beside the hotel -- and there were little gray fuzzy ducklings! Some were swimming in formation with their moms; a few were v-ing ambitiously across the water on their own. Watching them made me feel good enough that I went back downstairs to take one last pass through and see if anybody fun was still around. And lo, there were a few of the "intermediate writers" crowd hanging on in the consuite. And then a few more came in, and a few more, and soon there was a big bunch of us talking and laughing and drinking Writers Tears and making terrible jokes until 'way late. It was a goodbye, but it was also the essence of everything that had made 4th Street great.
As J and I were wending past the Spoonbridge and Cherry the second time, there in the pond at the base of it were ducks -- including a momma duck with about a dozen little fuzzy ducklings! They were paddling about in a clump as baby ducklings do. Watching them gave me a strong sense of having come full circle, a feeling of closure and of starting anew.)
By the time we got to the expressway entrance I'd seen on the way in, the skies had opened and people were starting to build arks. So it was back across the Minn-St.Paul metro area *again*, only this time with five feet of visibility in which to see the taillights of the Minnesota drivers in front of me hitting their brakes for no particular reason, or sailing across multiple lanes of traffic without warning. I thought I knew where I was going, finally, but between the rain and the brakelights I must have missed a sign (and you only get one, driving in Minneapolis), and I was just starting to think that my, this is taking longer than I expected when I saw the "expressway ends" sign. The expressway was not supposed to end, so I pulled over and grabbed the map out of the back of the seat, and yep, we were nowhere near where we were supposed to be. But there looked to be an easy route back, and GPS concurred (and it didn't even involve a U-turn!), so we found the route back and took an unscheduled scenic tour of the west country. In a monsoon.
(The only time I came close to having a problem, as I was driving in what was potentially dangerous weather, was when my phone kept zapping me in the butt to tell me that there was potentially dangerous weather. Must get to the phone store and have them make it never do that again.)
In spite of this, we got back to the hotel with time to dry off (we'd been driving with the windows open, because remember the heat? It hadn't gone away just because there was a torrential downpour going on) and still get to the restaurant where we were supposed to be having the post-con concom/Board/whoever's-interested meeting. I also had time to do a quick google-maps hit and *write down* directions, which I credit as why we got to the restaurant with no detours and only the smallest of U-turns.
Tea House has very yummy Chinese food and good plum wine, and what more can you really ask at the end of a con? Except good company, which we definitely had. As a meeting, well, there's a reason I style myself Herder of Otters: one-third of the Board wasn't coming for fear of getting trapped by the water (perfectly reasonable, there were flood warnings), and another third had to leave to go rescue somebody from the airport. But we didn't have much business to do anyway, just an overview of finances (not nearly as far in the hole as I'd feared) and some sitting around stunned that it went well enough that we're doing it again.
I did have a bit of a qualm about the Crispy Duck which everybody else wanted to order (and which I usually love). But I told the ducklings story by way of explanation, and apparently that made it okay. It was very good Crispy Duck.
Afterward, a bar was proposed. I dropped Jane, who had much more sense of self-preservation than I by this point, back at the hotel, then headed out to the agreed-upon bar. Which, because some folks needed to be dropped off at home and lived out that way, was on the other freakin' side of Minneapolis, again. But it was late enough that the traffic wasn't too bad, and I had a few minutes to make my own common-sense roll and hit Google Maps and write down directions, so whatthehell, it was all fine.
Halfway there comes the call that the target bar is closing, so it was GPS again for the replacement bar, and oh look! More turning around! But we got there, and there were drinks and good company, and another refugee from the airport joined us to make it even better company.
And then it was 2am, and time for even this crowd to admit they were tired. So off we went back to the hotel (with only one minor U-turn), and though I warned C that it was 394 again, I *finally* knew where I was going and spotted all the turns and made it back sans detours.
J was sensibly asleep, and this time I'd remembered to set the alarm while it was still daylight so I didn't risk waking her fumbling with it. I had a little trouble getting to sleep, because even though I was too tired to see straight, I'd been having so much fun I didn't want to stop. Then I turned over, and it was morning.
Tuesday morning we loaded up the car, which was an adventure in its own right; rear visibility was a lost cause. Everything eventually got crammed in, and we rolled out somewhere around 1:00. Which gave us time to drive through quite a lot of western Wisconsin (still beautiful, still far bigger than necessary), blast some more music, wonder how the hell far it was to our planned stop (mile markers not so useful when the expressways keep joining and splitting), and finally get to the glory of the Lake Delton Culver's for a leisurely lunch so's to miss the worst of rush hour around Madison. (Why yes, I have done this route before.) And then more driving, and J & I took a break from blasting music to have a great conversation about our various novels -- hers fanfic, mine original, but character is character. It was a really nice capper to a fabulous weekend.
The trouble with the drive back is that by the time I get tired enough to want to stop for the night, it's only a couple of hours to home. Seems silly to stop when you're that close, so there's a certain amount of rest area strolling and really loud music to keep the driver from getting dozey. By this point we were on to the merits of various classic Trek episodes ("Spock's Brain" is actually kind of fun, but there's no excuse for "Turnabout Intruder"). The weather continued revolting; the only thing that kept me from stripping off my shirt and driving naked was that I knew I'd have to put it back on again. A 2am stop for gas meant some more turning around, not so much to find an open station, as to figure out how to get to it from the off-ramp. I made the mistake of listening to the expressway signage around Ann Arbor instead of relying on my own directions, so we got to turn around one... more... time! just to thoroughly commemorate the trip, and then I dropped J and her stuff back at her own cozy home.
And then I barreled on for home myself, with some *really* loud music, and croaking along with what was left of my voice. Rolled into the driveway at exactly 4:00 am by the car clock. Unloaded the few things that absolutely could not sit in the car until morning, petted both cats, who came to greet me at the door but didn't condescend to actually be excited about it or anything, went upstairs and fell over.
And that was Narrativity. It was a long haul getting there, in far more than just the driving sense, but having seen the end result, I wouldn't trade the journey. Damn, that was one fun con.
We're doing it again next year.
This entry was originally posted at https://lizvogel.dreamwidth.org/205939.html because I got tired of dealing with whatever LiveJournal had broken this time. Comment whereever.