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Sunday at Ohayocon was mostly about goodbyes.  I had met a few new people and there were a smattering of “I’ll keep in touch”-es which is a rare case where my cynicism doesn’t take over.  When people say “we’ll talk later” I take them at their word and then reach out when they don’t start the conversational ball rolling.  I suppose in the end they’re still right.  A gaggle of us went to an indoor market and I had hot soup followed by four desserts consumed one at a time as a chocolatier and I debated the finer points of tempering technique.
It was quite cold out and after lunch I decided to flat out run back to the car that was parked about 15 blocks away.  On the run to the car I joined up with a group of jogging co-eds and they commended me for running in my work clothes.  This would be the last time I got to run before having surgery.
Suzie and I eventually pulled ourselves away from the convention and made our way to Chicago where we would stay with half of a couple with which we were friends.  They were separated with an impending divorce and entering the condo felt strange.  We were met by a dog instead of two cats, three people lived there instead of two, and the name of the cohabitants had changed.  The view was the same, the dishwasher was just as loud, and the freezer tray still needed to be repaired.  I didn’t expect to be comforted by the sameness of the place as opposed to the sameness of the people.  We stayed up late talking that evening, because that’s what we do.  The sun started rising over Lake Michigan and we had seen dawn in Chicago again.

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Saturday at Ohayocon I got to participate in a panel on Valve Software.  I’m not a video game expert but I can mimic one by reading what vastly smarter and more insightful people have said, committing some of those lines to memory, and then saying them back at the appropriate time.  I did so here and that appeared to be successful.  I got to argue with Linux neck beards that contested that installing Linux was easy.  I contextualized their version of “easy” by asking if iOS would be easy to install if every iPhone owner received a phone and a boot CD they had to load to dump a ROM on their phone on purchase rather than simply entering an Apple ID.  They persisted in arguing even when I was otherwise talking and I was glad to have a microphone.
Ohayocon had furries, and this was new to me.  I feel a part of their menace comes from how completely the covering went.  The moment I can’t make out a human face, the costume registers as “other” and I’d be just as likely to believe that under each costume lied a robot, xenomorph, or member of the Borg Collective.  The furry costumes were quite ornate compared to many of the other costumes and this lifestyle appears to be either not for the faint of needle or faint of checkbook.
My assessment of yesterday’s costumes was a bit harsh.  The people in their homespun fandom were not here to impress me, well, a few were, but most were simply here to show allegiance.  Their simple costumes of just appropriately colored clothing pieces was their badge of identity not a statement on craftsman.  This was their convention and I was their guest.  Once this mentality change hit, the costumes seemed to get a lot better.
Suzie walked around the show floor scaring people and I spent my time trying to find odd juxtapositions:
[pe2-image src=”http://lh5.ggpht.com/-Ys2TB6u7JNA/UR3Uz7bcqrI/AAAAAAAA3Vc/5MvOP7_y4QE/s144-c-o/130119-14560-ohayocon.jpg” href=”https://picasaweb.google.com/111254650097626470057/20130119Ohayocon#5845061879988005554″ caption=”Endurance – I was one of four photographers chasing these guys. I’d say we covered at least 200 yards chasing them until I got out in front enough to get a good shot.” type=”image” alt=”130119-14560-ohayocon.jpg” pe2_gal_format=”phototile” pe2_phototile=”800″ ] [pe2-image src=”http://lh6.ggpht.com/-p9bwvgyiodw/UR3U_L2kFKI/AAAAAAAA3Vs/IgKHpvR6vrU/s144-c-o/130119-14201-ohayocon.jpg” href=”https://picasaweb.google.com/111254650097626470057/20130119Ohayocon#5845062073375265954″ caption=”Costumer – This customer is apparently from a five second dream sequence in some esoteric anime. I gave her the banana, she liked it as a prop.” type=”image” alt=”130119-14201-ohayocon.jpg” pe2_gal_format=”phototile” pe2_phototile=”800″ ] [pe2-image src=”http://lh3.ggpht.com/-mNcqG6ObRM8/UR3Vq1Hmh-I/AAAAAAAA3W8/NYH2N3U_zb8/s144-c-o/130119-14253-ohayocon.jpg” href=”https://picasaweb.google.com/111254650097626470057/20130119Ohayocon#5845062823186958306″ caption=”In Line – Poison Ivy, Kratos, The Doctor, the Moon, and a guy in white robe.” type=”image” alt=”130119-14253-ohayocon.jpg” pe2_gal_format=”phototile” pe2_phototile=”800″ ] [pe2-image src=”http://lh6.ggpht.com/-ve_ZWRJTcVI/UR3VubtDt7I/AAAAAAAA3XE/Kq9_oLmDe6c/s144-c-o/130119-14272-ohayocon.jpg” href=”https://picasaweb.google.com/111254650097626470057/20130119Ohayocon#5845062885084215218″ caption=”Plastic Man – I liked this one.” type=”image” alt=”130119-14272-ohayocon.jpg” pe2_gal_format=”phototile” pe2_phototile=”800″ ] [pe2-image src=”http://lh4.ggpht.com/-tMvHevp8bGU/UR3Vy3XPOHI/AAAAAAAA3XQ/iqU08gEfoJ0/s144-c-o/130119-14293-ohayocon.jpg” href=”https://picasaweb.google.com/111254650097626470057/20130119Ohayocon#5845062961228363890″ caption=”Point Break-ish – I have a gif of these guys doing the YMCA. I assume this is a throw back to Point Break except that we didn’t have a black president then.” type=”image” alt=”130119-14293-ohayocon.jpg” pe2_gal_format=”phototile” pe2_phototile=”800″ ] [pe2-image src=”http://lh4.ggpht.com/-m6t0uUZDHY4/UR3V2yhjLVI/AAAAAAAA3Xc/1EFBRWtEYQY/s144-c-o/130119-14316-ohayocon.jpg” href=”https://picasaweb.google.com/111254650097626470057/20130119Ohayocon#5845063028648914258″ caption=”Moves – The DDR tournament was nuts. Gravity isn’t fast enough so good players lean on a chair to be closer to the pads.” type=”image” alt=”130119-14316-ohayocon.jpg” pe2_gal_format=”phototile” pe2_phototile=”800″ ] [pe2-image src=”http://lh5.ggpht.com/-Y03ZPlA2Dqc/UR3V8kvdCbI/AAAAAAAA3X0/PnpKHcfeNh4/s144-c-o/130119-14387-ohayocon.jpg” href=”https://picasaweb.google.com/111254650097626470057/20130119Ohayocon#5845063128028350898″ caption=”Distance – Half way through, I remembered how photography worked and swapped out the 24-70 for a 70-200, stepped a bit back and zoomed. That’s a bokeh a man can take home to mama.” type=”image” alt=”130119-14387-ohayocon.jpg” pe2_gal_format=”phototile” pe2_phototile=”800″ ] [pe2-image src=”http://lh4.ggpht.com/-kt1g7VAwCeY/UR3V_yXLYgI/AAAAAAAA3X8/vFGpO1S3nTY/s144-c-o/130119-14399-ohayocon.jpg” href=”https://picasaweb.google.com/111254650097626470057/20130119Ohayocon#5845063183224234498″ caption=”Slender Man’s Quarry – Santa’s next.” type=”image” alt=”130119-14399-ohayocon.jpg” pe2_gal_format=”phototile” pe2_phototile=”800″ ]

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Road trips are broken down by scale:
<600 miles – Not a road trip, doesn’t even require filling up the tank twice.
2500>x>600 miles – Minimum road trip.  Have to fill up tank at least once strictly to cover distance but at no point are you more than a day from home.
5000>x>2500 miles – Road trip.  There’s a point in the trip that if you left at that instant, you wouldn’t be home for at least 16 hours, a full day, of driving.
>5000 miles – Grand road trip.  At the 5k mile mark, you need to have an oil change at some point.  Requiring vehicle maintenance on the road ups the stakes a bit.
This weekend, Suzie and I are going to Ohayocon in Columbus, Ohio and this marks our first dip into the category of “minimum road trip” since August.  We got underway and Suzie was to my right as we began driving West.  There was a wonderful strangeness to driving to Ohio with her in the car after so many cases where this was the solo leg of the trip.  The driving was easy and I got a parking spot immediately in front of the Ohayocon venue.  We walked in and slowly made it to the room where I was participating in a panel Suzie was running.  The going was slow from the infinitude of people stopping Suzie to say “hello”.  Here, she was a rock star.  The closest analog would be me at Ockanickon when I was ecology director and ran the Magic tournaments.  There I would have a cloud of people following me around.  A staff member referred to these kids as my “electrons”. Luckily, my electrons never hit on me.
I need to use the bathroom before the panel started so walked to the bathroom.  On the way back in, a convention staffer moved to stop me but I did what I always do when I don’t have appropriate credentials to be somewhere; I walked with purpose and a certain aloofness at a pace a little bit faster than most people.  He gave up stopping me after a few strides and going “sir!”.  Had he gotten in front of me and asked me what I was doing he would have received a “that’s a stupid question”.  This Star Trek-inspired tactic has about a 50% chance of success but is well worth the effort.

The panel was on survival horror games and involved bringing up unwitting audience members and trying to scare them.  Dim lighting, unfamiliar controls, scary games, and some well placed screaming made the event go well.  The costumes at Ohayocon were not too impressive and some didn’t even show any particular sense of craftsmanship.  Some people seemed to just ape the colors and ideas of their favorite fandom and for me that was unappealing.  Dragon*con had spoiled me.  This was the first convention where I felt exposed to “con folk” and my initial reaction to them was overly strong.  They were unwashed, poorly dressed, and were identifiable by the sound of their knuckles scraping behind themselves, or at least that’s how it was in my head.  On reflection, I’ve encountered the same people in Scouting and at Magic tournaments.  Just like in those other communities, they wanted to be there.  This was their hobby, a way of getting social engagement with people like them, and probably is the foundry of some of their finest memories.  They will grow-up a little, hopefully, and convention culture will have helped them bootstrap themselves into proper society… or they may become furries.  Who knows.