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I have made the sleep-deprived trip from Cincinnati to Philadelphia a number of times before but this time Suzie was in the car as we headed East. We passed the Centennial Barn that marks 76.2 miles having passed and we passed Columbus, OH and the dozens of signs for Zanesville. We passed Wheeling, WV and the last Hardee’s before Philadelphia. We passed Harrisburg and Valley Forge and Willow Grove and eventually we passed my mailbox. In a stupor, we walked into my house and re-collapsed in our respective beds for a nap until noon. We rose at 4 PM, I got a haircut that I didn’t much like.   We sat in Chipotle to wait out the rain. Despite having driven across the Gulf states it was only Philadelphia that we encountered a deluge.

We picked up miscellaneous items in Walmart and drove to 18th Street in Philadelphia to drop off all of the non-bed things which went quickly. I drove back home, picked up a bed, a night stand, a table, and some Uncrustables and returned for a second round; this time to assemble flat pack furniture and move a bed. The bed didn’t fit.  Not even, it did not fit.  Not by a long shot. Today was a long day.

Clocks are not always measurers of hours. In war, the clock is blood and iron and in moving it is steps and sweat. Suzie’s new apartment, her apartment, was on the third floor of a building with narrow steps and every foot placement was laced with a little fear that I’d fall.  Suzie’s clock had recently measured days but now ticks in time with opportunity. There is something lost when saying “hello” to someone becomes easier by at least a factor of 10. The power of “this is what I did just to be here” is lost but it is a small loss, one best mourned fleetingly lest it return. I don’t know what happens now as I’m very used to friends becoming more rather than less distant. I look forward to finding out.

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Suzie and I arrived at Ryan and Bree’s after midnight and headed to Denny’s for a long meal. Having broken low-carb after the blood-drive I decided to continue this by having a burger and fries and stealing some of Suzie’s pancake balls. Pancake balls are donut holes served with cream cheese frosting and serve as a reminder that fried starch is a highlight of world gastronomy. Ryan and Bree talked about their upcoming wedding and their life in North Carolina and this was interspersed with asides to internet culture.

Ryan mentioned that he spent little time with non-internet people and I noticed that I feel less connected to said folk. Maybe this is a byproduct of doing contract work, spending less time with Team Interrobang, or reconnecting with Scouts and school friends.

Their home was uncluttered and hosted a new large DDR setup that stood out from the simplicity of their decor. They had a rescue dog that drank too much water and was very happy to see people and Ryan and Bree crept around trying to be polite as Suzie and I slept in. They are feeling out their future, I wish them well.

Our next stop was Cincinnati and for the first time on the end of a trip it wasn’t to drop off Suzie. She’s moving to Philadelphia and tonight we will put as much of her life in the back of my car as we can. Nine hours after leaving Charlotte we landed in Florence, Kentucky. Suzie had most of her things already packed and the move consisted largely of moving things from her room to my car.

Me: I think we got everything you wanted packed.
Her: Everything?
Me: I think so. We still have some room if there’s other things you’d like to bring.
Her: Well then, I get to bring more shoes.

More shoes, indeed.

It was a Monday.  I had a job interview in a day.  Time to drive.

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Dragon*Con was interesting and in some capacity I’d like to return in 2013. A four day badge is only $65.00 when purchased far ahead of time and the convenience of this seems like a good benefit versus the possibility of not attending next year.

I spoke with a number of photographers about their craft and next year I’m going to bring a flash come hell or high water and preferably a soft box.

My two favorite photos are characters out of character where someone breaks costume to eat something or talk to someone and cross-over ideas like Steampunk Rorshoche. A lot of people in costume would instinctively pose when I pointed the camera at them and I’d have to ask them to unpose so I could get Leia taking a call or Q smoking.

While Dragon*Con was full of nerds, I considered few people there to be “my people”. I don’t participate in any sort of Fandom. There is no nerd culture item about which I maintain encyclopedic knowledge nor are there any figures where I’d spend more than an hour in line waiting to shake their hand. Costuming seems interesting but I much more enjoy capturing others’ work. On reflection I feel a guilty irony to my dislike of arts that are ultimately imitative yet very much enjoy photography. Maybe this is why I so much more enjoy costume variants than people who go for spot on recreation.

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I didn’t feel well at the start of the day and slept until noon. I dropped off Reuben and Suzie at the registration area and immediately found parking, registered for the day and disappeared into sessions.

Sessions

Mad Scientist Lab – I learned what cattle prod feels like. Usually my willingness to raise my hand when someone calls for audience volunteers nets me something cool, usually. Here, it net me being hit by a cattle prod. Anyway, I now know what a cattle prod feels like.

Presenter: Please stop asking us to cattle prod your children. I think that counts as child abuse even if you say it’s ok.
Audience Member: But I thought you were evil?
Presenter: Yes, but at scale. It’s hard to be evil when you’re locked up in prison.

They also had made a Jolly Rancher railgun but decided against it because the acceleration caused the wrappers to come off and that’s just not sanitary.

The next few hours were passed walking around and much enhanced by simply popping in on panels that looked interesting and out on ones that weren’t.

Walking Around

If I thought a shot turned out particularly well, I’ll show the costumed person the LCD on my camera for approval and often they’d ask for a card from me. I had four or five on me, I should have brought several dozen more.

Saturday night at the Hyatt’s many lobbies proved to be a massive party. I met up with Suzie around 3 AM to leave and things had just gone from 11 to 10.

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Today was the first full day of Dragon*Con and Suzie dropped out of attending to do other things. Reuben and I met up with Grant who is a fine fellow but with whom there is a storied meeting history. He has no car at college and the last few times we met with him had to pick him up and work around the narrow windows of his schedule.

Reuben and I dashed to Con after a short lunch, made our way through registration, and darted to our first session. My schedule was stacked with science, space, and skepticism bits and Reuben wanted to see some segments on voice acting.

Sessions

Curiosity and Skepticism – The presenter for this session ran The College of Curiosity which runs field trips in major cities. The presenter had some interesting objects like tektite, trinitite, and a styrofoam cup crushed by 2100 feet of oceanic pressure. I don’t think the session had much of a message so much as a parade of neat stuff.

James Randi and Alice Cooper – James Randi, the patron saint of skeptics, was the magician behind the effects on Alice Cooper’s Billion Dollar Baby tour. Alice is witty and cogent and told wonderful stories.

*Alice: Everyone in the 70s wanted to be a hero in Rock n’ Roll. I had no problem being the bad guy.
*Alice: One city wanted to present us with the key to the city and he had to work as hard as we could to find a reason to not get it.
*Alice: During one of our shows a live chicken appeared on stage so I picked it up and threw it into the audience. It came back a few minutes later torn apart and I was known as “Alice Cooper, Chicken Killer”. The thing was, the first four rows, and that’s the farthest I could have thrown it, were all people in wheelchairs.
*Randi: Alice called the magic shop I was in and owner said there was an Alice Cooper on the phone. I said I wanted $100 just to talk to him. Alice agreed, and I ran down the stairs so fast they may have burn marks on them.

Blood Drive – I gave blood and was told by a pregnant nurse that I looked like Ethan Hawke, I’ll take it. Later at the snack booth:

Me: Do you have any low carb snacks?
Nurse: You need sugar, honey.
Me: I’m on a ketosis diet.
Nurse: How low carb is that?
Me: 20 net grams a day.
Nurse: If you can, you want to make an exception if you want your red count to rebound in any reasonable amount of time and not have fainting spells.

I took her advice and had the tastiest Nutter Butter that I can remember.

Stealth Skepticism – The panelists talked about skepticism in popular media. Each panelist was interesting but the unified theme was “ask smart people questions” and I was fine with this. Rebecca Watson gave her commandment of “a good question is identifiable for being short, having a point, and ending in a question mark”, advice that everyone followed. One person asked: “my brother is a physics major and believes he can perform faith healing, what can I do to sway him?” to which Michael Stackpole replied “Waterboard him”.

Cryptographic Engineering – I attended this panel because it was done by Bruce Schneier and Randal Shwartz, the security expert and programmer, respectively and just kind of sat in awe as they were smart for an hour or so. I took their pictures a lot and they politely posed.

Evening Photos

I walked around and took photos. In the process, I lost track of Reuben frequently.

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Early we left Oklahoma City into a day of long miles bouncing north and south to wind our way East to Atlanta. The south slept and we slipped through the silence a little faster than we normally do but there is an energy that comes from driving head long into dawn. Suzie bit a 550-mile chunk out of the day which probably included more distance that she’s driven in every other car combined and I batted at sleep. We arrived around 7 PM and Suzie set to making herself presentable for an evening outing and I chose what pieces of camera equipment would join me. The 24-70 won and we shot south into Atlanta and the convention incubating in its downtown.

Atlanta is entirely unexplored to me, subject to a history club trip when I was in 11th grade and revisited later to see Reuben. The city has a history but exudes little sense of it as the downtown was revamped over the last 20 years. The city is going through a demographic shift and economic boom which are rewriting its character and this transition has a feeling of blandness over excitement. Think of the crystalis period of a moth vs. having a teenager.

Dragon*Con on the other hand had an energy all its own and after parking I walked to the registration building passing pockets of oddity. The event is overwhelmingly a volunteer effort with three paid staff and hundreds of primary volunteers with a thousand ancillary ones. I wanted to know if I could register other people for an event day and the answer was always a variant of “I think so”, a phrase I appreciate for its eagerness but loathe for its truth. I asked my way up until I met with the head of registration services. We chatted.

Me: So why do you do this?
Her: Volunteer?
Me: Yes.
Her: The stories. Earlier a man reported to the police that someone had tried to mug him with a small knife. The cop asked him if he was harmed, and he replied by pulling back his cape to reveal his chain mail and claymore. He replied “no, just wanted you to know”.
Me: Interesting.
Her: Why do you ask?
Me: Curiosity. Reasons for volunteering tend to be varied albeit not as much as the volunteers.
Her: You should talk to our media department. They’re always looking for people with good equipment. Do you volunteer for other things?
Me: You could say that.

I did a few laps of the Hyatt taking pictures, re-united with Suzie and retired to Reuben’s.

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Chris and I went to the Oklahoma Osteology Museum which, appropriately, had a large collection of extant animal bones. The collection spanned all the major classes and orders of vertebrates and the work was impeccable.

Peaking Milkduds

Some of the displays were rather light hearted a la this raccoon skeleton and while there while the discussion of life and death was frank it never crossed into being morbid. I expected there to be dinosaur or other bones at some point but realized that those would be fossils instead. The one exception to this was the display on hominids which provided a set of replica skulls making a nice family tree.

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After the bone museum, Chris and I went to Walgreens to get Christine a card as today was her birthday and I received a call from a firm with which I had interviewed.

Me: Terry Robinson speaking.
Her: Terry, this is <name>.
Me: What can I do for you?
Her: I’m calling regarding your interviews with us. I’ve spoken with my bosses and the other interview members and I’m sorry to say *my heart dies* that we really wanted to offer you a position *heart breaks into pieces* but we can’t *broken heart pieces scattered to wind* until October. *Heart pieces re-assemble, and forge into super heart, fist rises skyward*
Me: That sounds wonderful. I look forward to working with you.
Her: You’re ok with that.
Me: Yeah, I’m on a road trip right now, I’ll probably fill the time with studying and taking another one.
Her: Oh, well if another position opens up elsewhere that you’d like to take in the mean time, please keep us informed.

I emitted a victory howl and Chris and I went to a Braum’s which provided a presentable lunch. Their burger was fine but the ice cream I couldn’t have looked far better. We picked up Suzie and returned to Chris’s and talked. Normally, a third person in a conversation proves a wildcard but there is an unusual degree of synchrony between Suzie, Chris, and myself. Chris and Suzie share a knowledge of programming that’s alien to me and Chris and I get to talk about Web 2.0 crap and our membership in the Cult of John Roderick. The next two hours passed quickly and then we went to the Cheesecake Factory to celebrate Christine’s birthday.

This was my first visit to a Cheesecake Factory and I didn’t see much of the draw besides incredibly rich food. The simple strictures of low-carb eating kept my meal under 1000 calories which proved less than a single slice of cheesecake. One menacing aspect was that the decoration appeared to be both palatial and Tolkeinesque.

I don’t know if it’s a phenomenon I am only now noticing or only now affected by but when visiting someone I haven’t seen in a while, it takes a few hours to remember who to talk to that person. Maybe it’s re-aquainting with cues or collecting enough background information to have a conversational foundation but the number of silences decreases rather than increases over time as if we weave more conversation from whole cloth over time.

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Rarely does one get a chance to re-enact one’s childhood. The simple pleasure of staring out the side window of a car for minutes as the country passes you is something I get to experience rarely but as we fly from Wichita to Oklahoma City my gaze drifts from copse to copse of trees punctuated with overpasses, hay bales, and a car from the 1950s or 1960s abandoned in a well-tended field.

El Dorado lake has its surface crested by logs and other pylons that make it look like the last resting place of a collection of decapitated Ents.

There are tiny gifts of friendship that in my life I have come to value greatly. Being able to cross the landscape and safely daydream is one of them.

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Brad and I got to bed around 2am and he didn’t have classes until 11am today which I thought gave me plenty of time to sleep. This calculus failed to consider that he had three other housemates all on different schedules and the first rev of the burr grinder occurred at around 7:30am. Whoops. I formally woke at 10am, showered, changed, and chatted with one of Brad’s house mates until near 11am when I was supposed to pick up Suzie. I thanked Brad again, offered fudge, and was off.

Outside Suzie’s house I shot her a text message that I had arrived and I was invited to park in the driveway. The garage door opened and I was invited in. I have known Suzie for a little over two years and we’ve covered about 20,000 miles together. We’ve shared a lot of the same spaces but never before did this include one of her parents. Suzie is much younger than I and there are moments where this surfaces above lake Friendship and never has this been more apparent than when I came face to face with her father. He was a visage of shriveled sternness. I was waiting for a “be careful with my daughter” line but his reserve didn’t allow for such an obvious display of feeling. This was a man that would never let me know how many rounds were in his revolver forcing me to keep track. He stared at me, reached to shake my hand and it was soft leather. He warned us of rain and I commented that I was only worried about dust storms or prairie fires. He bid his daughter goodbye as a part nod and part dismissal. I don’t know if it would have been more affectionate in my absence but “reserved” seems an appropriate description.

I hadn’t seen Suzie in seven weeks which despite an almost exactly 600 mile gap has come to feel like a while. My standard conversational paralysis set in and we exchanged short sentences until the front left tire of my car blew out spectacularly. I’ve had four flats in my life and both that occurred in Wanda have been within 30 minutes of Suzie’s house with her in the car. The side wall had gone out completely around the tire and there was a pile of tread shrapnel when I finally got the tire off. The tire was very hot to the touch and after an illegal turn we headed to Walmart to have it changed. This explosion proved the catalyst we needed and conversation picked up.

We met up with a friend of Suzie’s in St. Louis and then continued on to Columbia, MO to meet up with John and Zane. The stretch from St. Louis to Columbia is one I’ve tread before and the Jew Flinger seemed to be intact.

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For the next 9 days I’m going to be on the road for a variety of functions. One part visiting places, one part visiting people, one part “last fling of summer”, and one part helping Suzie move to Philadelphia. The car was packed the previous night and the angel food cake, cookies, and fudge were all properly packaged so with two cans of Pepsi Max I headed into the West at around 8:00am.

“How far away is Cincinnati” is a question with many answers. Googles says 10 hours, my GPS says 8 hours, and history says about 9 hours. This time, everything went well and I made it in nearly 8 hours and met Brad, my host, and the University of Cincinnati where his student group was doing promotion as part of the semester kick-off. I helped them clean up and Brad and I retired to his apartment to plan our evening. We had wanted to do karaoke.

Brad: Let me call my karaoke friend. *calls* Rachel, this is Brad. What’s that karaoke place you like? *pause* ok, they’re generally booked a month in advance? *pause* Ok, good know. Thanks. Let’s ask Google.

We googled karaoke near Cincinnati and found one place but on street-view inspection it appeared to be someone’s house. No karaoke this evening. Instead, we took pictures of the University of Cincinnati as the sun set and then took pictures at Washington Park which has illuminated fountains.

UC

Building Prow

The buildings of UC don’t quite harmonize and each seems to come from a different school or time.

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The glass facade of the University Pavilion showed but sunset and bell tower.

Stockart

Almost stock art.

FOUNTAINS

Part of photography is getting a handle on “recipes”.  Certain mixes of settings that achieve a certain effect.  One important fact to me is that water droplets look suspended in air at shutter times faster than 1/2000″.

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The above was taken at 1/500″.  Here’s what going to 1/2000″ does.

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Notice how the droplets seem to freeze?

On the other end, if you take a longer exposure of colored water falling, the center part will over expose to white and the outer side will maintain color making it look like fire.

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This at 1/160″.

When a sheet of water is launched skyward, there will be a moment where it is suspended as a flat sheet.  As it falls, the outer area will experience different air resistance than the center and a bulb may develop.  When this begins to collapse, it kind of looks like a jellyfish.

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The last part of the evening was dinner at Adriatico’s where I received what is easily the largest antipasto salad I’ve ever had. The plate was the size of a hub cap and the greens could not be seen from under the massive pile of meats, cheese, and olives on it. The server provided another plate and even after removing most of the meat and cheese I easily had two salads. I’m pretty sure they just threw a cheese and meat party tray through a wood chipper and caught it with a salad bowl. About 2/3s of the meat made it home with me and Brad and I had man time.

Friends of friends are almost always NPCs in my life. They fill ancillary roles as characters in stories or provide a particular expertise in my life and rarely are promoted to the rank of “friend”. Today was my 4th time seeing Brad and I am hopeful that we will reach autonomy.