Found an old Word file on my first trip to Dragon Con back in 2003 (that I never got around to posting on my website... probably because I never finished it
).
Thought I would share it with you grunts!
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<span style="font-size:large;]Dragon Con 2003
Well, I attended Dragon Con in Atlanta Georgia this past Labour Day weekend. This was my first convention in the United States and I must say I picked a whopper to start
off with!
Thursday August 28:After coming home from work at 4pm, I loaded up the car with my luggage including my Colonial Marine armour. I decided not to bring any airsoft or replica weapons with me, as I didn’t want to take any chances of being delayed or heaven forbid turned back at the Canadian/US border. So I was going as an unarmed marine. At 6pm I said my goodbyes to my wife (whom I had never been apart from our entire marriage) and left for Atlanta.
I made it to the border in about three hours, and although I hadn’t brought any weapons, I was still nervous as hell. The guard asked the standard questions: citizenship, where are you going, what purpose, etc... When she asked what was in Atlanta that I was going to, and I said a convention, she asked, "What kind of convention?" Sheepishly I answered, "A science fiction convention". She gave me that, "oh brother" kind of look and then came out of left field and asked, "So what’s your favourite tv show?". This took me aback a bit and I ended up saying, "Uh... Star Trek?"
I felt like a complete idiot. "Which one?" the guard asked. "Uh... the first one?"
I felt like a liar now.We chatted a bit about the Trek shows and Stargate (she must have been an SG1 fan) and then she asked if I was bringing a "crazy" costume. I answered yes from the movie Aliens. "Not the Alien?" she asked. "No ma’am, the Marines." I answered. She gave me back my ID and said I was OK to go. WHEW! When I think about it, I could have brought anything I wanted. Next year I’ll bring some gear with me.
The drive to Atlanta was not an easy one; I had been awake since 5:30am on Thursday for work and I was now driving through the night with no sleep. I blasted the radio,
rolled down the window, sang, did everything I had to, to stay awake. The longest I had ever driven had been 5 hours and this was an 18 hour trip! I tried pulling over at rest stops for some sleep, but I couldn’t get comfortable in the car. I got about 2 hours sleep in total and kept going.
When I arrived in Atlanta, it was about 12pm on Friday. The hotel I was booked in was a zoo (I was staying at the Marriott, which was one of the two hotels hosting the event).
After getting to my room, I considered getting some sleep, but I was feeling pretty good so I decided to register and pick up my convention badge.
Friday August 29:Registering was a nightmare: there was a line up at the top of a set of escalators about 20 minutes long. Once you went down the escalators there was another line up to get into the registration room about 10 minutes long. Once inside the registration room, the line was like the ones at an amusement park with rows and rows of rope barricades. It took about an hour and a half in total to get my badge.
I walked around the convention for awhile, mostly checking out everyone’s costumes. I decided that it would be better to be in costume than not so I went back up to my room to get "geared up". Returning to the main floor of the Marriott in full marine armour, I found my friend, who I had been corresponding with via email for weeks before the con,
Chris Chulamanis (aka FNG from the Aliens board). Chris was also in his armour, and with the two of us together, people began coming up and asking to take our picture or have their picture taken with us. It was great! I felt like a star!
I ran into another Kevin who was dressed in an amazing Predator outfit complete with sound effects, moving shoulder cannon, and wrist gauntlets.
Funny story: Chris leaves to go get a drink, leaving me alone at our meager fan table. A group of guys walks up carrying several large boxes and stops right in front of our table. The lead guy takes one look at the USCM banner and yells, "WHAT IS THIS!! WHAT ARE
YOU DOING HERE!! THIS IS TABLE 35!! WE RESERVED THIS TABLE!!". He looked like he was going to have a heart attack right there. Needless to say, I wasn't
impressed.
I answered him by saying this is table 36 reserved for the Colonial Marines group. His friend walks up, and says to him "Ok let's not fly off the handle, I'll go and ask the head
guy" (or whatever). Turns out they were wrong; they had the empty table next to us. The second guy comes up to me afterward and apologizes for his friend saying he found out he only has six months left to live and gets excited easily.
Chris comes back and I told him he missed all the action. (I don't know, but if it were me, and I was told I had six months left to live, I wouldn't waist my time getting angry at anything.)
For about an hour, we had to endure another guy sitting at that table, who wouldn't shut up, thought he knew everything and anything about the movie Aliens (especially the
marines), and went so far as to try and convince us the smartgun is a lazer weapon- he said he read it in the Technical Manual!
The majority of the evening was spent at our fan table which we set up as a meeting point for our fellow marines. Eventually we found other members of our board such as
Darthgoat, SWFreak, and Neokramer. After a few hours we called it quits and tooled about the convention still in our armour. We spent most of our time in the dealer’s room
and exhibitor’s room. Saturday morning was going to be the big D-Con parade so we didn’t stay up too late.
Saturday August 30:Chris and I met first thing to have breakfast and get ready for the parade. We almost got lost trying to get back to the hotel, and Chris was ready to freakout because he didn’t
want to be late. We managed to get back in time, and get our gear on. Now we had to find the parade.
A lot of the guys were saying the parade was pretty unorganized this year. Finally on our way to the parade grounds, we almost went the wrong way (again), and half way there, a guy in a motorized wheelchair was yelling at everyone, "YOU'RE LATE! MOVE IT!" or something like that.
We made it to the parade point, and had people yelling at us go here, go there, get off the street, get in line on the street, go behind the mini van, follow the car, you're in the wrong spot!! You get the idea.
Classic military operation: hurry up and wait! It was worth every minute though!
The group in front of us was some Combat News group (no clue what that was). They didn't really get into the parade- we were yelling marine marching chants, and saying quotes from the movie. Actually I was the one calling cadence. It was a lot of fun!
The lousy thing was there was a WWII British “Ferretâ€
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never seen kevin run so fast in my life LOL