So it has been a week. I have been kind of sick and recovering. But Anglicon was a BLAST!! SO worth it.
Anglicon is a British media themed nerd con in Seattle, WA. You can read about it HERE.
*EDIT: Also there is an Anglicon photo group on Flickr. Everyone's photos are pooled HERE. *
Next year it is happening around the same weekend. I plan to be there too. And I am helping to plan where I can.
I took the train up on Thursday previous, to make sure I had time to unpack and decompress. when you have joint issues, decompression time is crucial. I got there and the only room they had open was way on the other side of the hotel from the con. That makes it hard to go back to the room between panels if i need to, so I asked if they had anything closer. She said she would have one open in an hour and to come back then. I went and had dinner and came back. She looked at my reservation, rolled her eyes, swore and offered me a tower room for regular room price. Which of course I took. It has a fridge and is much closer to panels. It was nice having my own room for once. It is definitely cheaper to have roommates, but with no one I know who wanted to go, I would rather absorb the cost than room with an unknown. I need to be able to sleep and relax. I am too old to have people partying around me all night.
I got to help teach kids stop mo. I got to meet a ton of cool people. I ended up getting my picture taken with both the 5th Doctor Peter Davison and the 7th Doctor Sylvester McCoy. I tried Periscoping from the con, but it did not really work, except in my hotel room. I paid extra to the kickstarter so I got to tour Seattle with Peter Davison. It was fun. We went to the Space Needle, which I haven't seen since I was 10. And we went to the Living Computers Museum. OMG!!! My nerd done squeed out everywhere there. They have a ton of computer equipment from the beginning of computing until now, and they have been working to get a lot of it working. It is amazing. They also have some awesome new technology for you to play with. If you are ever in Seattle, GO IF YOU CAN. It is awesome.
I was going to do a blow-by-blow of the weekend, but I am still tired and dealing with a cold. I don't have energy for that right now. At the end I will post a link to my Flickr page and post a few pics I took.
The thing I want to really go into is what happened on the way home. I suppose I should let it go, considering what Amtrak is going through right now, but it is hard. Thier idiocy caused me to spend 2 days on my back with joint issues. The stop at Tukwila, WA is the stop that is closest to the con hotel. It takes a whole $10 off the cab/Lyft ride between the station to the hotel. It is also a minimal stop. There is no building, no heaters, just a few bus type shelters. There are 3 tracks. Track 1, a track for cargo trains, and Track 2. Between the cargo track and Track2, there is a huge fence. I am sure this is to make sure people don't run across the tracks at a bad time. What it does is make things way more difficult. There are also steep stairs from the parking lot to the tracks. The only ramp goes all the way around the area, and only goes to Track 2. If you want to go to track 1, you have to haul your ass and your stuff up the stairs. Do you know how hard this is when you are walking with a cane and have a heavy suitcase? I would like to say this is not ADA compliant, if you can only get to one of a couple of possible places with the ramp. According to the Tukwila Amtrak website, the train I needed to catch usually goes on Track 2. It does say that sometimes it arrives on Track 1. I have used this station before. I know where Track 2 is. I considered it, and decided the probablility of it coming on Track 2 is the highest probability so I wait on Track 2. Then the train shows up on Track 1. None of thier train tracking mechanisms mentioned a change of track. There was no annoucement over a loudspeaker. No warning. I just had to rush over to the other track. Which, if you remember from earlier, is only accessible by going all the way around the 1/2 mile platform area, down some steep stairs, and then back UP the steep stairs. Not a fast process for anyone, but particularly not a fast process for me. So I start trying to head over there. Before I am even to where I can get around the train leaves the station. It is 6:19pm. Late. Cold...below freezing. I had a reservation. They knew I was going to get on. But they did not stop long enough for anyone to get around, much less me with my crap and my cane and my joints that were already painful and not wanting to work from sitting there waiting in the freezing cold. They did not warn me in any way that I would need to get to the other track. I was told the train would beon time, but nothing about the track change. When I called them, they had no sympathy and weren't willing to help me at all. They told me to stay warm until the next day, when the next train came through. Stay warm. I had no money left. Well, very little money left. I just paid my hotel bill for the weekend and my next check did not hit for 2 days. There is nothing close enough. I had to take a Lyft, depleting what little money I had, to get to anywhere I could get warm. There are other stations with other trains that leave later, but further north. They could have offered a cab to get to one of those stations then a ticket on one of those trains. Or to put me up, because I had no way of preventing my predicament. It was entirely thier fault. Nope. Nothing. This makes me so mad. I know, I am being petty. But I can't wait in the cold. I had no money. I expected them to let me know if I needed to be on the other track. I put a call out on the facebooks, and some friends fronted me the money to get a hotel room for the night and cab fare. I swear, if I did not have awesome friends I would have been screwed. And my health insurance does not kick in till Jan 1. Again, I know they have the derailment to deal with. Which, btw, if the con was a week later I would have been on. But they still dropped the ball. The next morning there were 6 people there waiting with me for the train. It isn't like it is rarely used. They know how hard it is to get from track to track. They should already have a mechanism in place to prevent this. It is not a new stop. I have used it in the past. It may be maintained by Sounder, but they need to help thier passangers navigate it. Humph and humph. *shakes fist impotently at the sky* *adds cane shake for emphasis*
Ok...enough bitching. Here are a few of the better pictures. You can see all of them by going HERE. Sigh. Enjoy!
Anglicon is a British media themed nerd con in Seattle, WA. You can read about it HERE.
*EDIT: Also there is an Anglicon photo group on Flickr. Everyone's photos are pooled HERE. *
Next year it is happening around the same weekend. I plan to be there too. And I am helping to plan where I can.
I took the train up on Thursday previous, to make sure I had time to unpack and decompress. when you have joint issues, decompression time is crucial. I got there and the only room they had open was way on the other side of the hotel from the con. That makes it hard to go back to the room between panels if i need to, so I asked if they had anything closer. She said she would have one open in an hour and to come back then. I went and had dinner and came back. She looked at my reservation, rolled her eyes, swore and offered me a tower room for regular room price. Which of course I took. It has a fridge and is much closer to panels. It was nice having my own room for once. It is definitely cheaper to have roommates, but with no one I know who wanted to go, I would rather absorb the cost than room with an unknown. I need to be able to sleep and relax. I am too old to have people partying around me all night.
I got to help teach kids stop mo. I got to meet a ton of cool people. I ended up getting my picture taken with both the 5th Doctor Peter Davison and the 7th Doctor Sylvester McCoy. I tried Periscoping from the con, but it did not really work, except in my hotel room. I paid extra to the kickstarter so I got to tour Seattle with Peter Davison. It was fun. We went to the Space Needle, which I haven't seen since I was 10. And we went to the Living Computers Museum. OMG!!! My nerd done squeed out everywhere there. They have a ton of computer equipment from the beginning of computing until now, and they have been working to get a lot of it working. It is amazing. They also have some awesome new technology for you to play with. If you are ever in Seattle, GO IF YOU CAN. It is awesome.
I was going to do a blow-by-blow of the weekend, but I am still tired and dealing with a cold. I don't have energy for that right now. At the end I will post a link to my Flickr page and post a few pics I took.
The thing I want to really go into is what happened on the way home. I suppose I should let it go, considering what Amtrak is going through right now, but it is hard. Thier idiocy caused me to spend 2 days on my back with joint issues. The stop at Tukwila, WA is the stop that is closest to the con hotel. It takes a whole $10 off the cab/Lyft ride between the station to the hotel. It is also a minimal stop. There is no building, no heaters, just a few bus type shelters. There are 3 tracks. Track 1, a track for cargo trains, and Track 2. Between the cargo track and Track2, there is a huge fence. I am sure this is to make sure people don't run across the tracks at a bad time. What it does is make things way more difficult. There are also steep stairs from the parking lot to the tracks. The only ramp goes all the way around the area, and only goes to Track 2. If you want to go to track 1, you have to haul your ass and your stuff up the stairs. Do you know how hard this is when you are walking with a cane and have a heavy suitcase? I would like to say this is not ADA compliant, if you can only get to one of a couple of possible places with the ramp. According to the Tukwila Amtrak website, the train I needed to catch usually goes on Track 2. It does say that sometimes it arrives on Track 1. I have used this station before. I know where Track 2 is. I considered it, and decided the probablility of it coming on Track 2 is the highest probability so I wait on Track 2. Then the train shows up on Track 1. None of thier train tracking mechanisms mentioned a change of track. There was no annoucement over a loudspeaker. No warning. I just had to rush over to the other track. Which, if you remember from earlier, is only accessible by going all the way around the 1/2 mile platform area, down some steep stairs, and then back UP the steep stairs. Not a fast process for anyone, but particularly not a fast process for me. So I start trying to head over there. Before I am even to where I can get around the train leaves the station. It is 6:19pm. Late. Cold...below freezing. I had a reservation. They knew I was going to get on. But they did not stop long enough for anyone to get around, much less me with my crap and my cane and my joints that were already painful and not wanting to work from sitting there waiting in the freezing cold. They did not warn me in any way that I would need to get to the other track. I was told the train would beon time, but nothing about the track change. When I called them, they had no sympathy and weren't willing to help me at all. They told me to stay warm until the next day, when the next train came through. Stay warm. I had no money left. Well, very little money left. I just paid my hotel bill for the weekend and my next check did not hit for 2 days. There is nothing close enough. I had to take a Lyft, depleting what little money I had, to get to anywhere I could get warm. There are other stations with other trains that leave later, but further north. They could have offered a cab to get to one of those stations then a ticket on one of those trains. Or to put me up, because I had no way of preventing my predicament. It was entirely thier fault. Nope. Nothing. This makes me so mad. I know, I am being petty. But I can't wait in the cold. I had no money. I expected them to let me know if I needed to be on the other track. I put a call out on the facebooks, and some friends fronted me the money to get a hotel room for the night and cab fare. I swear, if I did not have awesome friends I would have been screwed. And my health insurance does not kick in till Jan 1. Again, I know they have the derailment to deal with. Which, btw, if the con was a week later I would have been on. But they still dropped the ball. The next morning there were 6 people there waiting with me for the train. It isn't like it is rarely used. They know how hard it is to get from track to track. They should already have a mechanism in place to prevent this. It is not a new stop. I have used it in the past. It may be maintained by Sounder, but they need to help thier passangers navigate it. Humph and humph. *shakes fist impotently at the sky* *adds cane shake for emphasis*
Ok...enough bitching. Here are a few of the better pictures. You can see all of them by going HERE. Sigh. Enjoy!
 |  |
 |  |
RSS Feed
