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Pokey Travel

This is Effingham calling

A few years ago, after I finally got Pokey, my ’72 Volkswagen  put back together, I took a road-trip up to Effingham, IL with my friend Todd from the VW club. We decided since neither of us had ever been to the MidAmerica Motorworks Fun Fest, we should go and with Pokey done, it was the perfect time.

On Friday night, there was a cruise from the show site through the country side that ended up on the town square. As I was taking pictures of the cars, I snapped a few pics of this old courthouse building as the sun was setting. Someone at YellowBook must’ve found it on Flickr.com since they emailed me asking if they could add it to the list of photos they were considering for use on the cover of their next phone book. I said sure, as long as I got photo credit and a copy of the finished book if they chose my photo. I never thought I’d see anything, but when Joy and I came home last night and I got the mail, I saw the shrink-wrapped phonebook. I almost tossed it since we never use phone books but then I remembered the email.  I tore the plastic off and sure enough, there was my photo of the courthouse! I flipped to the first page and there was my name under the photo credit. Sweet!

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Boardgames Travel Uncategorized

Dragon Con – Day 4 Final Thoughts

By Day 4, we were Dragon Con’d out and ready to head home for some rest before starting the work week. We had no idea what kind of traffic to expect in Atlanta on a Memorial Day weekend as a lot of the other 60k Dragon Conners were also heading home. We skipped breakfast at the hotel and headed North on I-75. We stopped at Cracker Barrel for breakfast, then topped off the tank and resumed our northward journey. I was using Waze to navigate home and throughout Atlanta all we heard was “Watch out… police reported ahead” about every 45 seconds. They were out in force trying to catch people heading home a little faster than they ought to be.

With our first Dragon Con behind us, We thought we’d share a few of our thoughts and observations.

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Boardgames Travel

Dragon Con – Day 3

By Sunday, Joy and I had settled into a morning routine. Waking up around 6:30 and get showered and dress so we could run down to the lobby for a donut or bagel with some hot tea for me and a latte for Joy. Then it’s onto the shuttle to the Con. Our first stop for the day was to check out the artists’ gallery and comic illustrators at 10am. We had the good fortune of getting there early  enough to get 3rd and 4th place in line. There was a group of Avengers roller-derby girls near the doors but we couldn’t tell if they were trying to get in or were just there to pose for photos.

Avenger Derby girls
Derby Girls Assemble!
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Boardgames Photography Travel Uncategorized

Dragon Con – Day 2

Today we tried to get up early enough to have breakfast down in the hotel restaurant but after walking around the buffet and seeing what kind of food they were offering for $20 person, we decided to just have bagels and fruit from the Starbucks counter again. We then took the shuttle from the hotel and went to the  Con arriving a little after 8:30 a.m. The Dragon Con parade was today and it started at 10 AM. and the sides of the streets were already filling up. It was a beautiful morning  so we hiked up to where the staging area was. The closer we got, the thinner the crowd became. We found a good spot on a hill where the parade would be marching up. The sun was going to be at our back and we had a nice soft pile of mulch to sit in. Win!

It was going to be about an hour before the parade started, so we sat down and I got my camera ready. I bought a new digital camera several months ago, a Panasonic Lumix LX7. It’s a great camera, almost a cross between a DSLR and a micro 4:3. It only has the one lens, but it has a large image sensor and full control over the aperture and shutter. The only problem is there’s no viewfinder, which makes taking pictures in bright daylight a little hard. Fortunately for my birthday, Joy’s parents bought me an electronic viewfinder for it!

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Travel Uncategorized

Dragon Con – Day 1

The-New-Dragon-Con-LogoJoy and I decided that this year for our birthday gift to each other and for our 10th anniversary, we would go to Dragon Con in Atlanta. If you’ve never heard of Dragon Con, it’s like Comic Con, just a little smaller and a lot closer. It’s a 4 day convention that spans 5 hotels in downtown Atlanta. There’s a parade, costume contests, parties, vendors, and panels on all manner of video/board games, movies, literature, fan films, comics, cartoons, and pop culture. It’s basically Nerdigras!

This year’s Dragon Con took place over the Memorial Day weekend and started on the Thursday before. So we hired a house/dog sitter, made reservations, chose the panels and events we wanted to see and hit the road Thursday after work. We had a big weekend ahead of us, and since we didn’t arrive in Atlanta until around 11pm, we tried to get a good night’s rest.