I was kinda disappointed that I wasn't able to attend Sakura-Con and meet Hangry&Angry in Seattle. I had a lot going on back then and also figured that Seattle was quite a ways away. But in my several years of watching Morning Musume in videos and TV appearances (especially Utaban), I made a vow that if they ever came to the U.S., wherever it was, I would go.
So in a conversation with Tom on MSN right before Good Friday service I said, not thinking too seriously about it, "I'm going to look into the LA gig, what's it called?" Next morning I had bought a plane ticket, registered for Anime Expo, and put in for a hotel reservation. Once I saw plane tickets for $300 it took about 20 minutes and I was officially bound for the Expo.
I made a list the weekend prior, of all the things I wanted to get done before I left for the Expo. Some of them were necessities for the trip, others were intended to ease my return, like cleaning my house so I didn't return to a complete junkpit. And some of my chores bordered on the macabre, just in case I didn't make it back. A few things in my house still have the labels I put on them: "Please return this to (name here), it's not mine, I borrowed it." The weekend came and went, and finally the big day had arrived.
I live about two minutes from the airport in Des Moines. Dad picked me up and took me there so I wouldn't have to pay for a week of parking, practically in my own neighborhood. He didn't even park, just pulled up to the entryway to let me out. No long goodbyes, no words of wisdom, just a quick "see ya in a week" exchange and I was off to wait for the plane to board. Not that we're a sentimental bunch, but I thought he might want to see me off in a more conventional way. It's not like he had anything else to do that day, but in retrospect it was nice to be on my own for the start of this landmark journey. I reflected on my life so far and felt my stomach do flips as I listened to Hiro songs in the terminal. It was *much* better than the music being piped-in.
I didn't make it through the Xray process very quickly because I went a little over-the-top on my present for Tom. I thought it would be appropriate to bring him something unmistakeably Iowa, since he probably won't be coming here anytime soon. A quick brainstorm with a friend led us to this, literally a piece of Iowa...
It's a geode, if you haven't already guessed, a little bigger than a softball, and cracked in half to display the pretty crystals inside. I took half of it with me to give to Tom, and you should have seen the looks on the NSA people's faces when they saw that through the Xray machine. They didn't say anything to me, I thought they might go all "Code Red" and shut the airport down until they realized that it wasn't a threat. I waited patiently (while they called for a supervisor) to explain to them that it would in fact make a really crappy bomb, then told them, "I know what you're questioning, and you're welcome to search the bag."
They never did open the box, just wiped it with an Oxy pad and told me I was free to go. But they weren't real nice about it.
I warned Tom about this as I gave it to him on my last day in L.A., but apparently he slipped it back to England unnoticed. Good for him, fight the power!
My good friend/next-door-neighbor/coworker/frequent dining companion (all the same person) was generous enough to give Tom a signed copy of one of her books, "Grasp the Stars" (hint: you can buy it on Amazon):
Luckily for him, Tom actually reads sci-fi, so I think he liked it. Jennifer knows I'm not a sci-fi reader, but gave me the copy that you're looking at above. I might read it someday...
So, two hours after boarding the plane, I'm in Dallas. No need to tell me we're over Texas, looking at all the brown grass and muddy ponds from overhead. It made me trip out a bit because it takes 11 hours to get there in a car, and I know that for a fact. My brother spent four years at UNT in Denton, so I made the trip probably a dozen times by car, and had already flown to and from DFW twice. So it was a strangely familiar place despite being so far away. I hit the airport McDonalds for some en-route comfort food, and an hour later, we were in the air again and headed to LA.
There's something about flying that makes me feel like we're all just pieces of dust floating around at random. You probably aren't the type that does this, but whenever I'm on a plane I make up stories about all the random people who I'm travelling with; you know, imagining the human-interest newswires about us some ten years from now, on the anniversary of the gruesome crash we'd all be in... 'Timmy had just reconciled with his father and hadn't seen him for twenty years... and he never got the chance.'
Well, I'm not that worried about plane crashes but there have been few happier moments in my life than when they tell me I can get off the plane. Otherwise I'm just stuck in there, breathing the same air as everyone, at the mercy of the crew. After a couple of hours of staring down into the nothingness that is West Texas/New Mexico/Arizona, the pilot comes on and announces, "we are beginning our descent into Los Angeles International..." and I'm freaking out by that point, for several reasons.
1.) The reality of Anime Expo is about to come. 2.) Midwesterner about to arrive in Los Angeles for the first time (sure, you can have my wallet!) 3.) No more air travel for a week, and the pilot was nice enough not to crash the plane!
Suffice to say we landed at LAX after I saw from overhead several of the famous 52-lane freeways I'd seen on TV so often. There's 'urban sprawl' and then there's the Los Angeles metropolitan area. Jeepers, it's huge.
As I boarded the shuttle to the hotel, an Asian-American guy a little older than me spied my MiniMoni t-shirt and says, "I know what you're here for..." and proceeds to talk my ear off about fansubs and how he's moving to LA from New York, and we wished each other well when we parted ways at the Sheraton. As we were driving in I looked out the window and could say nothing but "damn!" to myself as the shuttle driver drove like a madman past the Convention Center, the Staples Center, the Denny's Restaurant, Library Tower, all of which I had only seen in pictures. If I was still questioning whether these places really existed, here was proof-positive.
I figured that the driver knew how to get to the Westin Bonaventure, but knowing my luck I'd get the guy who says, "biggest hotel in town, you say? I've been driving shuttles for 20 years and I've *never* heard of it..." But he gets to the curb, and one of the uniformed bellhops opens the van door and says, "Welcome to the Westin Bonaventure!" I'm thinking 'holy crap, how did I get here?' Nothing at all had gone wrong!
I decided to get checked in and contact Tom from the room, although on my way to the elevator I thought I recognized him from afar in the huge lobby. Since we'd never met in person before, I didn't feel like going up to a random person and asking, "Tom?" as they gave me a blank stare in return. Turns out it *was* him, but how was I to know for sure until he came up to the room?
Before he arrived I took a moment to get a shot of the view from our hotel room. The second picture is a view of the crosswalk, right before AX pandemonium took over the town...
Next: Part 2: "Day -1, Day 0, and the Wonderful Registration Process. Til then...