Trip to Tulsa, Part II
The next day we got to Tulsa. It was...very hot and bright there. It was averaging around 105 for every day we were there. The downtown cluster of skyscrapers is pretty compact, and the rest of the city and landscape just seems flat.
That being said, we spent about 85% of our time between the linked hotel and convention center, so we managed to avoid most of the worst heat. Heck, neither of us even got sunburned!
The con was a blast. It was a smaller, younger con, maybe 5 years old at the most, but experiencing a sudden growth spurt. So the crowd was (overall) pretty young. It was actually kind of refreshing to see a dealer's room and artist alley with completely new vendors. I bought an excellent steampunk prop pistol, and from one of Brian's friends in the artist alley I bought a cute kitty scarf for my friend Nancy's birthday. AEG had a table and we poked them about 7th Sea and bought a copy of Thunderstone (because they were giving out extra promo stuff, and we'd been meaning to buy a copy of Thunderstone anyway).
But the big fun was meeting all of Brian's online friends. These are people he's know through Gaia for years, but since most of them aren't in our vicinity and they have an annual meet-up in Tulsa, this was the best time to meet them in person. And since I don't often hang out on Gaia (I actually haven't logged on in years) this was my chance to get to know this awesome group of people. We went out to a local eatery for dinner one night (and seriously, once you cross the Mississippi, it seems every eatery has at least some Mexican food). On Sunday afternoon I even got a few of them to go with me to a local used book store on the other side of Tulsa. (Yes, of all the things I could have seen in Tulsa, I wanted to go to a used book store. But I'd seen billboards for it, and this thing was huge--like, 23k square feet of books. How could I say no to that?) One of my friends bought an Anatomy Coloring Book, which is surprisingly considered an excellent learning tool even at higher levels of education, and for my part I bought a few fantasy novels.
Con panels I enjoyed: a Steampunk jewelry making panel, where the panelist was unprepared but I walked away from it with a cool ring I made myself; and "What, Really Japan?" which was a series of short videos of strange things to come out of Japan: short animations and music videos and commercials that could only prompt a reaction of "WTF?!"
Batman also put in an appearance on the balcony above the Artist Alley, spreading his cape and standing there looking dramatic while people snapped photos. He also had a Robin with him, to draw fire help him out.
The Artists Alley also seemed to have a running game of "Marco Polo" going on. It's amazing what you can get a mob of geeks to do :)
On Saturday night, we went to a local Irish pub called Kilkenney's, which had some great authentic Irish fare. Dessert was the highlight, a bowl of fried dough balls and an Irish whiskey cream sauce for dipping them in. It was DELICIOUS. I found the recipe online and will attempt to make it one of these days. But first, I think I would need a deep fryer.
So there developed a running horror gag among the group. A running horror gag is the best way I can describe what happened. One of the girls discovered, to her horror, a man's face in her floral hotel painting. If you stood at the right angle, the flowers and leaves appeared to form a man's face that stared at you creepily. Thus, much screaming ensued about how everyone who sees it will die in a week, but the first person to see it is cursed to see all their friends die first and THEN die themselves, and nobody wanted to be alone in the room with it. And then a shadowy figure was seen in the background of the OTHER hotel painting, which led to the belief that if The Gardener is covered up, he will simply move to someplace else. So we covered it up with paper, and protected the room with a Bible, a sketch of Brian as a My Little Pony, and El Bondo, the group's totem, who is a jar of Bondo with a dashing moustache glued to it. Don't ask.
Anyway, The Gardener was blamed for anything remotely "tragic" that happened in the room, such as at one point someone fell off the side of the bed and became wedged between the bed and the wall. Granted, she rolled off the bed in a fit of laughter/screaming, but that's not the point. When I told the girls that the book store we were going to was called "Gardner's," there was much freaking out, and that was determined as the reason why "Gardner's Books" was not findable by my GPS, and why we had to have someone use their iPhone to look up the address and search for it that way.
Anyway, we all had a fun time scaring ourselves with a made-up phantom :) And despite the simmering supernatural malice of The Gardener, a merry time was had by all, and Brian and I only regretted that we had to leave on Sunday afternoon and miss all the post-con festivities.
The trip back was pleasant, and we saw some more amazing sights. At one point, a hawk (Brian thinks it may have been a Red Tail, but I didn't get a good look) took off about 20 feet in front of the car, flying by at eye level. For lunch on the second day, we stopped in the charming little town of Greenville Ohio. It was a sneeze on the map, but very well kept up, with a lovely central square that reminded me of Meadville. If we had had some extra time, it would've been a great place to stop and look in some chintzy country store or antiques place.
We even managed to stop at a Trucker rest area so I could get a good look at the stars. Unfortunately the street lamps at the stop did give me some ground light, but it was still more stars than I'd seen in a very long time. It was lovely! Later that same evening we had to pull over at a rest stop and use the wireless to try to see what was up with the huge storm front. It was, apparently, coming right for us, so we decided to hang out there for an hour or two, eat dinner, and watch the MST3K episode "Diabolik" on Brian's laptop. Afterwards, we decided to get back on the road since we didn't want to stop another night. And as we pulled away, the bruise-purple sky behind us crackled with lightning, which I found even more amazing and beautiful than the stars! When you have an unimpeded, "Big Sky" view of a lightning storm, it's easier to see all of the lightning, and the way it crackled silver across the dark purple clouds was amazing.
At last we returned home shortly after midnight, and gratefully collapsed into bed.
Whew! If you stuck with me and read all of that, kudos to you, my friend! Overall it was a fantastic weekend, I met a lot of great folks and had a fantastic time. Even the long drive was kind of enjoyable (though that may be because we didn't hit any bad traffic or roadwork). Maybe one day I'd love to do it again :)