Conventional Wisdom

If you haven’t read the old stuff (most of which still haven been ported over yet) you need to understand that I actually DID camp out in the van all weekend one Ichibancon… and still haven’t lived it down.  You also need to understand that, up until around mid-December, I was operating under the assumption that I’d be heading up to MAGFest this month instead, only changing plans last-minute when the previous trip fell through.  And, of course, last-minute scrambling to find new hotel arrangements are one of the main reason I’ve been trying to avoid hotels in general, so commuting it was.  Hopefully, the do’s and don’ts I figured out from pushing the limits of commuting like this will make it that much easier to plan around driving to cons where I actually have stuff to DO.

And to preemptively answer ANOTHER question: Yes, I realize the commuting/hotel question is as much a matter of money as it is time.  If the gas and parking adds up to more than the hotel room would have been, is it worth it?  In this case, at least, it was.  Parking at Ichi’s hotel is free (if limited, more on that later) and I happen to live near a Harris Teeter with a gas station, and since our whole extended family uses the same membership for all their shopping, the points that racks up really cuts down on the gas price.  So, yes, it was entirely possible to drive down to Concord and back all weekend and have it cost less that one person’s share of a hotel room.  As for the TIME involved… well, we’ll get to that soon.