Travel – Page 12 – Karen K. Lee

At the beginning of this month, I went to the Emerald City Comic Convention! It was my first time at an American Comicon, as the other ones I have been to have all been in Hong Kong. Here is a recount of my trip!

Day 1

I woke up bright and early on the 1st of March (after only four hours of sleep), and took the bus down to Seattle (via Quick Shuttle). A 4-hour long bus ride was not the worst thing in the world, but I do wish that the bus would not make so many stops so that we could speed up the process. I ended up getting to Seattle half an hour late, which meant I was even later to the con than I had originally intended to be.

At 2:00pm, I arrived at my hotel in downtown Seattle– SpringHill Suites by Marriott. My friend and I chose this hotel because it was an 11 minute walk to to the Washington State Convention Centre– where the ECCC was to be held. I left my luggage at the front desk (I must say, the staff at the hotel were amazing. They were super nice and helpful throughout the whole trip!), and tried to make my way to the convention centre. Despite having printed out a million maps to guide me around the small area that is Downtown Seattle, you will not believe how many times I got lost. But soon enough, I got to the convention. What I was not prepared for was the line. I was in line for my badge for 2 hours. What happens is that you take your ticket to this counter to exchange it for a badge. Sound easy enough…except the line to the counter wrapped around the convention centre like a million times. I was forced to miss Felicia Day’s panel (but I guess it was okay, because she was to have another one on the third day with Wil Wheaton).

After getting into the convention centre, I realized that it was very warm in there. It was my first day at the con, and my friend was skipping today, so I did not cosplay (we were cosplaying together). Instead, I spent my day taking pictures of other people’s amazing costumes. I am very impressed with the amount of work people put into their costumes, and for putting up with how hot it was. I was in short sleeves and I was hot– I can only imagine people walking around in full body armour and how gross it must feel.

I left the con at around 7PM that day, choosing to take some time to explore Downtown Seattle. It was my second time there and I quickly got bored after entering random shops. I went back to my hotel, and realizing I had gone the whole day without food, I hastily picked up a lunchbox at a Japanese restaurant so I could eat back in my hotel room. My friend Michelle came later on in the night and we ended up watching the latest episode of Supernatural together! We had troubles falling asleep, but soon enough, it was morning.

Day 2

We woke up at 7:30 in the morning, as I warned Michelle about the line ups. We had our breakfast, and learned that there was actually a free shuttle to the convention centre leaving on the hour, every hour, from our hotel. I already had my badge, but she still had to get hers. Luckily, because we woke up early, the line for the badge was very quick (took her about 10 minutes), but we had to wait in line before they could let us into the centre.

Today, both Michelle and I were in costume. We dressed up as the same character from Supernatural, except she went for the more traditional look of the character, and I genderbended mine. I cosplayed as fem!Cas. It was very hot as our costumes required that we wore a trench coat for the whole day.

Castiel’s original outfit

My spin on Castiel’s outfit

There was not too much on our agenda today. We mainly aimed to get our picture taken with Misha Collins (who plays the character we dressed up as), and to go to the Supernatural Fan Panel later on in the night. Misha Collins was amazing, and although you do not get a much of a window of time to tell him how you want to pose for your picture, he was very quick to understand. I liked how my picture turned out.

We went to the Fan Panel an hour early, but somehow, they only allocated the fans a room with a seating capacity of 220 people. They grossly underestimated our numbers. So we were turned away. However, after the panel started, I convinced Michelle that we should go back up and check if they had extra space. It turns out they did!

The fan panel consisted of a room full of fans discussing plot lines and raising hilarious questions. It also allowed for a bunch of people cosplaying from the same show to congregate together! I met a lot of wonderful people, quite a few of whom I still keep in touch in on Tumblr.

AND THEN MISHA COLLINS CRASHED THE FAN PANEL. It was against his contract, or something of the sort, but he still broke the rules and nonchalantly and quietly snuck into the room. It took about 3 whole seconds before the room started screaming. I love this man.

Misha Collins crashed the fan panel!

And that was day 2.

Day 3

Michelle and I had to wake up very early again, because Misha Collins’ panel was the first panel of the day. It starts at 11, but we got to the Convention Centre at 8. This again meant we had to wait in line before they let us into the convention centre, so it was this mad race towards the line for the main hall where the panel was to be held when they finally let us in.

We ended up getting pretty good seats– 3rd row behind the VIP area. Misha came into the hall and seemed surprised at the fact that it was so full. I skipped a lot of details in this post, but I was at quite a few other panels during the course of my visit– and none of them were as full as this one. The whole hall filled up, so there were thousands of people there. The panel moderator asked Misha questions for around 20 minutes, and then opened the floor up for questions. I obviously booked it to the mic, and was one of the first people to ask a question. Unfortunately, the girl in front of me asked the question that I wanted to ask, so here I was, freaking out because I did not have a question. So I improvised. The whole thing was ridiculous, but I guess it made people laugh. Someone recorded a video of my question that I found on Youtube…so here it is if you want to hear me sputter and stuttering.

Emerald City Comic Con: Misha Collins Panel Part 6 (Hunter Salon …

The rest of our last day was spent walking around and doing more shopping. I spent bucketloads of money on graphic T-shirts. No regrets there. Okay, maybe a little because I am extraordinarily broke now. I also took a picture with Felicia Day! Her panel was amazing, and I actually teared up when she addressed how female gamers/’geeks’ (I do not exactly agree with the use of the labels of being ‘geeky’ and ‘nerdy…) should do as they would like without being judged by others. Wil Wheaton also added a line on how he was seriously pissed at people who made Felicia have to clarify this to the females in the audience. I never applauded louder.

Sadly, it was eventually time to go again, and Michelle and I made our way back to the hotel to pick up our luggage and headed to the bus stop back to Vancouver. Lots of amazing memories were made, and amazing people met. I hope that one day, I will actually be able to get tickets to the San Diego Comic-Con. But for now, the Emerald City Comic Con was an amazing experience!

-Karen

(Sung in the tune of “Down By the Bay”)
Down by Hick’s Lake
Where the water reeds grow
Back to my tent
I dare not go….

And that is basically where our campfire song ended as we realized how scary the lyrics were.

I am back from my camping trip, and have finally showered after two days without doing so. It was my first camping trip, so the whole no showering idea was scary to me. However, I prepared myself before the trip and finally accepted the fact that it was no big deal. What I did not expect was that there were no sinks in the ‘washrooms’. The ‘washroom’ was more of a pit in the floor, and the smell was pretty horrid.

Before heading off to camp, I read loads of camping tips, hoping I will have these bits of advice floating around my head as we camped. One of the first advice for new campers was to arrive while the sun was still up, so that you can set up your tent, get a fire going, and get a good look at your surroundings. Sadly, we did not arrive before sunset as we ended up being two hours behind schedule, so we did have to stumble around in the dark. Thankfully, the family in the adjacent camp site was really nice and lent us supplies (just rope really) and was there to answer any questions we had.

My friend Monica and I had practiced setting up the tent in her front yard before the trip, just in case we would be working in the dark. That turned out to be very smart indeed. We also prepped the food and meals for the trip, getting them ready for the cooler. Packing was slightly annoying because I had to dig around for some winter gear since it would get cold at night. In the end, I think we were pretty well prepared seeing as how this was our first camping trip. Josh and Connie chopped up wood for the campfire, William got the van, and soon enough we were off to Sasquatch Provincial Park.

The first night was chaotic. Connie got the fire going, while Monica and I tackled our tent, and William and Josh tackled theirs. Monica’s dog Gator was also very anxious as he had no idea what was happening. We ate bannock, ignoring all food safety procedures and had ham and cheese. Sleeping was actually a lot better than I imagined, mostly due to Connie’s friend who lent us her inflatable mattress. Without it, we would have been sleeping on gravel under our thin sleeping bags.

The next morning, we woke up at around nine. We started another fire so we could cook breakfast. We ended up cooking our lunch too (Beef Kebabs) since fires took so long to get going. I think we all underestimated the amount of time it would take for us to cook our meals. It was well into lunch time when we finally got the food well done enough to eat. Thus, we had brunch instead.

Hard at work cooking our brunch.

Bacon, beef kebabs (with zucchini) and scrambled eggs.

Then it started to threaten to drizzle, so we glanced over to our neighbours to see them setting up a tarp over their fire, covering as much of their site as possible. We had two tarps, one to go under each tent. Good thing one of the tarps were actually huge, so we moved both tents over to the big tarp and used the small one as our rain shelter. We had rope, but it was not enough. The family next to us offered to lend us some, so we ended up being able to put up the tarp. We were lucky we copied them, and for them to have extra rope. When we were packing, different websites told us to bring rope. None of us knew what the rope was for…until then.

When the drizzle stopped, we started to hike. Hick’s Lake was actually really nice, and we started to walk around the perimeter. We eventually got to a point where Gator could not cross because it was too steep, so we had to turn back. We stopped by our site for a quick break consisting of toilet breaks and fruits, then the girls were off again on a different hiking trail. The guys wanted to nap.

Hick’s Lake in the drizzle

We saw this little guy on our way back!

Connie, Monica, Gator and I found a place called Beaver Pond. It was a hiking trail, with a sign claiming that a hike around it would take thirty minutes. It took us a bit longer because we kept stopping for pictures. But the view of the pond was breathtaking. The water was very still, and gave a perfect reflection of the trees and the sky surrounding it.

Beaver Pond

That night, for dinner, we had stew along with crackers, followed by smores. Then we told some ghost stories and sang some songs. We also just talked for a while. It was not until we used up our firewood that we decided to go to sleep.

Connie and William by the fire 🙂

As a whole, I found the camping trip a fun experience. It was not as strenuous as I had imagined, but the lack of actual washrooms came as a surprise. I look forward to going camping again!

Tips for camping (a.k.a notes to future Karen for future camping trips):

it is best if you arrive before sunset
practice setting up a tent if you do not have prior experience
bring your own firewood, or else you will have to buy from the camp site (overpriced)
it does get cold at night, so bring suitable clothing
make a meal plan. Even if you end up switching certain planned meals around, you will be able to prepare the right amount of food this way.
camp sites that allow you to drive your car into your lot is awesome. You save time unloading everything, and you can also lock up any valuables or food items to be kept away from nature.
cooking meals take more time than you would think
bring extra rope and tarp in case it rains. Just tie the tarp’s corners to trees to secure it. For us, we had to secure one end of the tarp to our car as we lacked trees for that end.
firewood and supplies will take up a lot of space in your van/car. We rented a 7 seater van, but still struggled to fit all our stuff

Until next time!

-Karen

Karen K. Lee

Finding myself

Tag: Travel

Emerald City Comic Convention 2013 – The Clash of Fandoms

Down By Hick’s Lake