Lost in Atlanta

As some of you may know, Labor Day weekend they hold DragonCon here in the City of the Braves. Attendance is somewhere in the vicinity of 50,000, or the equivalent of almost 100 CONduit conventions all at once. I plan to give you all a day-to-day account of events here. For now just imagine me trying to cope with several dozen streets all named Peachtree, and running every direction like a crazed spider's web. Our hotel is surrounded by three streets all named Northside Drive, and a couple named Powers Ferry Road. (In Salt Lake City you know most streets run east and west or north and south. The folks here in Atlanta must have decided that if the Yankees ever want to invade again, they'll first get hopelessly lost.)

So far we've visited the Coca Cola Museum which is apparently based on Dante. And we ate lunch at CNN Center, which Turner Broadcasting has turned into a sort of theme park for news. (Before that it used to be where H.R. Pufnstuf was produced.) It didn't make my Killian's Red go down any better. Later we took the tour. Lots of security. Senator Craig doing a tap dance on all of the monitors.

The Georgia Aquarium was probably the best thing we've seen here. We could have spent hours there. Just watching the whales swim around and look at us was worth the price of admission.

These three spots are all separated by the Olympic Park, where Richard Jewel spotted that bomb. Only 11 years later he's dead. The slander he suffered from because of his quick action has never been settled. Lesson learned: take care of your health if you're suing deep pockets.

We've been to the High Art Museum, which was OK. Annie Leibowitz had an exhibition of photos. I'm not sure what the noise is about. Call me a philistine. I was particularly impressed by the exhibition of Cecilia Beaux's work.

We've been to the Carter Center (which seemed dated) and to the Atlanta History Center (which had a large but superficial exhibit on Ben Franklin, and lots of Civil War stuff).

Our oldest son lives here, so we visited him and met his two stepsons. We took them to the Atlanta Botanical Garden where they behaved themselves very well. I was impressed by both of them.

Besides that we've found that Georgia drivers may rival Italians for aggressiveness and Jerseyites for cluelessness. We've eaten way too much, and we've taken a video of an honest to gosh UFO.

Today we went to the Peachtree Center to pick up our badges. After about an hour of standing in line we were let in and snaked through about a mile of queueing barrier. I kid you not when I tell you that one fellow who was waddling about as fast as he could (which was not fast) had to give up about halfway to the registration booths.  He was pale and we asked him if he was OK. He said he'd recover and told us to go on, but after standing for a couple of minutes to catch his breath he collapsed in a heap. People hurried to get him help. Congoing is not for the physically unfit.

Elysa and I collected our bag of free swag, bought a couple of teeshirts, and got back on Marta to return to Dunwoody where our car was parked. This will be our routine for the next few days. Get up early, drive to Perimeter Mall, park, and take the train to Peachtree Center. Late in the evening things get complicated. They run two lines north and south. The one runs from airport station to Northsprings station, which is the line we have to take. The other runs to Doraville station. After 9 pm the Northsprings line only runs south to Lindbergh station, so we'll have to change trains there on our way home.

I've got 200 copies of the World HorrorCon flyer, and 200 bookmarks printed on bright yellow cardstock. I'll bring them along tomorrow morning.

Right now I have to decide what I'm definitely not going to miss, and just how much gaming I'll do. Then it's time for bed.