Omg the trip was amazing. I don’t think that I could have had any more fun. The first day of my journey started when Tina and Les picked me up in Denver, we went to go see Harry Potter. The movie was amazing. I truly think that it is one of the better ones that I have seen. I am not going to go into details about the movie just incase some of you haven’t seen it yet. If you haven’t seen it, I highly suggest that you do.
Tina and Les are really sweet. I couldn’t ask for better friends. I must confess I was terrified of meeting them. That is a big step to finally meet people that you have only talked to online. Then everything that was going on with my grandma, I almost didn’t go on the trip. Later to find out that Tina and Les would have taken me anyway.
So the road trip started out good. Kansas was Kansas. I don’t think that I have been in a place that had so little in it. All we saw was corn. Actually through every state that we went through we saw corn. I don’t think that I will be able to eat corn for a while.
We finally arrived in Ohio, when we pulled up to the hotel that the convention was at we were disappointed in what we saw. I couldn’t believe that Vulkon would pick a hotel that was in a place like that. The inside of the hotel was okay, but the out side it looked like we were in the run down part of town. There is no way that I would choose that hotel for Kate to go to. It just isn’t right.
I was so tired from the drive. I think that I slept 30 minutes the entire time we were in the car. I remember Tina asking me if I was okay when we got to the hotel. I don’t think was were in the room for five minutes and I was laying on the bed. I fell asleep and the next thing that I feel is Sarah slapping my feet saying get up sleepy head. I woke up and we went to lunch. We also found the nearest Starbucks and got coffee. Tina and Richie played with the cap to his water like the little paper football game. We sat and talked for a couple hours laughing a lot and probably annoying a lot of the people that were sitting in the area. Oh well, we will never see them again.
Sarah is one of the sweetest people that I have met. I was nervous to meet my fellow admin lady. I don’t know why, well yes I do, like Tina and Les, we had never met before. Sarah’s little boy Richie, OMG how cute. I don’t think that I have ever seen a five year old behave to well.
So the big day, we started the day off by watching the Bride of Chaotica. We needed a little Janeway booster. The first thing that we did was go to the autograph signing for Tim Russ. I don’t think that he was happy that morning. Granted he was nice but it looked like he needed more sleep and coffee. After I got his autograph all of use waited in line for the photo op for Kate Mulgrew. OMG I think that was the worst part of the day. Waiting in the line knowing that you would be standing right next to her in a few minutes is really stressful. There were a lot of things running through my mind while waiting in line, until Tina decided to pull my arm off when she saw Kate walk into the room. I wasn’t looking so I had no idea that she was going to do what she did. I think that Tina was the most excited out of us all. Sarah had already met Kate before so it wasn’t as bad for her. It was so amazing to meet Kate. I wasn’t even close to imagining what it would be like. Granted it was short but it felt long. She said hello to me, I said hello back. I told her thank you after the picture was taken and she shook my hand. That was the highlight of my day.
After we did our photo ops with Kate we decided to go listen to Tim talk. I had heard that he was funny, and he was. She showed us a few movie clips of some stuff that he was working on. Of Gods and Men, I think was the title of one of them. He also answered some questions. The question that Tina and I wanted to ask was asked by someone ahead of us. We wanted to know why he decided to hit Kate with spit balls. The person asked if he got his clothes back. That is a funny story about the spit balls.
After his Q and A we went and got ready for Kate’s Q and A. Tim was hiding in the audience, sitting a couple rows in front of us. Some how the word got out that he was there and he and Kate had a reunion on stage. It was so sweet; you could tell that they were and still are really close friends. There was one thing that did make me mad in her Q and A was the fact that there were people in there that were asking her questions and they had no idea what they were talking about. There was on person that was asking her a question that didn’t know the name of the episode and Kate asked the audience if anyone knew what this person was talking about and Sarah immediately jumped to her feet and told Kate the title of the episode. The thing that I am confused about, how some one could stand up in front of Kate Mulgrew and not know what they were talking about, what were they thinking? After her Q and A Kate was scheduled to do autographs. This is where I started to feel really bad for Kate. Vulkon decided to schedule her events so close together that she was running out of time and was being rushed. So after the Q and A they started taking rows up for the autographs, well I heard that the staff that was running the convention got their autographs first, and then they started on all of the fans. Right after the autograph session Kate was supposed to be at a meet and greet. Well because of Vulkon’s stupid staff members Kate was rushed, she didn’t even get to look up at the person who she was signing the photo for. She just kept signing and signing. I felt so bad for her. When she got to my photo, she didn’t look up at me, but I did thank her for her time, she did say you’re welcome.
You would figure that a company like Vulkon would be familiar with how many people came to that convention just to see Kate. Since they are supposed to know these things, they would have arranged her times so that she had enough time in between events sot that if the time did run over she wouldn’t feel rushed. I really don’t think that I will be going to another Vulkon convention again.
So after our fun day of events we decided to go down to the bar in the hotel and have a drink. As Tina and I were sitting there talking and having a drink Tim walks up next to us and orders a drink. So we are sitting there and Tim goes off and talks to some other people. Tina and I were about to head back to the room when Sarah walked up. So we stayed there for a while longer and had a few more drinks. Lets just say that the night ended with Tim tipsy from the cocktail party and us tipsy. Sarah and I got back to the room at 3, Tina left early because there was a stupid guy there that was being an ass. He walked up to us and did the Vulcan hand salute and said something like, the lady over there told me to come of here and do this to see how many of you I could get. We looked at him for a while and finally asked him if he knew what he just did. He said that he didn’t know. I think that I said that he should know what a hand gesture means before he does it. What was really annoying about this guy was that no matter how much we tried to explain it to him, part of there reason was that he was tipsy also, but he just came from a wedding, so that was to be expected. I did have a lot of fun that night. I was actually able to forget about all that had been going on with my family.
The drive home was a little better than the drive there. For some reason drives back seem to be shorter then the drive there. The corn was still there, through every state that we drove through, corn. It was nice when we got into a city, we were able to something else.
We finally pulled into Denver at 4 am on Tuesday. Got a few hours of sleep. Tina and Les were so sweet to let me go see my grandma and ditch them for a while. I decided to take them up to Saint Mary’s Glacier, to see some of the sites here. IT was a beautiful drive up into the mountains. We finally got up to the trail head for the glacier and got ready to go up. Les stayed down with the car. She didn’t think that she would make it up the ¾ mile hike to the base of the glacier. It was a really rocky trail, seeing that we were actually walking up the glacier. Tina complained on the way up. We stopped and rested a bit along the way. It is a rough hike for some one that lives at sea level to climb up to 10,000 feet. I just kept telling her that it would be worth the hike. As soon as we got to the top she said it was worth it. I had forgotten hoe pretty it was, I hadn’t been up to the glacier since I was a kid. It was amazing but it was sad how much smaller it had gotten. After falling in the ice cold creek and throwing snow balls at each other we hiked back down and decided to go to lunch/dinner. There is a pizza place in Idaho Springs that is good so we went there and talked about the trip, meeting Kate and all the other things that we did.
When we got back to my house we watch and finally episode of Voyager to send them off and the second part of the journey home, Tinker Tenor Doctor Spy was the episode of choice. I think it was the perfect episode to watch. Then sadly when it ended I had to bid my new friends farewell. It was a bit sad to have them leave after only being together for a short period of time. But I am sure that we will get together again soon for another conventions or vacation in the near future!
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