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My Painful Birthday Adventure at Unthrocon
11 years ago
General
(Yes, it took me a while to decide whether I should bother typing this up or not.)
Unthrocon 2014. It was the first convention I've ever officially attended. It was a small, local event, one I could actually afford to go to. I had been feeling mildly depressed for quite a while - the kind of bored, broke, useless feeling that results from over ten years of unemployment without any regular income. I badly needed a reason to get out of the house, to have some place to go and people to meet. This was an opportunity I couldn't really afford to pass up.
Besides, it was on my birthday, and I could think of no better birthday present to give myself than a little adventure. Those were the two words going through my mind when I decided to push the button, to commit, to actually spend the money and preregister for the convention: "Birthday adventure".
And then the big day finally rolled around, and I was in trouble. I had had a sore hip for the past couple of weeks; goodness knows how I managed to injure it with my sedentary lifestyle, but there it was. It was an intermittent pain, the kind that would go away, come back, slowly fade away, then suddenly return if I slept the wrong way, or put too much weight on it, or that sort of thing.
I also, having no idea what to expect, wanted to be prepared for anything, so I packed lots of snacks, lots of drinks, a few tools in case of emergency (because I'm pretty good at fixing computery things), even some ethernet cables just in case I happened to overhear someone complaining about the unreliability of hotel wi-fi; and also my fall jacket, that I ended up not wearing at all because it was a warm, really warm day.
Unfortunately, I started packing a little too late on Thursday night, and then I had to make a choice: Finish packing and get no sleep at all, or sleep and then scramble to finish packing right before leaving. In short: I got three hours of sleep, and left for the convention an hour later than I had planned.
I can drive, but, mainly because of fuel and parking costs, I prefer not to when going all the way to the big city. I took the bus. The convention hotel had a bus stop very near to it, just on the other side of the block, which certainly wasn't too far to walk... except maybe for someone who had the kind of hip injury that could be aggravated by a significant amount of walking.
Although I did my best to hide it from the wolves, the truth is, I was limping really badly during most of my time at the convention. It got so bad, in fact, that I finally just had to leave, an hour earlier than I had originally planned.
This meant walking back to the bus stop, a block away. This also meant that, after I got off the bus, I had to walk the distance from the bus stop to my home, which is uphill, and not a short distance at all, even for the fully able-bodied.
By the time I got home, I was so sore and exhausted that I couldn't join the family at the neighborhood Halloween festivities - the reason I had planned to return home that night in the first place.
I really wanted to return to the convention the next day, as I had planned. Instead, I was so badly injured that I was practically bedridden and popping ibuprofen all day, hoping I might recover enough to go back on Sunday. The event I most wanted to attend was on Saturday, but it was too late for that.
Then Sunday came. The convention wasn't over yet, but for me, it was. Post-con depression started hitting me hard. I was losing my last opportunity to go back for more. I felt terrible. I had missed nearly everything. And my hip still really, really hurt.
The convention was a three-day event. The total amount of time I spent there wasn't even three hours.
It probably didn't help much that, because it was my first convention, I was practically a nervous wreck, and excited, and a little lost and confused. And it was warm inside the hotel, too; At times, I was sweating like a copper pipe in the Middle East.
And it hurt. My overall health is just not good at all right now, and if that doesn't change, I wouldn't dare put myself through an adventure like this again.
However, I did get to see some of the things I wanted to see, and meet some people I had really been looking forward to meeting. There's something mildly surreal about being able to be friends with someone for a long while, and then meet for the first time. I got to see some cool fursuits, too - I even worked up the nerve to photograph a few. While I didn't get the chance to hug a full fursuit - that had been an ambition of mine for years, and still is - I did get to examine some gorgeous fursuit heads very closely, and even pat one of them.
In several important ways, it was worth it. For the few, albeit very few, things that I managed to accomplish in my short time there, I will always be grateful.
Perhaps, some day, I may adventure again. If I'm up to it. It might be a while...
Unthrocon 2014. It was the first convention I've ever officially attended. It was a small, local event, one I could actually afford to go to. I had been feeling mildly depressed for quite a while - the kind of bored, broke, useless feeling that results from over ten years of unemployment without any regular income. I badly needed a reason to get out of the house, to have some place to go and people to meet. This was an opportunity I couldn't really afford to pass up.
Besides, it was on my birthday, and I could think of no better birthday present to give myself than a little adventure. Those were the two words going through my mind when I decided to push the button, to commit, to actually spend the money and preregister for the convention: "Birthday adventure".
And then the big day finally rolled around, and I was in trouble. I had had a sore hip for the past couple of weeks; goodness knows how I managed to injure it with my sedentary lifestyle, but there it was. It was an intermittent pain, the kind that would go away, come back, slowly fade away, then suddenly return if I slept the wrong way, or put too much weight on it, or that sort of thing.
I also, having no idea what to expect, wanted to be prepared for anything, so I packed lots of snacks, lots of drinks, a few tools in case of emergency (because I'm pretty good at fixing computery things), even some ethernet cables just in case I happened to overhear someone complaining about the unreliability of hotel wi-fi; and also my fall jacket, that I ended up not wearing at all because it was a warm, really warm day.
Unfortunately, I started packing a little too late on Thursday night, and then I had to make a choice: Finish packing and get no sleep at all, or sleep and then scramble to finish packing right before leaving. In short: I got three hours of sleep, and left for the convention an hour later than I had planned.
I can drive, but, mainly because of fuel and parking costs, I prefer not to when going all the way to the big city. I took the bus. The convention hotel had a bus stop very near to it, just on the other side of the block, which certainly wasn't too far to walk... except maybe for someone who had the kind of hip injury that could be aggravated by a significant amount of walking.
Although I did my best to hide it from the wolves, the truth is, I was limping really badly during most of my time at the convention. It got so bad, in fact, that I finally just had to leave, an hour earlier than I had originally planned.
This meant walking back to the bus stop, a block away. This also meant that, after I got off the bus, I had to walk the distance from the bus stop to my home, which is uphill, and not a short distance at all, even for the fully able-bodied.
By the time I got home, I was so sore and exhausted that I couldn't join the family at the neighborhood Halloween festivities - the reason I had planned to return home that night in the first place.
I really wanted to return to the convention the next day, as I had planned. Instead, I was so badly injured that I was practically bedridden and popping ibuprofen all day, hoping I might recover enough to go back on Sunday. The event I most wanted to attend was on Saturday, but it was too late for that.
Then Sunday came. The convention wasn't over yet, but for me, it was. Post-con depression started hitting me hard. I was losing my last opportunity to go back for more. I felt terrible. I had missed nearly everything. And my hip still really, really hurt.
The convention was a three-day event. The total amount of time I spent there wasn't even three hours.
It probably didn't help much that, because it was my first convention, I was practically a nervous wreck, and excited, and a little lost and confused. And it was warm inside the hotel, too; At times, I was sweating like a copper pipe in the Middle East.
And it hurt. My overall health is just not good at all right now, and if that doesn't change, I wouldn't dare put myself through an adventure like this again.
However, I did get to see some of the things I wanted to see, and meet some people I had really been looking forward to meeting. There's something mildly surreal about being able to be friends with someone for a long while, and then meet for the first time. I got to see some cool fursuits, too - I even worked up the nerve to photograph a few. While I didn't get the chance to hug a full fursuit - that had been an ambition of mine for years, and still is - I did get to examine some gorgeous fursuit heads very closely, and even pat one of them.
In several important ways, it was worth it. For the few, albeit very few, things that I managed to accomplish in my short time there, I will always be grateful.
Perhaps, some day, I may adventure again. If I'm up to it. It might be a while...
And yay, retro computers!