Day 1

Comic-Con International, the biggest comic book convention in all the land.  It is the epicenter of all things nerd.  It is the Super Bowl, the World Series, the World Cup, the Wrestlemania, the... uh.. NBA Finals of comic book conventions.  In fact, it is more than just a comic book convention.  It is a pop culture convention.  Everybody whose anybody is there.  Movies, TV, Literature, if it has any hint of nerd, its at Comic-Con.

My trip to Comic-Con was almost a year in the making and it all lead up to this.  The following is the culmination of one of the best trips I have ever had... EVER.  Come with me, as we explore Comic-Con International 2006.

Aww, beautiful somewhere between Seattle and San Diego...

Road Trip!  Yes, the plan was simple.  Two people, two days, three hour driving shifts.  We'd leave Seattle Tuesday morning and get to San Diego on Wednesday just in time for preview night.  We left at roughly 7am on our trip with plans to drive about 12 hours on day one, leaving us around the Sacramento area.  Stopping around 7pm would give us time to find a quick campground to stay the night at.  Three hour shifts worked pretty good because it seemed at about the 2 hour 45 minutes mark driving started to get tiresome.

Mt. Shasta McMasta

The drive mostly consisted of listening to classic rock and looking out the window, pretty run-of-the-mill.  We had the AC blasting but the further south we moved the more apparent it became that things were getting warmer.  This was when I remembered hearing something about a California heat wave...

Uh-Ohs

Now surprisingly enough, it actually hit 110 degrees at one point, but when I took this picture it was only 105.  Wow... only 105... never thought I'd say that.  Anyways, we continued onwards and nearly melted as we stopped to get gas and a bite to eat.  We were a little behind schedule when we decided to stop for the night, about 45-60 minutes from Sacramento, but we were fine.  We found an RV campsite and pulled in.

$18 well spent

This is about when we realized we might have a problem.  You see, our whole plan was to sleep in the back of the truck, so we didn't bring a tent.  Now, being it was about 100 degrees outside, that would make it about, oh I don't know, a bajillion degrees inside a car.  I'm a math major, don't argue.  We put our ingenuity to the test and whipped up a sleeping area.

It's like building a fort really

Even with all the windows down and the back open, it was the most uncomfortable night of sleep ever.  There were moments when we thought we were going to die because of the heat.  The key was to pour water all over you and attempt to fall asleep before it dried up.  Eventually we made it to sleep without dying and got a good 6ish hours or lousy sleep.  We got up as early as we could to get out of this miserable place.  One could say it felt like heaven to leave...

Awwwww (choir of angels)

Onward to Day 2 >>

Jaybird currently resides in Seattle where he reads comics, works in a library, and writes for this site.  He has also been known to blow your mind, rock your world, and eat pizza.