As per tradition we stopped at Martinsville's Micky D's for breakfast, and I got to give a couple of patrons their excitement for the day. I had bronchitis, and the smell of disinfectant in public restrooms sets it off. So as I left the stall in the ladies' facility I was greeted by two very worried women, who though I was choking.

Northeastern Indiana is just about the most boring stretch of the state. Southern Indiana has trees and hills and maybe bigfoot, and in the Northwestern part you have the chance of glimpsing Mordor--er--Gary and looking at casino billboards. The area from Fort Wayne north is flat farm country--about as interesting as West Texas.

The only really interesting sight was just this side of the State Line-- a discount tobacco and fireworks store. I don't know about you, but I think this is just an inherently bad idea.

Over the state line into Michigan we saw two things we hadn't seen in Indiana--snow, and about a gazillion billboards for "adult shopping centers". (Which so far as I know aren't illegal in Indiana, so why aren't there any on this side of the state line?)

We stopped for dinner in Marshall, just after we left I-69 (the kinky interstate) for I-94, at a place called Country Kitchen, which while a bit heavy on the country cute has several things to recommend it: a good baked potato soup, fast service and they put the smoking section in a glassed-in room, completely cut off from those of us who have bronchitis.

Billboards are about my only distraction on a long drive, as you've probably noticed. There were some particularly choice ones on this route. The ones I remember best were a series of advertisements by some church or church council or perhaps someone with strange dark motives. They all had the same typeface and the same background so they must have been put up by the same group though I couldn't see any attribution--though it may have been in type too small for me to read going 70 mph. Anyway, one said, "What was it about ‘Thou shalt not' you didn't understand?" --God." And the other one said, "Let's get together at my house before the game Sunday. --God." I can deal with an inflexible Yahweh, and inscrutable Yahweh, or even a tolerant and loving Yahweh--but a breezy wisecracking Yahweh is just a bit much for my logic circuits. Later on in the Con dealer's room I saw book with quotes from church signs all over the country. Kinda scary.

We'd never been to Detroit before, though I had a near miss in ‘77 going to Toronto from Kalamazoo, so the layout of the city was entirely unknown. Dan had printed out Yahoo maps, and the Rand-McNally was actually in the car and not buried under Reeses Cup wrappers for a change. What we didn't have was the print-out with the name of the hotel. So, while we knew where we were going, we didn't know where we'd be when we got there.

Also, I think Yahoo should give little warnings about the neighborhoods you're going to pass through as you follow their directions. The map showed that our hotel was on 53 (Van Dyke) north of -I-94 in Warren. After a little worry about whether there actually was an exit from I-94 onto 53 (Rand McNally showed one--Yahoo didn't) we made our exit without taking a fender off of the white SUV that tried to cut us off and found ourselves in--well, lower Van Dyke.

I can best describe the neighborhood to you by saying that such buildings that weren't boarded up were either liquor stores, bars or storefront churches. Far as I can figure you can't get a liquor license in that part of Detroit unless you can prove you're within 50 feet of a church. (I did see one business that purported to be a barbershop with games and discount cigarettes, but as it was next to a liquor store I suspect it of being a camouflaged church.)

Later the neighborhood improved, and the majority of the buildings were liquor stores, churches or nail salons. At one point I saw a church called something like St. Petrouska's Orthodox Church, next to it was building with a sign that said, St. Petrouska's Hall, nail salon and package liquors. (You think I'm making this up don't you?)

We knew almost immediately when we left Detroit and entered Warren--half the traffic turned off on a Something Mile Road, and the number of churches fell by about 80%. We kept crossing streets called Ten Mile Road, Thirteen Mile Road, etc., but I never found out what they were ten or thirteen miles from or to, though it might have been the Canadian border.

There was only one hotel in the right area when we reached the cross street indicated by Yahoo!--the Van Dyke Park. A quick tour of the parking lot revealed two cars with "Pagan Clergy" bumper stickers and we figured that if it wasn't the con hotel it was at least an interesting alternative.

We'd known that we had a pool side room when I made the reservation. It was the last non-smoking room available. (See bronchitis above.) We hadn't realized how central to the con the atrium by the pool was, of which more anon. We were alone in the room, all of our friends being busy or broke, which turned out to be lucky because there was only one bed and a large gap that had once held a second bed. (I worried a little that we'd be accused of stealing it, but decided that I could probably find something less silly to worry about if I tried.)

After we'd located the green room, gotten our badges and other stuff we found the con suite. And learned about the evil elevators. Apparently the hotel is only marginally up to the strain of 800 fen, and all elevators were posted as having a top limit of 5 small people, or 3 large. The Confusion daily paper said that they were now monitored so that if there was a breakdown they could get to you faster. Taking this and several other broad hints dropped in that publication, the program book, and the signs by the elevators, we mostly used the stairs.

The con suite was on the second floor of one of the towers. This hotel was of the rooms-off-a-central-well design. After some time leaning on the railing around the well Dan and I have decided to suggest to the Confusion ConCom that much amusement could be derived from about a bushel of SuperBalls dropped from the top floor.....

The Con Suite--excellently stocked--was presided over by an 8-foot tall statue of Cthulhu wearing a party hat and a sign saying "Do not mock the happy fun god." None of us did, though someone stole his party hat on Saturday Night, but by that time he'd been leied* so he took no gruesome revenge. (*Not my pun.)

We did our first pass in the Dealers' room, and Dan bought the first three Sluggy Freelance books. (One of the reasons we were compelled to be at this con, besides the talk Dan was to give, was that Pete Abrams, who is the author of Sluggy, was the Artist GoH.)

Our next order of business was dinner. Dan didn't want to drive and the prospect of tacos in the Green Room didn't tempt me, so we decided to try Mongo's Mongolian BBQ and Sports Bar which was in the hotel (alas, the sports were plain old football and basketball, not Buzkahzi as one would expect at Mongolian BBQ.) We were seated immediately, our orders were taken quickly--and the food didn't show up for over an hour. We flagged down the waitress 4 times and each time she went to the kitchen and yelled at the cooks until she finally arrived with our club sandwiches. The only distraction besides the well-scrubbed cheery faces of the Olympic women's gymnastics gold medalists in the mural above Dan's head were the 3 Sluggy Freelance books--the result of that was that I'm now addicted to the stupid comic strip. (Warning, if you value your sanity do not go here .)

We both found programming we needed to attend that night: Dan signed up for a coffeeklatch with Pete Abrams, and I went to the cheesecake contest in the con suite. There were 10 cheesecakes, and even though we were each limited to tasting only three of them, it was great fun. My choices were the "Black Forest Cherry Chocolate", the "Double Fudge Espresso ", and a classic cheesecake called "Company Cheesecake". I wound up voting for the last one. The others were too rich--not, of course, that I didn't eat them. Selections I didn't get to try included "Uncontainable Love" (with chocolate hearts all over it,) "Ginger, Pumpkin Spice", "Raspberry Lemonade", "Peanut Butter Chocolate Cake", and "Marble Cheesecake Brownie". "Uncontainable Love" won, and my favorite "Company Cheesecake", came in last. Dan got to meet Pete Abrams and get his books autographed, but no cheesecake.

I should probably mention that the GoH's were: Pro-GoH--George R. R. Martin, Science GoH--Br. Guy Consolmagno SJ, Artist:--Pete Abrams, Filk--Heather Alexander, and Toastmaster--Sharon Meyers Shaw.

Br. Guy Consolmagno, is the Pope's Astronomer. Dan says his talks were very good and he got to have great conversation with him in the Green Room. (In case you were wondering why the Pope needs an astronomer, one of his panels was called "Why the Pope needs an astronomer", however I didn't get go to it since it was opposite one of my panels so I can't enlighten you. I'm sure he has a good reason. )

I hung around the con suite and talked to people I know from other cons whose names I can never remember despite the beribboned badges that they wear. By about 11:00 I was ready for bed. This is where we started to learn some of the pitfalls of our room location. The atrium is the designated public smoking area for the hotel and a favorite gathering place for those who can't smoke in the ConSuite. I didn't have any trouble falling asleep, but about 4 AM someone started yelling for no discernable reason. After that I was, awake, no reprieve.

No one should ever lie in bed for two hours listening to someone else's party. I finally got up at 6:00, remembering the convention's boast that it has one of the last 24-hour con suites in the Midwest. (A grand old custom that should be revived.) So I got dressed and after getting lost only a couple of times--the hotel was laid out by drunken rabbits--found the con suite and discovered that not only was it open, there were actually semi-awake people in it. The conversation was good--I even found another Sims addict--and I was able to throw off the self-pity blue meanies. I went back to the room about 8:00 and slept until 10:00.

The Green Room fed us a good breakfast, and I got myself together for the first of my two panels--the Ethics of Creativity. I have no idea why I was on this panel. (Actually, I do. I didn't say, "Why would you want me on this panel?" when I was asked to do it.) The other panelists, only one of whose names I recall and that's because I know him from the SCA (Randy Asperlund) consisted of one gentleman who had written articles on the subject of the panel, two artists, no musicians, and me. Neither the panelist nor the audience managed to separate ethics from legalities and it more or less turned into a lecture by the guy who'd written the articles on the new world order of copyright forced on us by the internet. It killed an hour.

Dan had told me I needed to stop in the Art Show--not for the art, but for the Legos exhibit. The Michigan Lego Users Group had set up two or three large tables, with Lego monorails, trains and buildings. The amount of work and creativity put into these was fascinating. There was a Lego dragon, and a row of houses with, for some reason, Darth Vaders fighting in front of them. And something that looked like a red and black Lego Minas Morgul. (Interesting--my spell checker has flagged Vader and Morgul, but not Darth and Minas....)

Eventually I got a headache so I took some Ibuprofen and decided to take a nap. When I laid down the atrium was full of the SCA fighting demo and it wouldn't be the first time I'd slept through the noise of crashing rattan. What I didn't realize was that the fighting demo was to be followed by Ookla the Mok's concert. In the atrium. Directly next to my door. If you aren't an Ookla the Mok fan, I need to explain that their style of filk includes large speakers, amplifiers, electric guitars and drums. I was able to manage a light doze between really loud riffs.

At least the headache was gone, but I was still pretty groggy and in the blessed silence that followed I forgot that the next thing I wanted to do was go to Heather Alexander's concert in the Theater immediately following the Ookla-people. Consequently I missed the first forty minutes. The forty minutes I did hear were wonderful, and I've decided that in my next lifetime I want to be as nifty as she is. After entertaining us for about an hour and a half she then told us that, because her fans had been so supportive and bought so many albums not only had her husband been able to quit his day job to help her, but that they had just had been able to close on a house. She said that every time she put the key in her lock she was going to thank all of her fans. That is class.

I met Dan for dinner--his talk had been at five. He'd had a couple of hecklers at first who thought that a talk titled "building your own radio-telescope" had to be a joke. They were won over quickly though and the talk went very well after that, with about 20 attendees.

We both wanted Mongolian BBQ so we decided to risk Mongo's again. As we waited to be seated we fell in with a gentleman whose name I don't remember (John D, I think his badge said) and ended up going to dinner with him. Mongo's was true to form. It took half an hour to flag down a waitress and the line for the BBQ was very long. (Dan was nearly killed his first trip through by a cashew flying off the grill.) All in all dinner took us two hours so it was fortunate we had such pleasant company. Luckily there wasn't anything we were in a hurry to get to that evening, though judging from the costumes I saw in the halls as we headed up to the Con Suite, we missed a great masquerade.

About 10:00 Dan and I decided to go swimming. Swimming, hell, we wanted in the whirlpool. Hell is an extremely apt usage in this context. Soon as we got to the whirlpool the two people getting out of it in a hurry said, "Warning--it's really hot." And it was really hot. I kept expecting Elmer Fudd to arrive and start slicing carrots and potatoes for the stew. We were able to tolerate perching on the edge of the pool and par-boiling our feet for about 5 minutes. Next we tried the regular pool--which appeared to be snow melt.

Back to the room, followed by a meander to a few parties, the green room and the Con Suite. About 1:00 we retired to discover that that night's atrium activity was a drum circle. However, the forces of insomnia were foiled--I've had enough Pennsic experience to like falling asleep to drumming and Dan has slept through earthquakes and tornados.

My next panel was at 1:00 on Sunday. We slept until about 9:00 and once again were fed a good breakfast in the Green Room . In the dealer's room I bought Heather Alexander's latest CD A Gypsy's Home which had some of the music I'd especially liked that she'd done in her concert the evening before. Nothing much interested me otherwise, but I told Dan he should get the Confusion T-shirt what with the cool Sluggy Freelance art. He pointed out that he didn't wear T-shirts much any more, but that I could get one. I wound up getting the sweat-shirt version instead. (Worship the sweatshirt. It is not nifty?)

We checked out and I went in search of the room where my panel was supposed to be--it was as usual down an invisible corridor. I had an over hour to spare and when I checked the program book I found that there was another drum circle about to start in the room next door. I also managed to catch the tail end of Moonwulf's (Michael Longcor's) Songwriting Class. I'm sorry I missed it--the handout I snagged a copy of looked fascinating, and I really liked his extra-credit--instant pass bonus project: Write a song that makes Jar-Jar Binks likable. "I love Jar-Jar Binks. Deep fried."

The drum circle was incredible. Heather Alexander was one of the participants, and there must have been ten or fifteen people drumming, tinkling, rattling, tootling, strumming, and dancing. Heather even fiddled for a while. It was fascinating to try and decide at any given time if the music sounded Celtic, or Middle Eastern, or Far Eastern, or from some new, previously unknown culture.

The final panel was one I really wanted to be on-- "Writing Inspirations". The moderator, as much as there was one, was Gene Wolfe--who is also high on my list of nifty people--Sarah Zettel--who I know from Sff.net and Genie--Tobias Bucknell, and Martha Allard. We had fun, and Gene Wolfe made one of the best observations about plotting I've ever heard: start with the ending. Most writers who come up to him with ideas, he said, have beginning situations. Gene starts with an ending and figures out how to get there. Anyway, unlike the other panel I think I made a contribution to this one. It was interesting and if any one person expounded for any length of time it was Gene Wolfe who I personally could listen to for hours.

We got out of the hotel immediately after my panel, afraid of being sucked back into the dealer's room or the Con Suite. This time we decided to take an alternate route that avoided the worst sections of Van Dyke. We found out more interesting things about Detroit. You know that drunken rabbit (a relative of Bun-bun's, I'm sure) that laid out the hotel? He or she also laid out I-96 through Detroit. Sparing you the painful details I'll say we managed to get to where we needed to be with a minimum of backtracking. (Note to anyone trying this route: The 14 on the map is not a mileage marker. It's also not I-96. I won't give you any more hints.)

Dinner was at the same Country Kitchen we'd eaten at on Friday. I mention this because, despite the fact that it was crowded, we still managed to order, eat our soup and get our main course in less time than it took to flag down a waitress at Mongo's.

And on the way back we noticed that the snow again stopped at the state line, and reappeared while we rounded I-465, between I-70 east and I-65-south. And, just to keep up a good tradition, we had to make a pit stop at a gas station in Martinsville, which used the same damn disinfectant as the Mickey Ds. This time I had people pounding on the door afraid I was being sick. (Of course the janitor was one of the people who were pounding. He had a vested interest I guess, being the one who'd have to clean up.)

Anyway, we got home just fine. The cats were all mad at us for days, and we're hoping to get there again next year.