Yes, it's true. I'm finally writing about GenCon again...

One thing you can say about California gasoline. Sure it's more expensive than most anywhere else in the nation. And that's because there are a lot of required additives to make it burn better and be better for the environment. Yes, there was a problem with MTBE which has started to pollute some of our water supply, hence why it's being rapidly phased out. Being environmentally conscientious is oftentimes a tradeoff between known pollutants and maybe pollutants.

In any case, as we drove through the Southwest, one thing became clear. Gasoline outside of California smells really bad -- awful even. I never knew how bad gas smells when it hasn't been treated. You can tell it's toxic. Whereas California gas smells like gas. It doesn't smell like it's going to make you keel over. That may be good or that may be bad, but I think it's a reflection of the anti-pollution additives in our gasoline.

As I was writing a month and a half ago, I almost immediately fell asleep at the hotel room, after Dave and I brought in the luggage. So I was snoozing while Dave took a shower. I don't know if I took a shower or not. Anyways, Van Horn comes back to the hotel room saying that he's going to be stuck with us because Rowe doesn't have any extra rooms. Chris insists that he told Eric that he needed a place to stay but Eric doesn't recall that. Heck, I told Eric we'd need an extra room and he forgot about that too. Oh well, next time get two rooms.

We had some time to kill so we thought we'd might as well get registered. In front of the Residence Inn is a mall, a big mall that stretches the three blocks to the Convention Center. This way we stayed indoors were it was nice and cool. Milwaukee has a lot of walkways that span across the streets. The mall we walked through was three separate blocks connected by walkways. Walkways led from the Convention Center to a couple of the hotels. And as we walked around downtown Milwaukee there were walkways everywhere. Remember that it's hot and humid in the summer, cold and snowy in the winter around here.

There were already a lot of people at the Convention Center. The typical gamer convention crowd. Some dressed up in weird costumes, a lot in tourist type clothing, the usual goth chicks and bikini babes. No line at the ticket place since we were so late. Then we wandered the convention halls. There is a wax statue of a security guard right at the front. Really life like and people were constantly taking pictures of it. We visited Eric at the Wizard's Attic booth. There was a little Skotos section which Eric had graciously provided.

One of the great things about Eric, and the reason why he is so well known and liked by industry people, is that Eric does things to promote the gaming industry. He's smart and helps smaller companies. He hasn't tried to make Wizard's Attic into a discount mail-order company because that's not really good for the industry. Instead he works on providing services that companies can't do themselves and he advises a lot and he does his homework. I really appreciated that he took time on Saturday to have lunch with his gaming group friends, since we see him all the time anyways.

The convention center spans two blocks and it goes over the street that bisects it, creating a sort of cavernous area. When we got there there was some sort of party going on and we went through it looking for food. But it was too loud and we quickly left. Next Van Horn wanted to take us to some weird bar that he had heard about. Walk back to the Residence Inn and past it, going over a small river running through downtown. Where was Chris leading us? I don't know and I don't think he knew either.