Nashville Notes

As promised, my HyperiCon report. But first, there was the drive to Nashville. A confession: I dislike interstates, especially crowded ones. Drivers tend to take their brains somewhere else but on their driving and I'm not fond of being the guy who pays for that inattention... at 75-80 miles per hour. So I tend to take scenic routes if I-75 North out of Atlanta is involved. For some reason that stretch of concrete to Chattanooga never thins out, unlike I-85 to Greenville. Unfortunately, that adds time to the trip. So what would have been about 4 to 4-1/2 hours to Nashville via the slab (3 hours if you're Toni S) became 6 hours. Yuck. That would have been tolerable if it hadn't been for the thunderstorms. High winds, driving rain, hail while driving a perfectly flat stretch of interstate with virtually no overpasses to shelter underneath. Hail means upper level turbulence, the kind you often see right before this dark shape descends to the earth and makes life really dicey. I pressed on through two hideous rainstorms after a brief stop during the first. The hail did it to me. If you get a ton of hail on hot pavement it melts, creating a dense fog (been there, done that). So I kept moving.

The convention itself was fun. The folks running it are great, the programming was well attended and I had a blast. If I had any problem, it was that the hotel did not have a restaurant and the area around the hotel was not conducive to just trudging out and foraging. I'd barely settled into the bar on Friday night to try to get some bar food when they started the Karaoke. If I dislike interstates, I HATE karaoke. It's a learned dislike from Hong Kong. I'll write about that sometime down the line.

So Friday night's dinner was out of the vending machines (the consuite's P&J sandwiches didn't sound that intriguing) but Sat & Sun perked up. The consuite folks shoveled food in my direction and we braved Nashville traffic Sat evening to make a food and booze run. Life got better.

All in all, the con was a great time. I had a few moments to talk to Sherrilyn Kenyon, who is a very nice lady. Met some new folks, connected with friends and sold books. I'm hoping that the convention continues to grow so they can move into a better hotel with a restaurant. Oh, and other bright note to the weekend -- they had an antique car show in the hotel parking lot. There was this 'Vette..... (sigh)