[this report was never finished]

Steve-o's BotCon '99 Report

I have finally gotten around to writing up my BotCon report.  I'm pretty
sure that by the time I finally got my BC96 report online, everybody
else's had been gone from my newserver for weeks, so I'm just keeping
with tradition...  I'll try to go more or less chronologically.

Friday, July 16

My plane arrived in St. Paul at around 2PM central time.  I disembarked
and followed signs to the ground transportation area, asked a lady at an
info booth how to identify the bus I needed, and then went down to where
all the shuttles pull in.  Standing there was a teenager and his mother;
I quickly learned that the teen was ATT's Perceptor (the seeker of
ultimate truths, not with the TFWW).  While we waited for the bus to
arrive, a few other people showed up who turned out to be TransFans as
well.  I was surprised to hit such a high density of fans while still at
the airport.  In fact, once the bus arrived, only one of the 10 or so
passengers was not in town for BotCon.

Among the people I shared the minibus with was Ben Yee, who I didn't
recognize from previous years because he'd gotten his hair cut shorter.
:) We talked TFs the whole way to the hotels.  I managed to irritate the
bus driver by needing to go to the Best Western Kelly instead of the Days
Inn, because I told him halfway through the trip instead of at the
beginning, which meant he had to backtrack to get me there after dropping
everyone else off.  So I threw him off-schedule because I wasn't
assertive about voicing my destination earlier.  Oi.

I arrived at the Best Western around 3:30 or so, and checked with the
desk to see if Rob Powers - who had the room in his name - had checked in
yet, to find that they had not.  Rob had emailed me before to say that
he might walk around the town to take pictures for a while, but that he
would be back to the hotel by 4PM.  So I took a seat in the lobby, and at
almost exactly 4PM Rob came in.  I recognized him from photos I'd seen of
BC98 (the camera case and strap made it obvious; Walky even drew him with
the strap on his chest in the 7/29 Roomies strip), and he pretty much
guessed I was me when he saw me sitting there.

(Reminded me of meeting up with Phil Zeman and Doug Vander Hoek in 97...
I was walking through the parking lot to get a book from my car when I
saw two guys walking towards the hotel.  "Are you guys here for BotCon?"
"Yup.  Are you Steve Stonebraker?"  "Yup."  "Okay, let's check in.")

Rob and I got keycards and went up to the room to drop off our baggage.
He'd gotten in much earlier in the day, before he could check in, so he'd
left his stuff behind the hotel desk and wandered around.  He'd already
met up with Walky and Ol' Dirty Steve - our other roommates - at the
convention center, as well as a mess of other people.  He and I sat
around for a few minutes and then made our way to the RiverCentre to meet
people and get in line for preregistration.

When Rob and I arrived, the line was *huge* already.  We took our place
at the end, and waited.  As more and more people arrived, the line
eventually wrapped the whole way around the enormous entry room for the
convention center, and then went down a flight of stairs to the
basement.  Yikes.  We talked to the people who were next to us in line; a
couple guys in front of us (whose names I've forgotten, although at least
one of them is an occasional ATT poster) and a mother with her ~12 year
old son.  At some point Tengu must have spotted us from his place in
line, and he came back to say hello and chat.  He told us that he'd
arrived much earlier in the day and hung out with Glen during some of the
setup, and that Glen had already shown him all the exclusive merchandise,
which he promised we would love.

After what seemed an eternity, we got up to the preregistration tables.  I
handed my confirmation letter to Glen Hallit who looked at it, paused, and
said "Oh, you're Steve Stonebraker.  Hi."  I greeted him in turn, of
course, and then got my registration taken care of.  I then found a spot
on the floor with Rob, Tengu, Phil "SkyJammer" Zeman, TonyFitz, Thy2k, and
probably some others...  I also wandered around a little, running into
some other WiiGii'ers, as well as Pema "Track Attack" Galang and Sarai
"Astrontrain"  Feria, who I spent a lot of time with at BC97.  (Hardly saw
them this year, though...)

Finally, it was time for the preregistrant's pizza party.  The convention
hall staff rolled out some long tables with punch and pizza on them.  A
huge mass of people approached the pizza table and eventually, most of us
were served, although it was fairly chaotic.  And, sadly, the pizza was
downright awful...  It bore a strong resemblance to Chef Boyardee pizza.
If you've never had this before, don't worry... you're not missing
anything important.

A little while later - not sure when, exactly - Glen got everyone's
attention to give us the official convention-opening speech and show off
the exclusives.  As you might expect, we were all so excited that
practically everything he said got cheers and applause.  The toys