So... who's ready for ReaperCon 2019?

[Keianna]

I pretty much always over pack for cons. But I am usually trying to organize and take care of at least one other person. This time it is just me and I am taking the bus. I get one suitcase, one backpack and a small paint kit. I have been doing this con thing long enough that I should be able to trim it down to what I actually need. Also, super excited to not be driving. I am about 99 percent sure it will be way less stressful this way. 

[Inarah]

8 hours ago, Kangaroorex said:

Just remember the tradeoff:  Denton never sees 0 deg F.  You may not appreciate this, but the people in Denton do...

 

Denton does occasionally get snow. I've seen it and driven in it.  Y'all haven't seen crazy until you've seen Texans react to snow.  And they get tornadoes, that is the real trade-off for all those hot summer days. 

 

Most phones have a flashlight setting, just have to figure out how to activate it. 

 

On the tips list: allow space in your luggage or vehicle to bring home your goodies. Or plan to mail them. Reaper has arranged for a shipper to be on site.  

 

Packing begins tomorrow!

[Kangaroorex]

48 minutes ago, TGP said:

 

How much of this can travel with you in an airplane cabin..?

Honestly:  all of it.  What GF describes is my typical travel kit for business trips (hence the other reason i don't make the lists:  If you do it often enough, it becomes habit. 

Flashlights and medication are a must particularly as you get older but the flashlights are on everything these days (phones, tablets, larger power packs, keychains and most other technical gadgets) if your a technophile, you'll be hard pressed not to have one on you.  Meds are another story.  I try and keep about a week's supply of everything i need on me at all times because most people don't carry around the drugs I take on a regular basis.  As a note:  if you take any controlled substances, I recommend you keep them on you when you aren't in the hotel room.  I have never had a whole bottle disappear but i have had the occasional pill or 4 go 'missing'.  Never enough to prove and never enough to get me in a bind, but enough to see it on a count.

 

Fortunately in this day and age there are a lot of electronic ways to get around carrying paper.  My phone is my lifeline in most cases, and i carry enough portable power on me to run for about 4 days without recharging, especially if i am travelling with my family.  If I print something its because I was specifically asked to (and i will probably lose it before i get there anyway.) 

 

Anyway, enough playing at being dada for a while.  Looking forward to seeing everyone there.  Hopefully i can be less of a hermit and more social this time.

 

 

 

6 minutes ago, Inarah said:

 

Denton does occasionally get snow. I've seen it and driven in it.  Y'all haven't seen crazy until you've seen Texans react to snow.  And they get tornadoes, that is the real trade-off for all those hot summer days. 

 

Most phones have a flashlight setting, just have to figure out how to activate it. 

 

On the tips list: allow space in your luggage or vehicle to bring home your goodies. Or plan to mail them. Reaper has arranged for a shipper to be on site.  

 

Packing begins tomorrow!

Hee!  watching people living in the south is great fun, as long as you arent on the road with them!  When we lived in Nashville there were two types of native drivers:  the ones that thought every flake was going to end them and they drove at less than 5 mph in the center of the road; and the ones that believed that if they just ignored it, it would ignore them.  They would travel down snowy and icy roads at 70 mph honking and swearing at anyone going slower.  As you can imaging, mixing the two led to some incredible traffic snarls, especially when one of the 'the snowflake is going to kill me' bunch decides to stop dead in an SUV straddling the double yellow line!

[Zoxe]

1 hour ago, Kangaroorex said:

Honestly:  all of it.  What GF describes is my typical travel kit for business trips (hence the other reason i don't make the lists:  If you do it often enough, it becomes habit. 

Flashlights and medication are a must particularly as you get older but the flashlights are on everything these days (phones, tablets, larger power packs, keychains and most other technical gadgets) if your a technophile, you'll be hard pressed not to have one on you.  Meds are another story.  ........

 

I'm the same; I do the mental list thing while packing.  With practice I kind of go into robot mode and just assemble it all.  I have a few things that I keep under my sink the the bath as a ready pack, and build from there.  Mentally I'm walking through the trip from the moment we leave the driveway until we get home.  Other than road snacks, we don't prepare much in advance and just grab and go the night before.

 

I like looking at lists to see what I could add/delete from mine, but haven't changed much in the past several years.  Alton Brown (the TV Show Good Eats) has a schtick about avoiding "una-taskers" in the kitchen.  I have the same philosophy when I pack; I want as few items as possible that only have one purpose.  If a phone doubles as a flashlight, that's good.  

 

That being said, when we drive somewhere (like we will for Reapercon), we'll likely be testing the suspension on the car there and back with all the schtuff we insist on bringing. :)

 

 

 

[Sylverthorne]

My Roadtrip Discord is live; and we're doing the last minute stuff, because ... we leave tomorrow morning, around 'who invented this hour' o' clock.

 

I third the list - especially if you have CRS. I definitely have a form of that these days...  >.<

 

[Green Eyed Monster]

12 hours ago, Kangaroorex said:

Honestly:  all of it.  What GF describes is my typical travel kit for business trips (hence the other reason i don't make the lists:  If you do it often enough, it becomes habit. 

Flashlights and medication are a must particularly as you get older but the flashlights are on everything these days (phones, tablets, larger power packs, keychains and most other technical gadgets) if your a technophile, you'll be hard pressed not to have one on you.  Meds are another story.  I try and keep about a week's supply of everything i need on me at all times because most people don't carry around the drugs I take on a regular basis.  As a note:  if you take any controlled substances, I recommend you keep them on you when you aren't in the hotel room.  I have never had a whole bottle disappear but i have had the occasional pill or 4 go 'missing'.  Never enough to prove and never enough to get me in a bind, but enough to see it on a count.

 

Fortunately in this day and age there are a lot of electronic ways to get around carrying paper.  My phone is my lifeline in most cases, and i carry enough portable power on me to run for about 4 days without recharging, especially if i am travelling with my family.  If I print something its because I was specifically asked to (and i will probably lose it before i get there anyway.) 

 

Anyway, enough playing at being dada for a while.  Looking forward to seeing everyone there.  Hopefully i can be less of a hermit and more social this time.

 

 

 

Hee!  watching people living in the south is great fun, as long as you arent on the road with them!  When we lived in Nashville there were two types of native drivers:  the ones that thought every flake was going to end them and they drove at less than 5 mph in the center of the road; and the ones that believed that if they just ignored it, it would ignore them.  They would travel down snowy and icy roads at 70 mph honking and swearing at anyone going slower.  As you can imaging, mixing the two led to some incredible traffic snarls, especially when one of the 'the snowflake is going to kill me' bunch decides to stop dead in an SUV straddling the double yellow line!

I experienced the aftermath of the only snow of the season the year I arrived in Memphis, Tenn. on my way to nearby Millington Naval Air Station for Class A and B Electronics/Avionics Schools.

One of the first things I noticed was the high number of vehicles with obvious moderate to major but not totally disabling crash damage, and most of it obviously recent.  I found out the cause of it all when the first snow fluries hit in the fall of the same year.

Yep.  southerners and snow are a dangerous combination.

GEM

20 hours ago, Kangaroorex said:

Hasn't really hit me yet.  This year has been so busy that life just seems to blend to never ending cycles.  It will probably take until I'm on the plane before I notice I'm not just on another work trip.

 

Besides, I have to deal with my doctor chiding me for not taking better care of myself.  I haven't had the best luck medically over the last few months and he would like me to back off my schedule but there is just so much to do!

Going to ReaperCon is definitely part of "backing off".  Now if you can convince your Doctor to make out a perscription for nex year it not only becomes fun but a possible tax deduction for "medical expenses" as well.

GEM

[Thes Hunter]

On 8/23/2019 at 5:02 PM, haldir said:

 

"And she's got big balls......."

as quoted from ACDC

 

There are reasons I did not change the size of some of my ribbons.

[Green Eyed Monster]

Well, as you may have surmised from my above posting, we made it through the day safely, if not without incident.

Firstly, the air leveling system works as hoped.  Put 35 psi in the air bladders and loaded the car to the gills plus stuff in the cargo basket plus our Speed Racers.  And here hangs a Tale.  The rack our walkers go on is a bicycle rack.  It has a ruberized plastic bracket with velcro straps for securing each "bicycle" [walker].  The brackets failed on the rearmost walker and we lost it somewhere in the early morning hours of our travels.  Didn't discover the problem until our first "comfort stop" at a rest area over 150 miles from home.  Second walker was imediately secured with a nylon ratchet tie down strap, which is fortunate because the ruberized plastic on ~that~ walker failed before we got to Kingman.

We lost about an hour and a half travel time trying to come up with a kludge for mounting and securing brackets doable with limited mechanics tools and no power drill available.  Will see how it works when we get to Denton and I put it all together.  In the interim, the nylon tie downs will suffice, and will also keep the box secured holding the [not assembled yet] replacement walker I picked up at the Kingman Wally World.

So the Gods of the Highways have received a substantial sacrafice in both time and treasure, which I hope will translate into the rest of the trip happening without further complications.

Y'all travel safe now as I've made sacrafice that should cover all attendees.

GEM

[Thes Hunter]

13 hours ago, Keianna said:

I pretty much always over pack for cons. But I am usually trying to organize and take care of at least one other person. This time it is just me and I am taking the bus. I get one suitcase, one backpack and a small paint kit. I have been doing this con thing long enough that I should be able to trim it down to what I actually need. Also, super excited to not be driving. I am about 99 percent sure it will be way less stressful this way. 

 

I think I've talked myself out of the sequin plaid outfit of ridiculous awesomeness (because it won't match my hair), so I won't have that bulking up my suitcase. But we will see. I have a way of overpacking outfits, gaming supplies, painting stuff and etc.

[Fire_Eyes]

I am trying to resist packing everything I own. My giant rolling suitcase is already full of essentials, costuming items, Red Dragon Inn, and some Bones. I haven't painted my paint stuff yet, so who knows how large that's going to get.

[Kangaroorex]

1 hour ago, Thes Hunter said:

 

I think I've talked myself out of the sequin plaid outfit of ridiculous awesomeness (because it won't match my hair), so I won't have that bulking up my suitcase. But we will see. I have a way of overpacking outfits, gaming supplies, painting stuff and etc.

Since I can't lift much over my head we always pack one big suitcase to go in the luggage compartment and then the rest of it goes as carry on.  Rarely do I overpack going out but it can be a little tight coming back!

 

1 hour ago, Green Eyed Monster said:

Well, as you may have surmised from my above posting, we made it through the day safely, if not without incident.

Firstly, the air leveling system works as hoped.  Put 35 psi in the air bladders and loaded the car to the gills plus stuff in the cargo basket plus our Speed Racers.  And here hangs a Tale.  The rack our walkers go on is a bicycle rack.  It has a ruberized plastic bracket with velcro straps for securing each "bicycle" [walker].  The brackets failed on the rearmost walker and we lost it somewhere in the early morning hours of our travels.  Didn't discover the problem until our first "comfort stop" at a rest area over 150 miles from home.  Second walker was imediately secured with a nylon ratchet tie down strap, which is fortunate because the ruberized plastic on ~that~ walker failed before we got to Kingman.

We lost about an hour and a half travel time trying to come up with a kludge for mounting and securing brackets doable with limited mechanics tools and no power drill available.  Will see how it works when we get to Denton and I put it all together.  In the interim, the nylon tie downs will suffice, and will also keep the box secured holding the [not assembled yet] replacement walker I picked up at the Kingman Wally World.

So the Gods of the Highways have received a substantial sacrafice in both time and treasure, which I hope will translate into the rest of the trip happening without further complications.

Y'all travel safe now as I've made sacrafice that should cover all attendees.

GEM

[Purple]The person behind you may have had a story to tell. On the plus side: free walker.  On the minus side: how do we separate it from the undercarriage of the car?  We appreciate your sacrifice to the imp of perversity and I hope it means clear sailing for the rest of us!  [/purple]

 

Glad to hear you made it okay to your first landing!  I hope things go smoother tomorrow!

 

 

[OneBoot]

@Green Eyed MonsterSorry you lost a walker! Even though you were able to replace it, I imagine they aren't cheap. Hoping the rest of your journey ccontinues smooth and boring (aka uneventful)! 

 

On a different but related note, my 5-headed dragon is bumming a ride to Texas. @Sylverthorne and @aturriff will be passing near my area, and have been kind enough to allow him as a travel companion.

 

Note to self: remember to put his blankie in the crate; he makes the most pathetic whining noises without it.

 

Huzzah! 

--OneBoot :D 

[Chaoswolf]

As far as saving space to bring all your loot home with you: pack all your stuff in a suitcase. Pack the packed suitcase inside a larger one. Boom, bag for your loot!

Alternately (and this is what I do), pack a soft duffel bag in with your other stuff. When it's time to leave, you've got another bag to fill up.

 

[Thes Hunter]

2 hours ago, Chaoswolf said:

As far as saving space to bring all your loot home with you: pack all your stuff in a suitcase. Pack the packed suitcase inside a larger one. Boom, bag for your loot!

Alternately (and this is what I do), pack a soft duffel bag in with your other stuff. When it's time to leave, you've got another bag to fill up.

 

 

I personally bring a bunch of stuff that I then hand out, and boom! Space for more stuff to come home with me.

[Chaoswolf]

That works, too.