Theme: The Beach Episode
Location: San Jose McEnery Convention Center
We got up at 11:00 and spent the day packing. It was nice that the first flight was in the evening, allowing us to clean up the place and make it all nice and tidy for when we come back. We finished in time and at 17:25 my mom came and gave us a ride to the Vienna airport. We met up with Tabbie, Spikie and Nico there and waited a very long time until it was our turn at the SAS check-in counter. When it was finally our turn, checking in took about half an hour, since the agent had to type in all our required ESTA information. Very annoying. Our flight was pretty delayed, and we arrived pretty late in the evening in Copenhagen. The only other times I flew to this airport was to go to NFC, so it felt weird to arrive there for a different reason. We had a quick dinner at Burger King, then went to our room at the airport hotel. We wanted to check out the rooftop bar, which turned out to be just a liminal space with no bar. Tabbie, Spikie and Nico went for a beer, Henrieke worked a bit and we all went to bed soon after.
We got up at 10:00 and walked across the street to go to our gate. Our luggage was still checked in, so it was all smooth and fast. We got some expensive breakfast and the weakest coffee I ever had in my life, then we made our way to our gate where Henrieke got a randomly selected special security screening. We got the absolute worst seats assigned, only through some arguing with the person at the check-in desk I managed to get Tabbie and Spikie seats next to each other. I sat alone on a middle seat for most of the flight. In-flight internet did not work at all. I ended up watching Enter the Dragon, I also had to explain what furry was all about to my seat neighbor, an exchange student who was going to study at Berkeley, a place with lots of furries!
After arriving, we dodged a big bullet by using the Mobile Passport Control app, allowing us to use the express queue instead of the regular queue that would have been at least an hour wait. We picked up our luggage and spent about 20 minutes waiting for an Uber that was stuck in a big traffic jam at the airport. We checked in at Star Motel, our home for the next couple days. It was a classic US motel, very nicely kept up and in a prime location in SF. After unpacking, we walked up and down Lombard street to Pier 39, where we had some Bubba Gumps for dinner.
Then we went back to the hotel and got a lot of sleep!
We got up around 10:00 and took a bus that took us close to the painted ladies. I remembered the view from the park there being incredible, but it turns out even better were all the hummingbirds we saw up close!
Also lots of good dogs. We went to have a typical American breakfast at a very well-rated diner I looked up. It was delicious!
A local woman started a renadom conversation, which is something I really enjoy in the US. Simply starting conversations with strangers just because you feel like it is not a thing in Austria. I left some stickers on the sticker-covered counter, then checked out a nearby board game store where I found a cute Here to Slay blind box to surprise Sertro with back in Vienna. Almost next door was Comix Experience, a good Comic store.
Henrieke picked up a thick Astro Boy book and some other comics, sadly the Disney comic she drew a cover for wasn't available there. Then we continued to walk to Haight Street. Of course we had to go to Amoeba.
I picked up a couple Laserdiscs as usual, the others also found a few things. Tabbie, Spikie and Nico went to check out Mendels fabrics and other shops while Henrieke and I continued browsing at Amoeba. A bit later, Jeff Pidgeon joined. He also picked up some music, then we went to get some lunch at a Pizza place. It was great to meet Jeff again, such a nice guy! We continued to a nice indie coffee place and chatted about animation and Happy Beavers there until they closed at 17:00.
We all took the bus back to the hotel, Henrieke and I got out a few stops earlier to enjoy the nice view of the Golden Gate Bridge there and take some photos.
At the hotel we dropped our stuff and then went to Walgreens, where we got absolutely ripped off for some essentials. The prices in US these days are brutal. Tabbie, Spikie and Nico went to a pub. I fell asleep watching some YouTube on the hotel TV.
I woke up at 8:00, and offered to pick up coffee and breakfast at a nearby (very nice) Starbucks.
Loaded with caffeine and sugar, we walked to Fisherman's Wharf and checked out Museum Mechanique. We played some Asteroids, I had a lot of fun playing a 90s racing game set in SF and we looked at some big automaton.
After that, we went to have some clam chowder in a bread bowl for lunch at Boudin, apparently famous for sourdough bread. The chowder was excellent, but the bread was just.. urgh.. sour. Not my thing. Then we walked towards Pier 39. Henrieke picked up some socks at a nice novelty sock store, and Tabbie and Spikie loaded up on sweets at a huge sweets shop called "It's Sugar".
At Pier 39, we spent some time watching (and smelling) the sea lions.
Henrieke and Spikie checked out the Christmas shop. Sadly no Transamerica Pyramid ornaments. I saw some very obvious furries and approached them, asking if they were also there for FC. After a few minutes of talking, I found out that one of them was Charm, whose house we've been to for their birthday party more than a decade ago. Small world!
We walked back to the pier entrance, bought some cable car figurines and ornaments, then took an Uber to Coit Tower. They had a really good gift shop, so we got a die-cast figurine there for our die-cast tower figurine display at home. We took the elevator up and enjoyed a spectacular view of SF and the entire bay.
We got to talk with an employee there, a Belgian guy who has been living in San Francisco for a long time but still spoke perfect Dutch and also some German. Henrieke and I spent a while chatting with him about Bommel, comics, and life in SF in 3 different languages. We took some more photos, then made our way down again.
Walking towards Chinatown took a while as every intersection offered more beautiful views and interesting architecture.
We went to the tiny fortune cookie factory in Chinatown, then we took the bus to Japantown. There was a Nintendo store right on Union square, but sadly there was no time to check it out as we needed to catch the bus. I went to Nijia market to pick up my favorite drink on the planet, Suntori Gokuri, but they were sold out and told me to come again next week, what a bummer. Since we were starving, we went straight to Osakaya inside the Japantown mall and got a table for 6. Tachi joined us soon after and we had a nice dinner together. Tachi told us all about his game project he's been working on all day every day.
After dinner we went to my favorite bookstore, Kinokuniya, and I bought a Whisper of the Heart blu-ray there. We also checked out the big art book section there. Tabbie, Spikie and Nico went to Target and Tachi had to leave as well. I picked up a Mango Boba drink with Henrieke and we took the bus back. Tabbie, Spikie and Nico were already back at the motel. We unpacked the stuff we bought, had our mango boba and I fell asleep immediately.
We got up fairly early and Nico got us all coffee and breakfast from Starbucks. We put our luggage in storage, then took the bus to the Disney Family Museum. It was really nice, the Disneyland exhibition was a bit smaller than expected though. It was great as always to see the amazing originals hanging there.
Outside, there were lots of interesting birds to take photos of.
We walked though the beautiful Presidio to get some sandwiches at a deli, on the way we walked past a Lucasfilm building and spotted C3PO and Grogu.
After some pretty tasty sandwiches, we took the bus back to the hotel and called an UberXXL to take us to the San Jose Hilton. The ride took very long thanks to rush hour traffic. I had to spend a long time at check-in since the hotel had messed up our reservation. Due to some circumstances we had 3 back-to-back bookings for the convention. I added the request for these to be in the same room to each booking, e-mailed the hotel and even called the hotel to be told our request had been "noted" and it would be "absolutely no problem". Well, at check-in it suddenly was a problem and we would have had to move rooms twice during the convention. Thanks to a dedicated hotel employee and lots of shoving bookings around, we got a room for the entire convention.
We unpacked and I ordered some groceries on UberEats right away. I would prefer to just go to a supermarket, but downtown San Jose does not have any, apart from a very shady 7-11. Tabbie, Spikie and Nico decided to walk to WalMart to pick up an airbed for Nico. Henrieke and I went down to get our badges. We met Sharpy in the elevator. We got our badges and went to the Marriott and met Streaks and Bacon. Henrieke and I put our some flyers for Henrieke's Hyena Pin campaign on the tables in the convention center. I met Duino, Aura, Charlie Tinn, Tachi, Kipper and Drex downstairs, the whole gang!
We chatted for a while. I checked out the FurryTel table, which had a terminal, phones and a fax machine set up. The terminal was connected to the FurryTel telegram chat, and the fax machine allowed you to send faxes that would appear in the chat as images. Very cool!
The rest of the lobby was beach-themed, with some arcade machines, beach balls, pooltoys and a big TV with a greenscreen and a surfboard to take fursuit photos with.
We were pretty tired, said good-night to people and went to sleep at midnight.
I got up at 9:00 and went straight to Gameshop Downstairs, a great video game store in downtown San Jose. Sadly I did not find any Laserdiscs I wanted.
I dropped off some badges to ship at USPS, picked up some coffee at Starbucks in the Marriott and met Nico. We checked out the Arcade room, which had a Dance Rush machine! WHOA! For context, there is only one dance rush machine in all of the EU.
After playing a round, I went downstairs and met Phelan and Narf, along with some other Seattle people.
I went to one of the big round tables and the first art jam of the con started to form with Sharpy, Vee, Scruff and Tachi.
More and more people joined, as usual at FC. I left to quickly say hi at the bat panel, which I sadly missed. I still got to see Aatheus and EatYourSheep there. I went back and got a call from Henrieke that the hotel called us that we were late for check out. After annoyingly clearing that up again, I went back to the art jam. Henrieke joined as well. We did lots of trades. I went to the Dealers Den with Sharpy to pick up a conbook and said hi to Paco, Koidel and Andrew Dickman.
I went back to do more artjamming, Tabbie was nice enough to bring us some hoagies. Procy also joined. After some more arting, I went to the Dealers Den with Henrieke. Henrieke spent a while talking with Bastek and Kikidoodle. I chatted with Andrew, ArtKour, Kipper and Paco.
At Paco's stand, Rebel was talking about how much he liked the badge I drew for him last year, not realizing I was standing next to him. Very flattering! I went back to Henrieke and we both talked with ArtKour for a while, it's been a long time since we met. I went to the room to pick up some snacks and met up with Henrieke, Vee, Sharpy, Andrew and others at Furry Found Footage.
The Furry Found Footage panel was a blast! Their YouTube channel is here if you don't know them yet!
At 19:45 Henrieke and I went to Pizza my Heart to have some dinner. We picked up the Kiki puppet and other things from the room and then went to Lucky's Tiki Party. Croc, Furahi and a bunch of other people were there.
I went to the lobby for a bit and met Aura and Rain. On the way back I met ArtKour and Crow, and asked if they would join to the Tiki Party. They did, and we had a nice time chatting with them. I was lucky enough to do a trade with Kour! Abe also showed up at the party. Lucky made us tasty alcohol-free cocktails. Henrieke drew in Mike's book. Mike was supposed to be at FC, but sadly got sick right before and had to cancel.
Baseball also showed up at the party and said hi to everyone, then he went downstairs and flapped around a bit. He met Tabbie, Spikie, Duino and Aura there. He played 2 very exhausting rounds of dance rush, then went back to the room with Tabbie and Spikie. We went to bed at 1:45.
We got up at 9:00, sadly Henrieke came down with a big headache today. I went down with Tabbie, Spikie and Nico and dropped my suit off in the fursuit lounge. We went to Starbucks to grab a coffee and I met some familiar faces there.
I went to the Dealers Den, bought a fursuit brush because I forgot mine at home and chatted a bit with Koidel. Lance told me he was at reg so I met him there, and Henrieke joined as well and gave him some Covid tests he asked us to bring for him.
Then it was time for the group photo. I went to the fursuit lounge, and my suitcase was gone?!? Someone mentioned that it might be at lost & found, and it was. Turns out you're not allowed to leave anything unattended in the fursuit lounge. This was not written on any sign, but is probably the default at US cons. I just assumed it was fine, because at EU cons it's never an issue.
Either way, Baseball missed the group photo and joined the parade a bit later. There was a cheerleading competition happening in the other part of the convention center, and some of them watched the parade. They cheered every time Baseball was flapping his wings, it was fun! Baseball ran into Paco in the parade and they walked together from then on.
Outside the convention center all the critters converged. Baseball ran into some friends and got some photos taken in the convention center lobby.
Then it was time to go to the live bat panel. It was packed, they definitely need a bigger room next year. I love the collective "awww" whenever the tiny bats do something cute.
At the end of the panel, Baseball hung around a bit with Phelan. Henrieke went to the Hyena Meet to promote her hyena pin campaign. Dman took some more photos of Baseball, then I went to the room to get out of suit. Luckily Tabbie and the others were there to help me.
I then met up with Phelan and went to dinner with a few other people. Luckily the place I suggested had space and very tasty ramen.
We talked about animation, Shawn Keller and other things! I brought some gyoza and karaage back for Henrieke and joined the art jam. Tachi and Rueblebell were there. Tabbie also joined later.
I did a couple trades. Andrew and C_Eagle also joined us, along with a friend of his. Paco, Koidel, Duino, Aura and Charlie Tinn joined as well and the art jam just kept growing. I went to the room to get my roo kigu and some snacks. In the elevator Riley Winters noticed my Internet Archive hat, turns out he works for Jason and digitizes tapes. What a small world!
At midnight I went to the night market to pick up a really cute pooltoy party shirt I saw Pebble wearing. Paco picked up one as well. I chatted a bit with Phenod at the pooltoy party. I also peeked into the little panel, but turns out it was just ending. Then I went to a roomparty in 2501, but it was very warm and loud in there, so I left again right away and went back to the art jam. So many people were there! Sharpy still joined, as well as Kipper and Drex.
The hotel turned off the lights sometime after 1AM, the art jam still went on.
We went to bed at 3:00.
We got up at 10:30 and checked out and in again for the second time at the con. Also, my credit card had been maxed out as I've been paying all the hotels so far for everyone. Had to use my debit card. Henrieke already went to the Dealers Den, Tabbie and Nico were at the zoo, drawing. I joined Henrieke in the Dealers Den.
Then I got Baseball for the inflatable panel. Paco joined as well and they had some fun. Sadly this time there were no sea dragons anywhere.
Baseball flapped around the convention center a bit. He also met Trip!
I got out of suit and took my Polaroid camera down and took a few photos.
I met Tahoe, who was suiting as Zoroti, also LeafDubois and Dade. Tabbie and Spikie were outside as well. Then I went back in for some more art jamming.
For dinner I went to Sofa with Aura, Duino, Henrieke, Spikie, Tabbie and Nico. Henrieke joined a bit later since she still had to finish a drawing for MaryMouse. I got a headache which luckily resolved itself with some ibuprofen after a while.
Back at the hotel, we went right back to art jamming. Tachi started rigging my Karpour 3D model out of spite. I went to the room to pick up Henrieke's iPad and some snacks, and a powerbank for Tachi. I did some more trades.
Outside there was a wild party happening, with Bowser being the center of attention. Inside, I had some fun doing parkour and other dumb things with Duino, Sharpy and Charlie Tinn in a fairly empty convention center foyer.
Eventually the staff wanted us out, so we left. We said bye to Mynx, Sharpy, Charlie Tinn, Royce and everyone else, went to our room and went to bed at 2:30
We got up at 9:30, packed up all our things and carried them down the stairs, as usual at a furcon. There was no chance to get an elevator.
After chatting a bit with Phelan, Narf and Waffles, we went to the Marriott to say bye to Sharpy, but he went for lunch to Sofa already. We got a coffee and met Paco, then we joined Sharpy, Drex, Kipper and Procyon at Sofa.
We hung out with them for a while, then walked back to the hotel. Tabbie and Spikie still spent a while chatting with Kipper, Henrieke and I went to the International Snack Exchange in the meantime. We met Aatheus there. I met Lumie, who has a cute bat character and would be at NFC in a few weeks. He offered me some weird tofu jerky. We went back through the convention center, picked up our luggage and called an Uber to Croc's place.
It was very busy with everyone there. Lucky and Furahi also came, and later Paco and Koidel as well. We all suited up, I got to be Croc! Then Croc took a bunch of photos in their backyard.
After photos we ordered pizza and played a game of Monikers. Panda also came by. We did a birthday cake ceremony for Paco, as it was his birthday today. Ziggy got him a cute plush panda.
I spent a while chatting with Panda, Ziggy and Henrieke about BFC and other things. A bit after midnight, everyone left. We said a not-too-sad good-bye to Paco and Koidel as we would see them next month at NFC. Tabbie, Spikie and Nico went to their hotel near the San Jose airport. We were super tired and went to bed at 2:00.
We did not do too much today. Henrieke and I went to the Eastridge mall with Ziggy and Yippee and had lunch at Red Robin, very tasty! After that I send out some cards at USPS and Ziggy went back with Yippee. I went to Round1 for some Dance Rush, we also played some Mario Kart but the machine wouldn't work with 2 players, annoying!
We also got a really cute figurine at a blind box vending machine! The rest of the night we spent relaxing on the couch while Ziggy, Croc, Furahi, Lucky and Yippee played an RPG about bears. Also Ziggy gave me a cute kangaroo plushie he found at Wal-Mart, that was really nice!
Yippee was nice enough to give us a ride to Panda Express for lunch, then we met up with Tabbie, Spikie and Nico at the Computer History Museum. I had to show them the amazing IBM 1401 demo!
Through sheer coincidence I ran into CuriousMarc. We chatted a bit about Atkelar, and he mentioned he had 20000 HP microfiches he needed to digitize, so I promised I would ask tomorrow in Richmond if the Internet Archive would be interested.
Sadly I did not take into account that the museum would close at 17:00, so the others only got to see half of it, dang! After the museum, Yippee, Henrieke and I went to Dax and Latte's house. We ordered some falafel for dinner and chatted for a while, always great to hang out with them. Around 21:00 Dax dropped me off at Panda's house, where we had a little hangout with him and Muffles. I showed them my favorite Rocko's Modern Life Episode: Wacky Delly. He made me try some clear filtered coffee (like crystal pepsi but coffee!). I got some good sleep in his very cozy guestroom!
I got up early and Panda dropped me off at San Jose Diridon. I took the CalTrain to San Mateo, where DavidGA picked me up. Like previously, we went to the Internet Archive warehouse in Richmond where Matthew Soper was nice enough to prepare the 4 pallets of Computer Chronicles tapes for us. This time we were prepared a lot better than last time, and we managed to sort through and index 2 pallets of tapes.
We found 7 boxes worth of missing and damaged Computer Chronicles episodes, which David will re-digitize in the coming months. All in all, a big success! Now there's only one pallet left to sort through. After a job well done, DavidGA dropped me off at the Richmond BART station, and I took the 1.5hr ride to San Jose Berryessa station, where Tabbie, Nico, Spikie and Henrieke picked me up. Since it was shortly before sunset, we drove up the hills to watch the sunset!
After that, Tabbie was nice enough to drive past Panda Express before heading to Croc's place. I enjoyed my well-earned orange chicken and we had a nice evening together!
Henrieke and I got up pretty early and took an Uber to the Caltrain station.
We had a nice Caltrain ride to SF, then uber-ed straight to the Internet Archive. I arrived just in time for the 12:00 lunch. Tabbie, Spikie and Nico picked up Henrieke and went to the SF Zoo.
I went inside and immediately ran into Jason Scott. Jake, who does the Python API client, was also there. We chatted a bit and I showed him my lynx version of the archive.org! After an introduction round and some pizza for lunch I talked to Brenton and Jason, who work on the website and UX.
I also got a chance to talk to Brewster, Sarah (the hiring manager) and Mark, who runs the WaybackMachine. Everyone was super nice, and I really hope to work there soon. After about 2.5 hours I said bye to people and took an Uber to the SF Zoo to meet up with the others.
The Zoo would close at 4:30, but I still wanted to go inside. Lindy McKaw and Dahlia were also there. I met them at the Wallaroo enclosure, and we were really lucky and saw a Steller's Jay!
We walked around a bit more, got some Dole Whip and checked out the gift shop. Lindy already left earlier, and Dahlia also had to leave. Tabbie wanted to go to Red Lobster, so we drove down to South San Francisco. We had some dinner there, then - per my suggestion - we went to Twin Peaks, which is one of my favorite spots in SF! We enjoyed the view for a bit, then Tabbie dropped us off at the SF Caltrain station.
We took the 20:25 CalTrain. In San Jose there was a Sharks game going on, meaning the wait a while for an Uber. Eventually we made it and crashed on the couch.
Today we took it easy. Henrieke worked on things. Sadly both Bacon and Yippee came down with a concrud, so I made pancakes for everyone!
Later I went to Safeway with Croc and picked up some supplies for baking Vanillekipferl the next day. Croc made really tasty Spaghetti Bolognese, and Lucky and Furahi came over. We played some games for the rest of the evening.
We got up, I had some cereal and tried checking us in for the flight in order to get some good seats. That didn't work for some reason, thanks SAS. Then I baked some "Vanillekipferl", a typical Austrian christmas cookie.
Trip came over for lunch and brought half his kitchen. He made some Japanese chicken, egg and onions over rice for us, which was delicious. Tabbie, Spikie and Nico also arrived soon after and had lunch with us. Lucky and Furahi also came by and everything escalated into a big furpile soon after that.
Foster also joined us. For dinner, Croc made us some shepherd's pie. Then we played some Monikers and some Jackbox.
Baseball came to give Croc some hugs, but left soon again so I could play some Split the Room with the others. After Jackbox, I showed Schnappi to Lucky and Furahi, who both left after that. Croc came down still and we hung out a bit on the couch.
Then we went to bed after chatting until around 2:00 with Croc on his room.
We got up at 10, packed the last of our stuff and had a little time leftover to hang out with Croc, Yippee and Bacon! Baseball showed up to say bye to Croc, and both Yippee Coyote and Sunny Dingo appeared to say good-bye to us! We said bye to everyone and took an UberXXL to the airport. Luckily there was no traffic. We checked in our luggage and found out our hand luggage was way too heavy, but we made it work. We had some lunch at Boudin, I picked up a very mediocre 7$ coffee, and we boarded our grueling overnight flight to Copenhagen. At least now we had nice seats next to each other.
Spikie got some nice views of San Francisco after take-off. Henrieke and I watched On the Town.
We landed on time in Copenhagen and had a 6 hour overlay. The others were able to sleep a bit in a quiet corner of the airport, I was doing stuff on my laptop and drinking coffee.
I finally managed to get maybe 45 minutes of sleep on the second leg of the trip. My mom picked us up and we flopped straight onto our beds.
