San Anonio

After 2,200 miles the time had come to retire the car. A last two-hour ride back to our new (but vastly cheaper) hotel near the Alamo allowed us to drop our bags and make our way through a torrential storm to the Enterprise car rental site where it all began. We apologised for the depth of sun-broiled insect husks on the radiator grill but the nice young girl still gave us a free ride back to the Travelodge.

San An without the sci-fi nutter overlay is a bit more sedate but, as with all big cities, can be a rip off. (RANT ALERT!) It still annoys the hell out a me that Texians will not advertise their prices up front: it doesn't matter if it is for the museums, IMAX theatres, toll roads, or the alcohol prices. You only know how much it's going to cost when you go to pay. It's amazing how a modern commercial nation can be so secretive up front about what they are selling their services for. They wouldn't get away with that anywhere in Europe, S E Asia, or Australasia!

Having said that, the last few days were languidly pleasant. The storm had cleared the air. G & S wouldn't recognise the current San An pseudo-English-summer climate from the blistering humid heat of four weeks ago. Our time has been spent on overpriced drinks on the Riverwalk, steak dinners at the Hard Rock cafe, Sunday afternoon in Travis Park with cold beers attending a free jazz festival, running around downtown on a day pass for the trolley bus and generally bumming around people watching (the best sport for idle OAPs).

So, now that its just about over, what do we think about this country, this semi-rich state of Homo Texians?

Well, I may have mentioned the people here have a few guns, even though CNN seem to report daily on shooting atrocities. Back in Austin, in that really good upstairs-down-a-corridor bar, our server answered a mischievous question from Gary: "Yes, I have a gun for birds, ducks, alligators, deer, squirrels, possum, frogs, elk and T-Rex" (OK, made the last bits up, but the point is, he had a lot of species-specific killing machines). Back in Port A, we met the incredibly friendly mother of a most delightful 8-year-old girl who came from the Hill Country who, after buying a round of drinks for a pair of strangers, admitted to having over 30 guns in the house to "protect her family". Emergent conclusion: these rootin' tootin' alpha males and their aggressive ranch mothers are really afraid. Of each other! Of everyone! They have legalised assault rifles ferchrissakes! Bottom line: I can understand the need for a Frontiersman to take control of his destiny but this is not the wild west any more (or is it?). It worries me that people who worship the creed of the Second Amendment in such a fundamentalist way are able to influence US foreign policy.

My British prejudices notwithstanding, we've met some great, friendly people. A lot of them, once they realised we were naive, unarmed and (gosh, gasp!) Englishpeople-Who-Walked-Everywhere, they were very concerned about our health, whether it be our intention to drive to the Mexican border or just walk 20 blocks back from a downtown bar to the seawall in Galveston. One way to look at the Texian culture is as a hankering back to simpler times, something that the middle class English are very wont to do. The idea that everyone would be responsible for themselves and their loved ones without armies of interfering civil servants, social workers, insurance companies or lawyers is very attractive. (But, unfortunately, they live in the USA, so they have them too.)

To put it in perspective: Texas is 2.87 times the size of the UK. Here's a comparison map. The UK holds 63.7 million souls, Texas just 26 million. That's a lot more space. Room to move. Not surprising they are different despite using the same language. Would we recommend Texas for a visit? Yes, but you ain't in England any more, Toto.

And, that's it. We fly out tomorrow. Just one more chance for a cold beer in the evening sun and a Texan steak . . .

Boldly going again

After a final night in Kemah at T-Bone Tom's Steakhouse we were on the road again. The logical way to get back to San Antonio airport would be to take the Toll Road around Houston and then the Interstate directly back from Houston to San An, but I'll be buggered if I let the Texians charge me for travelling on their linear lunatic asylum. Luckily, the Sat-Nag and my new wonderful Nexus 10 tablet provided a low-stressed escape westwards. Or it would have been if the local council had decided not to waste public money on simple street signs. Of course, it wasn't our first experience with the concept that "everybody already lives here so why should we tell them where they are going?". I mean, they have an internationally-famous space centre museum, so it's unlikely stupid tourists will drive into the non-touristy area of their proper establishment, isn't it??! "Pass?", says the guard. Already resigned to the fact that we've driven into a one-way entrance to the Restricted area, I offer my best cheesy tourist smile. "We get this a lot", says the guard good naturedly, "back out, next right". "So why don't they put a simple sign out explaining that there are two entrances?", I add, helpfully. He sighs. "We keep telling them that but they say it's too expensive." Three minutes later we are at a museum celebrating the umpteenth year of a multi-multi-billion dollar space investment (see last post for the irony).

So it is that the Starship Lampen ploughs further into the uncharted southern territory of Texian space supported by its prettily efficient (but sometimes over-critical) Science Officer, Linda. Seeking out new life, civilisations, some fun and a place to sleep.
"Alien life from ahead, Captain", she reports. Actually, it's a rather large snake panicking in the middle of the highway. I don't think I hit it but wasn't going back to check. It looked pretty cross.
Approaching the target Victoria system: "Scanners show no intelligent life, Captain", the SO reports. Sure enough, we drive by a giant graveyard. On to the next system.
Refugio: "Evidence suggests this system has been assimilated by the Burger Borg, Captain". Maybe so, but this doesn't stop me from using their restrooms. T-Bone Tom served a lot of food last night.
We stopped hopefully at the Sinton system to examine what looked looked like a derelict Deep Space station called Economy Inn. "Sensors are picking up a Kockcroachian infestation, Captain". Sure enough, the dilapidated structure of the station and the state of the ships surrounding the boggy parking area suggested that any night's rest there would be unpleasantly eventful.
After seven hours of interstellar flight my Science Officer was showing signs of Denebian Fatigue. In a last ditched attempt to find a Class M planet we put into orbit around the Corpus Christi star. Landing safely at the Quality Inn on Northbeach we saw the now familiar sight of the ancient battle cruiser, the USS Lexington, at its permanent spacedock. Some friendly aliens fed us in the famous Blackbeard's restaurant by the holodeck sea. Unfortunately, the Universal Translator was malfunctioning because phrases like, "Can we have chips with those prawns?", and, "Oh, go on then, twist my arm", failed to make an impression when the cute little alien inquired whether sir wanted another beer? Ah well, it had been a long day. Finally, we retired to our bunks to recharge the dilithium crystals for the last flight home tomorrow.

Clear Lake

Apart from the Float bar, with its $1.25 cup of beer Happy Hours and interesting surfing clientele, the thing I miss most is Galveston's constant sea breeze. On the last evening, after the usual mixture of beer 'n burritos at the Float, we took a walk along the beach as the sun went down. Everyone say "Ah!". However, the show must go on.

A scant 30 miles in the general direction of Houston lies Clear Lake. We booked a couple of nights at the Holiday Inn in Kemah, Clear Lake's main town. We had plenty of time to wander around the Kemah Boardwalk in the noontime heat (not so much of a sea breeze here). Looks to be a great place for families and kids: luckily, they are all in school now. The Lonely Planet recommended the Aquarium, a 50,000 gallon tank of some very large fish that doubles up as a restaurant, so we headed there for a decent meal for a change (as opposed to our recently frequent bar meals). Not cheap, but you get to eat your seafood platter in front of a huge aquarium full of groupers, sharks and morays, all observing you from behind a magnifying glass wall. Surreal!

Of course, the real reason we're here: the Johnson Space Centre. No kids; no queues. Great fun for the inner geek child. Some pictures:

Linda lost amongst the rockets

Dave holding up the shuttle program

"It's life Jim, but not as we know it."

The whole programme was slick and efficient. We got to visit the original mission control room (it had been disassembled and placed in the Smithsonian but later faithfully reassembled) which was oddly moving. Especially when you got close to the truly primitive equipment they had to use to do all those wonderful things in the sixties. The IMAX and Blast Off theatres were pretty much concentrated on the success of the Curiosity rover and the International Space Station but, really, the whole experience felt sad: a celebration of past glories. They claim to have had an American in space every day for the last 13 years but play down the fact that they can't get them there. Or back. After the Sci-Fi Con with it's focus on the new wave of private space exploration like the SpaceX company, one cannot help but get the feeling that the US, through NASA, has dropped our species' ball. Betcha China won't! We'll see how their asteroid capturing project fares. Or whether Congress will cut the budget.

Galveston

After seven hours behind an insect-smeared wheel, we finally reached the inviting Seawall road of Galveston Island. To detract from this fine travelogue for a minute; a moment to tell you about G & S . . . Gary had foolishly e-mailed me the previous night that his chosen destination when leaving Austin was south; ending up at, guess where, a Best Western at Galveston! Too good to be true! Having Googled the only likely establishment Linda was told that; "Mrs. Farrant was at this moment just a foot away in the lobby". "SURPRISE!", we shouted down the phone. To cut a long story short we ruined their last night in a holiday paradise by forcing them to go on a very, very final pub crawl. Honestly.

The next morning, hung over yet again from an evening with the now finally departed Farrants (they had to fly out of Texas this day from Houston), we chose to walk the seawall for a few hours and find out what this town looked like in the daylight. Quite a laid back mishmash, evidently. Biker bars sit comfortably next to gay bars while families congregate on the sands just across the Seawall Road. Our hotel is just a step back from the road right next to a cool beach bar called Float. Someone took a small pool and built a bar around it advertising happy hours and bikini contests. Great place. Here's a photo:

And here's another one of our hotel. Nice, isn't it?

You'll see from the picture's vanishing point that Galveston isn't Blackpool, although there is a single pier behind me with roller coasters on it. In fact, I think we just happened to pick the one seawall hotel with the biggest concentration of eateries around it. We walked up the 20-odd blocks the width of the town (it's long, though; around 100 blocks long) to what the guide books describe as the "centre of activity on the island". It is, in a way, but a lot of places were shut (OK, it was a Sunday) and the downtown streets were very quiet. Perhaps the main reason for this was the town's vulnerability to hurricanes. This weekend one passed south of us to hit Eastern Mexico, not far from Laredo. Five years ago, Hurricane Ike swept across the whole island killing 100 people. A hundred years ago a 120 mph hurricane buried everything under 20 feet of water. Not conducive to long term property development, methinks. 

East Texas

Having said goodbye to the Farrants a second and final time (!), we pointed the car eastwards. Navigating the Interstate was a pain. When it isn't jammed up during Austin's rush hours (most of the bloody day!) it's chock full of racing cars and trucks all trying out out-man the other in a display of testosterone that would put a colony of alpha-male gorillas to shame. Nerves thoroughly jangled we headed north east on a continual stream of single-laned roadworks. For the next 36 hours my Sat-Nag directed us through:

• Bryan, an old school Texan town where we stopped for a coffee. Despite being billed an Italian Cafe, it wasn't up to producing a Cappachino.
• Crockett, a town so empty and boring that it isn't even mentioned in the LP guide book.
• The Davy Crockett National Forest (loads of trees, and then more trees).
• Nacogdoches (I'm advised that it's pronounced nack-uh-doe-chuss but we referred to it as "Dodgy Nachos"). I'm informed that is the oldest town in Texas. Certainly the most joyless. Nary a bar or restaurant in sight of the Main Street so we camped at the usual collection of motels outside the city limits. The girl who checked us in for the night was amused by our English accents asking, "What the hell are y'all doing way out here?" Quite! Evening saw us with some margaritas, litre glasses of a rather good local draught beer called Modelo, and burgers 'n wings at the Quality Inn's very own bar n' grill.
• Driving south the next day we reached the Big Thicket National Park, a place that boasted "one of Texas' most interesting ecosystems: coastal plains meet desert and dunes, and cypress swamps stand next to pine and hardwood forests." We duly went to the ranger station where some good 'ol boys were being lectured on what they could or could not shoot while they were there (my god, can there be anything not human left alive in this State?). Having received a map and directions we realised that not only the car but the entire ranger station was covered in giant insects. Stuff the cypress swamps, we thought, as we tried to get back into our car. At the next garage I filled the car up while Linda manfully tried to scrape the film of dead insects off the windscreen and lights.
• Having failed that objective, we made our way south through a large industrial town called Beaumont over a network of flyovers and underpasses. Our objective for the night was . . .
• Port Arthur. I figured to stop here for the night but Google maps was informing us that the accommodation situation was going to be similar to Dodgy Nachos -- a cluster of motels situated on the main road into the port town. We drove past them into a fairly desolate inner town before crawling over an impressively high steel bridge to the sandbanked section of the port. There, the surrounding swamp and port activity gave way to a complex of children's play castles and rich peoples' waterside summer homes, complete with private garage for their speedboats.
• Onward, then. Since it was to be no fun to stay there we decided to make another 70-odd mile journey along dreaded Interstate roads, sudden slip road exits, scary junctions and enormous causeways over acres of swampland to the island city of Galveston. 

Austin

Wow. This is the first town we've been to that has more bars than churches. A lot more bars! As the famous sci-fi film said: "My god. It's full of bars!". Gary's birthday bar crawl took some casualties. We haven't seen Sarah for 36 hours: she's been paying for her over-exuberance with hourly attendance at the porcelain bowl. Hah! BEWARE THE CURSE OF MANDY! The rest of us (OK, Gary and me) fared little better and rested up in the shade by the modest motel pool in the afternoon (that was after struggling to make ourselves presentable for the free breakfast At 9 am and going back to bed for a few hours).

So it was that the three of us abandoned Sarah and tried to repeat the experiment: that is -- taxi-beer-taxi-crash. Conscious that the two of us had to drive many miles the next morning we did intend to take it a bit easier. First off was a bar on 3rd that Gary wrote on a bit of paper: The Ginger Man (can't imagine where he got the idea from). Hundreds of draught beers lined up on a wall. Linda asked if they had anything else? The barman answered; they had wines and proceeded to list them. Linda gamefully picked one when he crumpled, admitting: "Actually, I'm a wine fan, and they're all rubbish." Linda cheerfully had a local brew. A couple of bars later and we plodded upstairs to a dubious "saloon" down a corridor to find the best establishment of the week: a bar with an interesting barman, great music, fun food for sharing and some quality alcohol. As the sun set on the street outside he pointed us in the direction of the bridge across the central river on Congress St. Already, the regular crowds were gathering on the eastern side of the bridge awaiting the batswarm. Yes, it was like someone let off tens of hoses underneath the bridge spewing hundreds of thousands of bats into the river. And it never ended! They swarmed and swarmed at phenomenal speeds out of the underside. God knows what they found to eat (although I noticed that there wasn't as many homeless in the vicinity as usual, although that may have had something to do with the guano smell). Culturally and zoologically satiated we were driven home by a Ugandan taxi driver who regaled us with stories of his cousin who got the short straw and emigrated to Alaska . . .

Sarah was greeted with a round of applause at breakfast before we made our separate ways again. Not that each car of intrepid travellers knew where they were going in the next few hours, or even in which direction . . .

Fredericksburg

Fredericksburg is a bit of a gem: another German/Texan Main Street full of art galleries, knickknacks, steak houses and biergartens. After a bit of a bar crawl last night to work the kinks from our day's driving we opted for a genteel drive around the immediate vicinity. First off was Luckenburg; Pop. 3 (yes, 3!). Driving around the "city loop" we spotted the Luckenburg Post Office (a shack), the Luckenburg Saloon (a wooden front with a hole in it to serve bottles and a sign; "No BYOB"), and an ATM (a wooden box). We understand that this place comes alive at the weekends when the inhabitants hold the Saturday night dance in the barn. Next; Comfort, a delightfully twee town that looks as if the inhabitants decided to build a disneyland version of what Small Town America should look like. After that it was back to Fredericksburg to mooch along the enormous High Street. Unlike the broiling 98F humidity of San Antonio the afternoon presented a breezy 80F and as we passed the Silver Creek Beer Garden & Restaurant, a local Country & Western singer was playing to a small audience. Well; nice afternoon + cold draught Stella Artois (yes!) + some laconic Jim Reeves tunes = "why not?". The evening saw us back at the Silver Creek where they had a blues band complete with harmonica. This is a delightful place to chill out

Thanks to the miracles of midnight e-mails and some feverish computation it was determined that the Farrant's cometary orbit would intersect the Lampen's circular one at Austen Texas on September 10th, which just happens to be 2 hours drive from Fredericksburg and Gary's birthday. Frenzied research identified the best (i.e. cheapest) motel to downtown Austin (unfortunately, six miles out -- Austin is stupidly expensive) and long-range plans were put in place for a rendevous and close encounter.

And amazingly, it worked. We met up with the peripatetic Farrants at the Country Inns & Suites on the i35, jumped in a taxi and headed off to 6th street, downtown Austin. What can I say? Big bars, tiny hotpants and tight t-shirts greeted us down the street for the next six hours until we fell into another taxi and crashed safely back at the Inn.

Escape from Laredo

Break-out occurred at approximately 0900 hours. Running like a bat out of hades up the i35 we turned sharply to the minor 83 road to aim for Carrizzo Springs. Didn't make it before being stopped by a closed-road Federales car check: "Where you from?", said pock-marked officialdom. "England!", we said cheerfully. "Passports!" He demanded, followed by a string of questions determined to catch us out on the fact that a) we were in a hired car, b) we spoke an unquestionably alien language (English), and c) we were leaving the Mexican border with no drugs (otherwise why would we be in a rental car looking stupid?). At Carizzo Springs we stopped at a well-attended restaurant called Rosita's for a Huevos Rancheros breakfast before the long climb away from Laredo. The radio stations were a depressing ping pong between Spanish Mariachi bands and wrist-slitting Texian country music. For large stretches of our road we chose to watch the sage scrub pass in silence. As we moved eastwards to San Antonio the good old classic rock stations came on line. Ah! Civilisation.

The road trip itself wasn't without entertainment. Buzzards picking away at a suspiciously large mammalian roadkill. Passing a couple of prisons in the middle of nowhere we were greeted with advice in big letters: DO NOT PICK UP HITCHHIKERS. THEY MAY BE ESCAPED INMATES. Barring the occasional overlarge truck the desert road was empty, encouraging playful use of the car's cruise control. A bit like playing a computer game with a keyboard: if you die you can go back to an earlier saved game but you'd rather not because you'd have to travel that stretch of road and listen to that interminable country music all over again. All sing along now: "Cruise Control to Major Tom".

We were heading for Hill Country north of San Antonio. Not sure where we'd stay but Linda had a route set out supported by the tablet's sometime-faithful blue dot. First place we passed was a busy one-street town by a river called Bandera; a place that had an interesting number of non-chain bars and restaurants right next to the few motels catering to the likes of us. The sage brush and flat lands turned into more recognisable trees and hillocks as the road became twisty and uphill. By the time we reached Kerrville I'd been driving for five hours (NB: while Gary has assumed a wild cometary elliptical orbit around the SanAn star mine has been a more Earthlike sedentary circular circumlocution: my back does not stand the pressures of the FarrantDrive hyperjump}. Unfortunately, Kerrville was quite charmless; we were beginning to wish we'd nested in Bandera. Another 24 miles got us to Fredericksburg, a charming German-Texan hybrid town with a huge Main Street. A cheap Super8 motel within walking distance of a handful of Yee Ha! Bar & Grills defined the rest of the evening. Ahhhhh!

Streets of Laredo

Our original idea after Port Aransas was to head off west to the Rio Grande and run up alongside the Mexican border. However, after making a few friends here on the island (upset a few people too, but that's my fault -- tend to get too curious about local mores, especially when it came to the gun subject), we've had cause to think again. Most people, when we told them our plans, had a tendency to shake their heads. Seems that the drugs cartels have gotten a bit out of control just lately and when they're not shooting the crap out of each other they're being hunted down by the Mexican Federales. The local Americans tend to get caught in the crossfire, especially if they get all gung-ho with their own weapons. Linda's Kickapoo-descended friend, Lionel, said to her succinctly, "I wouldn't go there and I'm an ex-marine!". One guy posited that, once the locals got wind of our accents they'd think us fair game, even to the point of kidnapping. Ah, well, maybe not, then. Safer to holiday in Somalia.

Ironically, a couple of the guys admitted they still made the trip to get cut-price dentistry (the health service here is astronomically costly and slow -- I'll never complain about the NHS again). I checked the Tripadvisor site who had this travel warning. We thought, "How bad can it be?" Hell, we'd been lost on the Ecuadorian/Colombian border and survived! After a lot more midnight reading on my tablet we settled on a direct drive to Laredo on the condition that we wouldn't be tempted to a day trip to the Mexican version, Nuevo Laredo, for some quick fillings. It is also the furthest end of the dodgy Tamaulipas region in the US Government's warning message.

Apart from an extremely loud thunder shower in the morning and Linda losing all the money and passports at breakfast, the trip was uneventful (someone kindly handed her funky Thai-crafted purse over to the hotel owners -- good job they're all honest here). It cost around twenty quid to fill the car up and the Sat-Nag got us to the Marriott Courtyard by 1 in the afternoon. We paid a $2-an-hour parking fee just outside the border controls and mooched around downtown for the rest of the afternoon. The best way of describing downtown Laredo is as an extended Shirley High Street in Southampton. Just substitute Mexican immigrants for the Polish and Payless clothes shops and counterfeit perfumeries for English Poundstretchers and Oxfam shops. With that overlay, this place isn't really that strange. The border is right on the river on the south side of the city with a big sign saying "Penalty for importing drugs -- Prison!" (talking to  our chum back in the Tarpon Ice House we get the picture that Mexican methamphetamine is a big problem for the Texians).

Most of the hotels and restaurants are on a strip north of downtown. We picked a small family kitchen for our obligatory Mexican dinner just a five minute walk from the Marriott. Cheap and very good. An after-dinner cocktail in the hotel bar and it's an early night. Texas hill country next. After that depends on whether we can meet up with Gary & Sarah in Galveston later in the week.

Port Aransas

Port Aransas is described in the Lonely Planet: "The funkiest port on the coast is also a jammin' beach town". Since our car was already aimed south it made sense to head off there. T'was a cool drive down the i37, cartoon white clouds in a deep blue sky, aircon full on, and the radio locked on to a classic rock station (FM104.5 -- yeah, man!). Linda was plugged in to Google Maps on my Nexus 10 to act as my very own "Sat-Nag". Her navigating skills improved by an order of magnitude when she discovered that the little blue dot that intermittently kept up with us was, in fact, us. Somehow, even though the Nexus is not 3g enabled and the wi-fi wasn't on, the tablet knows where we are through GPS. To avoid Corpus Christi we veered left to Sinton then right and south to Aransas Pass. To the left of us was a wall-to-wall wind farm, giant wind turbines turning majestically as far as the eye could see. To the right, huge oil platforms and the DuPont refinery. As we passed those we came to the free ferry to Port Aransas.

Geographically, Port A is at the northern tip of a sandbar tens of miles long and known to the locals as "the island". Landwards is a huge bay and wildlife preserve dominated by the town of Corpus Christi. Corpus connects to the island by a huge causeway in the south and a row of ferries in the north (so the big ships can get to the refinery at the eastern end of the bay).

While we were here we drove the full circle around the bay starting and ending at our little motel, the Captains

Cabin, just outside the ferry entrance. Corpus Christi itself is a charming waterfront city dominated at the northern end by a WWII aircraft carrier, the USS Lexington (now a floating museum). South of Port A on the seaward side is miles and miles of empty beach, although we understand from the locals that that during the previous Labor Day weekend it was covered in wall-to-wall cars, pickups, beach tents, and RVs.

As far as things to do there's a) drive around and soak up the atmosphere, and b) sample the numerous local bars and restaurants. For the first option, we've tried the beach (but frazzled in the 98F Texan humidity), drove around the bay stopping for coffee and snacks as needed, and drove NE to the historic town of Goliad where Santa Anna murdered 350 Texian prisoners just after the Alamo. We had lunch at the

Couthouse Square, a sleepy, picturesque town centre featuring a grand old 1894 courthouse and a hanging tree. Evening saw us talking to the locals in the quirky little bars. Last night we made it to The Gaff, a shacky little place where the patrons leave messages on the ceiling tiles and the only place in Texas so far that sells draught cider. Linda got talking to one old boy at the bar, an ex-marine whose ancestry goes back to the Kickapoo tribe. The couple who I talked to were your usual up front Texians: she didn't approve of our Royal Family and I had no respect for Sarah Palin and her beloved Tea Party. We both, however, agreed on a cap on welfare spending and got along fine after that (I can see Steve with his head in his hands, glad he didn't come with us). Eveyone seemed impressed that we'd been to so many other countries: I gather not many Texians get out of the State much. We ordered a huge pizza but had to take a lot of it home to have for breakfast the next day.

Tomorrow we leave but therein lies a bit of a problem. I'll explain in the next post.

Worldcon: Epilogue

There was one more panel that Monday afternoon, 'Computers Using DNA for Storage", but talking about recording exabytes of data on lab-created DNA, in fact, the sum total of human knowledge, seemed tame after the exposition on gun control. By then, fans were dragging suitcases and hugging one another, art dealers were loading up their unsold paintings, book and T-shirt vendors were packing up their wares, and the remainder of the guests wandered off to the the Con closing ceremonies. As the hotel and the Convention Centre slowly emptied itself, San Antonio took on a drab look bereft of its Sci-Fi overlay. I felt unaccountably sad, as if my parents had taken my toybox away.

The four of us made our way to the Leapin' Lizard for a last beer before going our separate ways the next morning. OK, not quite true: having got the taste for it again, we had a few more and a light supper in the supposedly longest bar in Texas, the Esquire Tavern. An early night, though, as we were both driving the next day. We're still not sure where Gary was really heading off to. Sarah kept joking about Vancouver and Gary mentioned Maryland more than once (which over 1300 miles away westwards). He did ask me what was at Roswell (apart from aliens, I presume) but that is in New Mexico and in a different direction again. So god knows where they are by now!

We got up later than our usual 0700 hours start on Tuesday morning and starting begging Enterprise Car Rentals for a pick up from the hotel. They couldn't come until 1200 so we ambled down to an empty River walk for breakfast idly wondering where all the weekend thousands of shuffling zombies had gone. Perhaps they had fallen in the water and were still shuffling around under the surface. We paid our hotel bill for the week, a paltry thirteen hundred dollars of comfortable beds, bar bill, state tax, county tax, city tax and tips. Good job it's not real money and on the credit card. Car hire was painless (apart from when we drove away from the lot with the boot open). We headed south. Farewell WorldCon! Same time next year in London!

Worldcon Day 5

Last day. Bank holiday Monday. Labor Day. Hungover. Four blurry figures make their way in the desert morning sun up Commerce Street for breakfast at the local Denny's. "Hi, I'm Mindy and I'll be your waitress today." Thank you, Mandy", say I, trying to be helpful. "Mindy!", she she snarls back over her shoulder. Sarah snorts and decides to call me Mandy for the rest of the day. Not starting well.

1000: Comic Book Movies: From the Page to the Screen. A lightweight start to the day where a panel of comic experts debate the good and the bad in the latest slew of superhero movies. Clue: The Avengers won the Best Dramatic Hugo award last night.

1100: 3D Printers: Our Replicators? I don't know much about this technology but the panel made a pretty convincing case that, economically speaking, this could well be a "destructive technology". Imagine every home with a 3D printer at the cost of a TV, making small domestic items out of any material based on blueprints downloaded from  the internet. Need something bigger? Just wander of to your local community fabricator with your DVD. Need to build homes in the Third World? Just ship out an industrial fab and make the "bricks" as you go from local raw materials. Want to colonise the moon or Mars? Fly out a fab first and build your colony from the ground up. This tech could well be a game changer.

1200: An Armed Society is a Polite Society. Ah! Now this was the real WTF!!! moment of the entire Con. The actual quote was from an old Heinlein book but I was pretty sure that this hour would satisfy my curiosity into the American obsession with guns. And boy, did it ever!!! Both panel and audience were as rabidly pro-NRA, pro-gun, out-of-control, I-can-do-anything-I-want, bleeding nutjobs as any paranoid Englishperson could imagine from watching the BBC. These people think you are socially irresponsible if you possess fewer guns to defend your home than you have windows to let in light. One wizzened old thing on the stage gleefully showed us the sword inside her walking stick as well as the palm-sized gun she admitted she "couldn't aim very well". They all, to a fault, reinforced the belief that possessing one or more death-dealing weapons of potentially mass destruction while walking down the street "made them more polite!" You could not fucking make this stuff up!

*sigh* I'm so bewildered/angry/terrified that I need to start a new paragraph here. If the panel had been looking at the audience, they would have seen a foreign couple looking at each other with their mouths open. I wanted to stand up and ask: "Hey! I'm from England. Does that mean we aren't polite? Or even civilised by your standards?". But the chair was, rudely, I thought, not permitting observations or questions and I was starting to be afraid of these people. Linda was starting to mutter ominously and I kept saying Shhh! and eyeing up the exits. As the panel got more crazy-arrogant they suggested that America should be exporting this cultural paradigm to other civilisations. Presumably at the point of a gun. One member of the audience managed to ask if there was a non-lethal option that could still satisfy the Americans' religious observance of the Second Amendment? "No" they replied, "because it wouldn't kill enough people in one go". I used to like America but this really changes my way of thinking. I mean, these are SF fans. We can dream up alternative universes ferchrissake! But this mentality so smacks of large-scale conditioning by commercial & political self-interest lobbies that it puts Iranian dictatorships to shame. Nowhere here was this about the pros and cons of the panel's guidelines: "Will an armed society be just polite? What other aspects, positive and negative, will this type of society exhibit? Will this make for a truly free society?". The only iota of rationality was from one panelist (a comics fan from a previous panel) who posited that the US had a unique history of large scale oppression of a portion of its citizens, bloody civil war and revolution that explains this mindset. After all, there were times under Gordon Brown or the EU when I wish I had a gun, but does anyone really think that's a good idea in an enlightened 21st century? (Memo to Ginge: OK you're a gun nut but I already know you're barking. It's the other 316,000,000 that really scare me!) As we tip-toed out, Linda whispered. "I need a drink!" Quite!

Worldcon Day 4

San Antonio was quite busy last night. Well, it was Saturday night. There were queues of so many trendy young things that the bemused bands of wandering, be-badged, be-t-shirted Conophiles were definitely in a minority. Our little group, ID badges carefully hidden away, found a couple of dodgy-looking subterranean dives to drink cheaply in. We cheerfully compared notes of our separated adventures of the day, both academic and physical (Sarah had found a Water Park); moving on from futurism to politics as the drinks flowed. By then we thought it probably best (and safer) to call it a night.

1000: Space Law. Up early for a quick breakfast on the Riverwalk and thence to our first presentation. Pretty dry stuff, you'd think. Not a bit! Purely because the guy knows his stuff and; is a professor at Harvard, is investing personally in space companies and patents, has practised space law for 25 years, and, most importantly, has all the self-deprecating humour and charisma so missing from yesterday's panel on space commercialism. Honestly, Linda & I could have stayed for two or three hours listening to this guy. In terms of content, they seem to be making space law up as they go along, much of it based on sea law stemming from Christopher Columbus' day. Otherwise, most of the existing law revolves around obsolescent NASA-based legislation, badly written international treatise that were forced in during the cold war and anti-proliferation agreements that have nothing really to do with the commercial exploitation of the moon, near Earth objects or asteroids. Unfortunately, he was just getting into his stride when the timer ran out.

1100: The Future Two Hundred Years Out. Another fun ramble from a bunch of writers trying to predict what life would be like if the current rate of technological increase was maintained. As usual, KSR stole the show in his usual erudite style while the others ruminated on the eternal "the more things change the more they stay the same" routine. Just about everyone agreed that, for this period of prognostication, no one will ever get it right; but it's fun trying.

1300: Consider Iain M Banks. Iain Banks, for those who don't know is a brilliant British (OK, Scottish, but let's not hold that against him) SF writer of space opera who died quite suddenly of cancer just before this con. I've read all his stuff and deem it great fun. Some of his compatriots formed a panel to commemorate his memory and it worked very well. A good send off!

Being Sunday and nearing the end of our stay we decide on a slightly more alcoholic night ("What!" I hear you say, "You mean you haven't been going for it already?"). On the way to another bar we found yet another bar (and so never made the first bar) called the Leapin' Lizard Pub. It was there, much to Sarah's continuing dismay, that we discussed and analysed the day's events. I have one recollection of earnestly explaining the significance of the Schroedinger's Cat quantum thought experiment to all and sundry in the bar oblivious to the fact that Sarah was rudely miming intense boredom and Linda was elbowing me in the ribs to the effect that I should "shut the f*** up". After making our way through an impressive number of local draught beers Linda sensibly suggested we eat something. Back to a crowded Riverwalk (day before Labor Day, remember?): the walkways looking as if they were a scene from the Walking Dead. Too many zombies shuffling to too few empty riverside seats. We finally installed ourselves on a bench at Dick's Last Resort next to a young couple who were trying to have a holiday drink. Gary started to babble at them about relationship issues until Sarah, realising that the bemused look on the guy's face was actually one of fear, shunted the offending Farrant to the other end of the table while trying to put on a more acceptable face of English inebriation. They looked less apprehensive but we noticed that, after 10 or 20 minutes, they had disappeared to be replaced by someone else we could be friends with. As it turns out, a quite pissed muscular military engineer tried chatting Linda up while I was in the loo. She was quite all a-dither! Gary engaged him in an earnest discussion on American football so everything was fine.

It was approaching midnight when we thought it would be a good idea to settle the bill. Linda, who heretofore had been on her best behaviour drinking coke, had ordered a green cocktail in a glass so big it could only be described as a posh bucket (that included an upturned bottle of beer as part of the cocktail "mix"). We knew that it wasn't going to be good news: it wasn't --- $170 including tip. Good job it isn't real money! Had an awful feeling we were not going to be well tomorrow.

Worldcon Day 3

On Saturday the information flow rate intensified exponentially. It is the major day of the Con. Where before (e.g. Thursday) there was a smattering of people apparently lost in a great convention hall, today there are thousands of multicoloured, multishaped, multicostumed examples of homo sciencefictionus wandering the halls and corridors preprogrammed to head off to a room to listen to the latest analyses on Manga, satire in literature, why Firefly should be resurrected/concluded, or how thoroughly the Klingon language database has been developed. There is something for everyone here!

We, in Clan Lampen, have developed more prosaic concerns, threatening the academic enjoyment of the day's information flux. After the previous night we find we have no money! Moreover, our cards have been rejected by four separate and independent ATMs and we see no immediate solution to the problem before our presence is required at the next presentation at 1100 hours. This threatens to make David & Linda very cross indeed (and is not helped by the fact that David has a very minor but noticeable hangover). So, in the same vein as yesterday:

1100: Wiring the Brain. This one Gary picked out and it turned out to be one of best presentations of the day. A guy called Ramez Namm presented a slideshow to demonstrate the research he did for his book, Nexus, which is about wiring the brain for communication and mind control (in fact, his whole talk was a plug for his book but I'm so sold already I don't care). He started off with the familiar: cochlear implants for artificial hearing. Then, low resolution optical implants for a test subject who lost both eyes, one after the other, in separate accidents. Inserting chips into the hippocampi of two rats to improve memory has now led, and this is where it really gets interesting, to wirelessly connecting them over miles of distance so that the experience of one is transmitted and retained by the other. The sci-fi kicks in when you realise you can do this with humans. Think telepathy, mind control, brain hacking. My god! Why doesn't everyone read this stuff?

1200: Planning a Starship. Greg again, still pumping away at his starship project or, as David Brin said: "Enabling the enabling technology that will enable us to enable the technology to build a starship". They don't see a problem with that. In fact, Greg's optimism is based on the statement by President Truman a few eons ago to the effect that Americans, colonising the new continent westwards, would "reach the Pacific" in a thousand years. In fact, because of the railroad, a technology they already had, he was out my an order of magnitude. All Greg needs is a starship version of a railroad.

1400: What Does SF Tell Us about Dealing with China in the Future? Had to miss the talk on AI conciousness to go outside and get some money (finally had some limited success) and just made this panel. Greg again, plus some sci-fi writers who have worked in China plus a couple of Chinese girls who write and translate Chinese SF. It made for some interesting perspectives but the need for translation made an active discourse difficult. What was interesting is the fact that most of the political leaders of China are also the top scoring engineers from the Chinese education system. Unlike American politicians, notes Greg, who are either lawyers or illiterate!

1500. Consensual Reality: Your Relationship to the World. There is little to add to the introduction blurb so, for the sake of my own record, I'll just copy that: "Google Glasses, augmented reality, kinetic gaming, tactile transmission systems. These and other new technologies are on the horizon to transmogrify sense and sensation. Google glasses are the first step to putting an overlay on the reality we see. This opens the door to hiding the ugly and changing what we see. When we do this socially it leads to possible consensual reality as in the works of Vinge, Schroeder and others. What will such capability mean in reality? Has science fiction explored the societal consequences?"

1600.Reclaiming the Solar System. Four heavy-hitters in SF: Greg Benford (again? Is he cloning himself or something?); Alastair Reynolds; Joe Haldeman; Kim Stanley Robinson; happily discussing their favourite vacation spots -- virtually or otherwise -- in the solar system. All these guys have been around for a while so once they get going it's very difficult to shut them up. Very entertaining. Must try zero G rock climbing on Miranda sometime. (Memo to self: KSR, or Stan, as he's called, is an incredibly intelligent and articulate writer; must get his Mars terraforming trilogy sometime.)

1600: The New Era of Commercial Space. Now this was something I was looking forward to and was a bit disappointed. With all the recent success of visionary Elon Musk's SpaceX company in progressing private launch capability in America (not to mention our own Richard B) I was expecting a panel with a bit more charisma; some  razamatazz, even. There were two older, and no doubt wiser, advocates of reusable launch vehicles and one representative of an extremely unpopular NASA. In fact, I get the feeling that most people at the Con see private spaceflight as the way forward and NASA as the evil government watchdog. Especially since they don't actually do anything except pay Russia billions to launch their spy satellites. The data was there but the entertainment definitely wasn't.

And that was it, really. We had planned another two hours of "Astrobiology and the Problem of the Fermi Paradox" and "Nanotechnology to Mine Asteroids". If anyone has managed to read this far they'll be glad to know that, simultaneously, Linda complained that her backside ached and my back was killing me. We surrendered in the time-honoured tradition and made our way to the hotel bar.

Worldcon Day 2

Nothing planned until 1100 hrs so we're getting some culture in. In any case, I think it is a criminal offence in Texas for visitors not to pay homage to the Alamo. An hour and a half later, we're still standing outside what's left of the old mission front. Our Alamo-descended guide, one Troyce Wilson, walked us around the outside mentally reconstructing the shape of the Alamo as was and pointing out where and how all the famous characters probably died. Being a history major (as well as a survivor-descendant), he was eager to debunk the old John Wayne movie. Unfortunately, we had to leave before we actually got into the Alamo in order to get back to our planned first panel on time. And on that note: back to the Con. This will probably mean nothing to anyone with preconceptions that sci-fi is "all about Star Trek"'; this record of each of the hour-long panels is for our failing memories.

1100: The British Invasion: Mods, Gods, and Miracleman. Three American graphic novel (okay, comic) researchers and publishers debate the influence of the UK comic writers on mainstream American publishers such as Marvel and DC. In particular, there was much hero worship of the likes of Alan Moore (Watchmen) and Neil Gaiman. I'm a fan too ("and so is my wife") so a lot of their viewpoints were spot-on; apart from the one that posits that the novel/film V For Vendetta was purely a reaction to Thatcherite oppression. I felt Linda stiffen in right-wing outrage but held her back before she could stand up and comment to the panel. Comics are a province of the left wing Righteous, after all.

1300: The Year in Physics and Astronomy. We had time for a quick brunch 'n beer (wienerschnitzel and German potato salad and corned beef on rye and sauerkraut 'n pickle) at our favourite Texan-German restaurant before attending a packed-out room for this one. Ended up sitting on the floor in the front. This was probably the best panel of the day: a bunch of Phd's and sci-fi writers merrily discussing the events of the year and why we, the human race, are more confused than ever. Amongst the topics they glided through were: the long running experiment on the space station to detect dark matter collisions; why dark energy is still inexplicable (apart from the fact it must exist to explain the runaway expansion of the galaxies); the detection of quantum tunnelling effects in electron transfer between biological cells; Chinese claims that they have discovered the reactionless drive first mooted in 1950's pulp sci-fi (yeah, right -- and cold fusion is still real!); discovery of the Higgs Boson (much more about that later); a long debate about the vacuum model of spacetime and how zero point energy could be obtained for free and why black holes evaporate due to the splitting of virtual particles created in the quantum foam; and, finally, why Hawking believes that the whole universe might be a hologram based on the 2D information matrix contained on the event horizon of a black hole. Phew! Now this is why we attend these things!

1400: The Future of the Future. Notable luminaries in the field such as Greg Benford, Norman Spinrad and Joe Haldeman debate the dearth of imaginative, visionary science fiction and where the human race is going. As far as the former is concerned, everyone blames greedy publishers and movie producers. Everyone wants book 'n movie sequels that guarantee a fan base and, of course, money. The first casualty is the old fashioned story that has a beginning, middle and end that really ends (instead of the current run of "join us next week, same time, same channel"). As far as how sci-fi reflects where the human race is going, the panel was split between the pessimistic (e.g. post-apocyliptic zombie rubbish) and the optimistic (e.g. space exploration to earthlike exoplanets). But, basically, we all felt that a constant diet of miserable news pretty much wipes out all the "sensawunda" of the fiction of earlier decades.

1500: Starship Century. Greg Benford again. This time giving a PowerPoint demo of his latest project to build a starship over the next 100 years. He's mapping out the available technology, the most likely emergent technology, the most likely target exoplantes, the best propulsion mechanism (lased microwave beams, apparently), the best source of free money, and whether we should send people first or an AI probe and a programmable 3D printer.

1600: Higgs Bosons, Neutrinos, B-Mesons, Oh My! Ah, now this one was a brain destroyer. A rather attractive, enthusiastic Phd in particle physics had an hour to explain to a bunch of morons (well, actually me, Linda and Gary -- many of the people in the audience had Phd's of their own) why the discovery of the Higg's boson at CERN this year proved that other particles had mass. First she took us through the constituents of an atom, then to the constituents of leptons, then to the various colours, spins and charges of quarks, then to the emergent flavour properties of neutrinos, then to time-directional properties of Feynman diagrams, to meson decay, W-particle creation, and, finally, the force transferred by the Higg's particle. The three of us met outside afterwards (Gary had sneaked in at the back while we weren't looking) with cheesy grins on our faces. We totally understood all that. Really!

We were supposed to attend another panel on "what's under the ice at Europa" but realised that we'd already taken in as much as we could handle. Instead, we found Sarah, who'd had a much more sensible day visiting markets, and then set off out for a drink. Sarah had sussed out some bars in Southtown so we went on a bit of a walk of discovery down Alamo St. A few Shiner Bocks later (the local beer -- looks like a bitter but is in fact a lager) we realise that Linda, who had been on unintentional double Bacardis, was not quite feeling herself. We dragged the giggling idiot home and left her to find her own way up the hotel lift to bed while the rest of us had just one more for the road in the hotel bar. Three hours and $100 later I joined her. Don't think she noticed . . .

Worldcon Day 1

After 6 hours of intense REM sleep (anxieties and stress processing, I suppose), we broke out of our comas at 6 am, finally unpacked, removed the travelling stink (memo to self: must apologise to Gary & Sarah for not showering last night), and burned the offending underwear. The world looks a lot less blurry in the morning.

Most of the day was taken up with getting the lay of the land. We found out pretty quickly that, because we were on Con rates, the Marriott did not feel obliged to provide a "complimentary" breakfast. That's despite the fact that we're forking out $180 a night after taxes for a room in a FIVE star hotel without even a fridge. Anyone else notice a trend in the American economy here? I'm getting the impression that the whole service industry is run like Ryanair -- no matter what you're paying for, everything extra costs more. Want Wi-Fi access in your room? That'll be another 59¢ a minute. See that bottle of water on the dresser provided for "your convenience"? Check the small print that says "If consumed $3.50 will be billed to your room!" Gary said he'd ordered cocktail last night in the hotel bar while he was waiting for us. That was $10. In fact, most of the street bars we tried last night wanted $5 from each of us as a "cover charge". We settled for one of the many alfresco bars down on the Riverwalk and notice that none of them cared to advertise their prices before you order. That seems to be true for anything you buy here in San Antonio. Texans do not appear to believe in open competition by virtue of price warfare. Perhaps everyone is so rich that they pay whatever they see on the bill: "if you have to ask how much it is, you probably can't afford it!". (In case you are wondering, a draft beer comes to around £4-5 a pint.)

We did have a fun breakfast in a local German restaurant. Bratwurst & eggs, anyone? The waitresses go overboard on the humour to work up their 15% tips. G & S went off to visit the Alamo while Linda and I checked into the Con (Gary was already the proud possessor of an ID badge and a thick programme of upcoming events; Sarah is declining to play citing us as " bloody wierdos" -- not out loud, of course).

By the afternoon the enormous convention centre is beginning to fill up with attendees, booksellers, artworks, fanzine stands, geeky t-shirts, white hair, white beards and big bodies. I downloaded an interactive programme to my tablet which directed me to room 008A at the end of the river-level floor of the centre to attend a programme on "Contaminating Other Worlds". We found Gary already perched in the back row having attended the prior talk on "Space Medicine". Damn! This boy is keen. Our talk basically revolved around "Human Race Vs Martian Microbes". Or Europan or Titan microbes, for that matter. I think the verdict was "stuff the microbes", especially if it delays space exploration or costs us more. There were a few die-hards muttering about analogous oil spills and alligator-eating Burmese pythons in Florida, not to mention the Prime Directive for Martian unicellular life, but generally I got the impression that the Solar System Belongs To Earth! At least as far as the American pro-space crowd was concerned.

The evening saw us at a reasonably priced Mexican restaurant on the Riverwalk. G & S caught up with us after he had squeezed one more panel discussing "Sacrificing Earth: The Politics and Science of Ecology". He really is putting me to shame. A word on the Riverwalk -- it's best described as a mini-American Venice. The canals are full of motorised "gondolas" passing by alfresco restaurants. For a better picture the Con downloaded this cartoon map:

Launch

Launch minus 6 hours: At 03:30 hours all the alarms went off. Triple redundancy, of necessity, as we had had a surfeit of Green Goblin and Bacardi at the Leap the previous evening. As I lay there, stupefied with 6% alcohol and disturbed sleep ("Have I forgotten anything?"), I can't help wondering why I can't just "beam' over to the bloody country. Of course: recent mathematical treatises have determined that to successfully map the quantum superposition states of each atom comprising a human being and recreate them at another spacetime point would take in excess of 10 times the life of the universe ( >14 X 10 to the power of 10  years at best guess). That would slow things down somewhat. Luckily, Linda booked a taxi instead.

Launch minus 5 hours: Our newly-discovered airport taxi firm was 1 minute fashionably late, arriving at 04:01 hours. Just over an hour later found us first in the queue for Delta Airlines at Heathrow's Terminal 4. Certainly faster than star Trek's teleporter! With some trepidation Linda asked how much an upgrade to "Premier Economy" would cost? Around 160 Euros, or £120 cash for the two of us (just over 20% of the original booking if we did this both ways). We took it on the basis of the prominent desk advert that promised to make our flight more "enjoyable & comfortable", increase our leg room from 31" to 35", and offered us a complimentary drink. In effect, Delta's offer tacitly admitted that their "economy" class was anything but comfortable, that their "upgraded" Premier class was in fact the same as most bog-standard Arab airlines, and their "complimentary" glass of warm Californian Chardonnay was the most expensive in history. Oh yes, the icing on the cake was that the check-in staff neglected to inform anyone that the in-flight entertainment was not working. Had been broken since the aircraft had left Atlanta on the flight out, in fact. So, no Iron Man 3 for David then!

Launch plus 3 hours: Sure enough, no Iron Man. Having entertained ourselves with some unattended props at Terminal 4 (see picture below) and topped up the previous night with a couple of Stellas and Bombay Sapphires at an airport bar we find ourselves in "Premier Economy" Class writing this rubbish and running out of things to moan about. Luckily, having read all the atrocious reviews regarding American airlines, I uploaded this handy little gizmo with the Thor and Green Lantern movies. Hmm. I see that just writing this has drained the battery by 10%. Maybe I'd better wait a bit until I'm really bored!

Launch plus 11 hours: Ah well, having availed ourselves of more "complementary" drinks (Linda was especially fond of the 56cl bottles of 49% proof Bombay Sapphire) and luxuriating in the extra legroom, our 9 hour journey to Atlanta weren't that bad. We were somewhat dreading the Immigration Experience in Atlanta, so much so that I extended our stopover before travelling onward to San Antionio to over 5 hourse to ensure we met the connection with a minimum of stress. Just to make a fool of me and my rampant paranoia the whole bloody airport was empty. We were through baggage reclaim, immigration, baggage redrop, Customs and the eternally redundant second security check in less than a single hour! So here we are in a relatively empty colossal airport bar drinking $6 draught beers waiting for our connection. Thank God they fed us solids on the plane! Nearly there!

Launch plus 24 hours: Yes, we've been awake that long, folks. Flagging a bit after nearly six hours waiting to board the San An plane we were pleased to know that the last phase was only 1 hour and 40 minutes long. At least when we arrived there were no more wretched Immigration, Customs or Security lines to go through -- travel as it is supposed to be! What rounded the day off fantastically was the smiling faces off Gary & Sarah waiting at our hotel check-in to whisk us off for a late night pub crawl. After 26 hours of conciousness, we finally crashed into deep, deep sleep. The End.
Oh, apart from the picture Linda took earlier at Heathrow. Caption reads: "After the shock resignation of Peter Capaldi, new hopefuls audition for the Time Lord role".

Standby for Launch!

Systems check . . . .

• Google Nexus 10 charged and uploaded with Fireball XL5 videos: Check!
• Superman underpants, Hawaiian shorts, hippy sandals & geeky sci-fi T-shirts packed: Check!
• KLM airline seats booked and on-board films identified (Iron Man 3 - goody!): Check!
• Entry visas to Fortress America logged and paid for: Check! (Memo to Self: go through the official site next time and pay £14 rather than a phoney site that charges £85, dammit!)
• Book rental car from Enterprise (who else! -- it is a Sci-Fi Convention, after all) for the post-Con Texas tour: Check!
• Blog website set up and functioning: Ongoing!
• Empty freezer, eat all the rubbish that's been hiding there all year, and defrost: Ongoing! (Memo to Self: next time, buy a more expensive fridge that defrosts itself!)
• Get Linda to sew me a carry case for the Nexus so I can look like Spock with an outsized tricorder: Ongoing! (Memo to Self: must get myself some false pointy ears!)