Solid State Brains For Sale: IAAPA '08 ~ Anecdotes and Anomalies

Its that time again folks... time to unload upon you who like to read the accumulated anecdotes of a week at IAAPA, the international amusement park and ride convention, this year held in Orlando Florida. Step by step. Raise your hand if you feel like a straight line. A vector.

I might mention I am writing this blog in Orlando at the 3 bedroom condo the six of us are staying. I've been averaging about 4 hours of sleep. At present I am in a deeply reclined position in a chair at a dinning room table, listening to Elbow, writing this blog, utterly exhausted, slightly delirious and seriously thinking about drinking the remaining Johnny Walker red I bought on Monday.

Anyway, I feel like I'm dreaming. I may ramble because my brain is barely functioning above the level of a seven year old right now. Hopefully a fairly bright and well read seven year old... see, I ramble and occasionally say strange things when i don't have any juice in m batteries.

I'm not sure how to present these but here they are:

Culmination of 100 plus hours of work....

anecdotes for Monday... 2 hours of sleep. Head to the airport to begin this excursion from reality.

We check 9 bags at he airport.

We have to leave Korey at the airport because the rental (dodge Caravan) is not large enough to accommodate all of us and our luggage. \Larry goes after him several hours later.

I rip my favorite pair of jeans while laying laminated flooring at the convention booth.

we eat pizza and sleep. Now the real fun begins.

Damn I'm so very hungry right now.

Tuesday...
The show opens… The Gravity Group holds a press conference…

TimberLiner!

Adventures in transportation
Through a series of mishaps it appears the remote for the car and the key for the car don’t work. I am elected to take care of it. I call and wait for about an hour for someone from the rental agency. They show up and we go to find the car, which is gone, save for a box of stuff my boss had jammed under it is strewn about the lot. I think the car has been stolen. Me and the rental guy split up to cover more ground. I find myself peering into every dodge caravan looking for ours, knowing in my heart it’s been stolen. 1.5 hours later, I get a call from a different section of the parking lot. “I think I found it.” Says the rental man.

In a flash all mysteries are solved. My boss forgot where we parked, jammed a box of crap under someone else’s Dodge caravan. That person kicked our box out from under their car. Of course the key and remote did’nt work. As a bonus my retinas were not permanently damaged by the blazing Florida sunshine.

My computer beats me
Though many believe spousal abuse to be dirty secret of many American relationships, I am somewhat ashamed to say that my nemesis is not a woman. While in the due course of attempting to remove my computer from a table to which it was attached via 2 way tape I ripped the top of the table off smashing my G5 into my face. There was blood. My computer accepted no blame. Below is the visual record of the healing process. That bastard.

Wed.

Ice Cream Man:

I met and hung out with the Ice cream man. This guy is something else. This guy has ridden his bike from California to Maine, he walked from Mexico to Canada, he walked the Appalacian trail. His curent plan is simple: Make a successful business out of giving away free ice cream. He is currently in year 5 of 7 of this plan. It appears to be working. I got a video interview with him in the ice cream truck while he drove us around. Check out the website here, and look into his “OFF THE WOOKIE” magazine. No lie. Most impressive moment for me was him regaling us with a tale of how he became friends with Neko Case.
As an added bonus he gave me Ice Cream Man guitar pics and a random iPod case.

GravityGroup Blog
heres some pics from the inside of the moving truck...

drawings
Somehow after the excitement of Wednesday I managed to fit in an entire 8 hours of work between ice cream man time and go to the convention the next day time. It gets frustrating at 3:00am when my computer notifies me “SYSTEM FAILURE”.
3:30 I have slapped some work together and called it good. 3 hours of sleep later I am awake.

thurs

I meet and smoke several cigarettes with iggy pop's bass player. He is a very amusing character. I initially thought he worked for Fender. I was wrong.

Charlie’s steak house
The plant below can be found outside of said steakhouse:

We decide to eat at the best and most expensive steak house in the state of Florida. My steak was 50oz…2.5 inches of juicy, bloody goodness.

After this I feel like death on the inside. Someone decides it’s a good idea to go out after that. I drink 2 very large cups of coffee and agree.

go kart racing
the night ends with go kart racing. Envision a three story track with a 32 degree incline at the top. Or just look at the pics. Invigorating.

The Gravity Group after hours...

fri

We all are very irritated with each other. I mean we packed up the booth and ate dinner at about 10:30 at night after eating nothing all day. That could have been my perception.

Unrelated note: My phone rocks at creating panoramic views.

It always seems a little sad to see all things sparkly and glittery torn down... wait a minute...I think I see the head of Hera...