Becky’s in the Backseat, pt.0: Driving to Comic Con, Driving to Comic Con
Every time I go to Comic Con, I always wind up 2 weeks before being all nervous and hectic trying to get everything together. Making sure that we have everything we’re going to need. Confirm hotel reservations. Go grocery shopping. Go liquor shopping. Buy all the last-minute garments that I might need. Make sure I have promo goods. Make sure I have business cards… and so on. It is a lot of prep.
We managed to get our stuff together, all of it. Well, a majority of it. One always forgets a thing here and there. This time, the only thing that I needed and forgot was a notebook… which is easily rectified.
We left bright and early at 3 in the morning… after a whole whopping 0 hours of sleep. It was earlier than our start time from last year. I figured getting an earlier start might have meant missing out on LA traffic.
That wasn’t quite correct. We landed in LA in the middle of rush hour traffic. So, just before we got to Burbank, I decided to find a good place for us to get a good brunch. When I’m outside of the San Francisco area, I depend on a handy-dandy app called “Find Me Gluten-Free”. One of the suggestions the app had been a restaurant called Bea Bea’s. It’s on the border of Burbank and Toluca Lake, about a mile from Warner Bros. Studio.
We got there about 9 in the morning on Wednesday morning. They have a good-sized menu, and they have plentiful gluten-free options including waffles and pancakes. I went with something fairly simple by having eggs and bacon. The food was good… really good. I recommend them both for gluten-free people and people who can eat gluten. The food is good. It’s not expensive. It was worth the diversion.
Instead of travelling straight through downtown LA this year, we decided to go around LA. While that sounds like it should take longer, I think it might have actually taken less time. We saved ourselves 2 or more hours in traffic, just sitting and waiting. We made it to the place to pick up our badges by 1 PM. This year, instead of the ungodly line of traffic there was last year. It was in and out with no wait. That’s a first. It was awesome just going in, picking up the badge, getting ice-cold water and heading to the hotel. I love not waiting to pick up my badge. It was awesome.
After we picked up our badges, we made our way to the hotel. It was a long drive and we were very tired. Of course, there was an expected line to check in to the hotel. While I did wait in a line, it did move quickly. And soon after we got there, we had all our stuff in the room and could begin to unwind from a long, hot drive… including a brief nap.
After a nap, we headed out for some dinner. We hit the Burger Lounge for dinner. It was OK. As far as burger joints go, I still prefer both the Counter and Roam (though I would only be able to find the Counter in San Diego as Roam is local to me). It was a good dinner, but I’m not sure I would call it great.
After dinner we headed back to the hotel and had a couple of drinks at the hotel bar. The bar at our hotel is quite swanky. It’s a great place to sit and have a drink. While drinking we had a great conversation about Final Fantasy and Legend of Zelda with the bartenders. The bonus to geek events is that sometimes the people serving you are also geeks. It was fun to talk video games with them. After that is was back to the room and to bed.