Shutter Crazy Adventures: Roadtrip 1 - Day 3/4

7/29/16 ~
I wanted to do a road trip, just get in the car and drive. And drive, and drive.... now I'm getting to, it's actually really nice.

So I left Billings at 7am and made a nice long drive, Emily was up before I left and I got to say goodbye to her, and on the road I went! Only once did I get stuck on the wrong on-ramp and headed the wrong direction. Otherwise Billings to Spokane drive wasn't terrible. It was just about 8 hours but once you cross into Idaho (which feels like FOREVER after Missoula) things get kinda non stop. Ran into more construction too.

Stopped for Gas/Coffee outside of Billings (I don't have my atlas for maps..might edit it later), filled all the way up and scrubbed my windows clean. Then filled up in Missoula and have still a half a tank left when I got to Spokane. Traffic was non-stop and it was very city and less beautiful when I exited Coeur D'alene, otherwise it's pretty with all the massive lake.

In my usual speedy style, I arrived to Spokane bright and early. As in, 2pm when I aimed for 4pm. So I got to attend the Volunteer meeting! Chatted up a bunch of people (4-6 of them?) and made friends! Meeting went well, then I loitered around and met up with my roomies. Saved the day with my credit card since debit cards never work for hotel rooms for people. They had key issues, so my key had to work.... our room is beautiful but has nothing. No coffee maker, fridge, or anything. Anyway, got the hotel room all done and then went back to the con to meet up with Dynai (and her friend Jordan) to do some random exploring and photos!

Roomies didn't know how to get to the parking garage, so I ended up navigating them back when they were in their car to the hotel parking. Hehee.

I knew who she was cosplaying as, and of course she doesn't know me. So I texted her, and then was walking through the con and saw the cosplay outfit, did the usual look up and down. She like, focuses really hard on her phone and steps into her friend and I walk up and am all "Am I texting you?" and thus we met up. This whole photography thing really has helped me extrovert.

Did the photo thing, hung out and decided we'd all go out to Sushi. Went to Sushi Masu which is a conveyor belt sushi, pretty good. Waddled them back to their car and got driven back to the hotel (which isn't a far walk, but there's a lot of weirdos).

Ummm... crawled back to the room to sleep. Probably around 11pm? Sorry this post is so unenthusiastic. Yesterday was long and exhausting!

Pictures and day 4 below the cut!

Lovely room. Yes, those are mirrors above the beds.

My view of downtown Spokane with lots of one way streets... yay?

pretty ass stairs.

Dynai during one of our photo sessions

I got excited when i saw ponies.

Saturday, July 30th 2016

This morning I had my alarm set for 7am, but being a timezone behind means I wake up at 6. Laid around until 6:30 and wandered into the shower shortly after. Our shower is fancy too. One of those classy walk in kinds with full on soap bottles in there.
After my shower people were beginning to wake up in the room, so I wandered off and got myself some coffee and asked about a mini fridge. We could add one to our room for $10 per night extra. Having cheese and other cold objects, I wanted to do this. Discussed it with the roomies and we were all down. So we ordered a mini fridge, which actually was pretty darn big!

My volunteering didn't officially start until 9:30, but being a space cadet I read the schedule wrong and turned up at 8:50(because I'm early for everything in life...). I was put right to work, assembling computers and plugging 8 of them in, as well as making sure the Xboxes, Wii's and N64 were all logged in and running. Clearly, I was in the console gaming area for these two hours. We were suppose to be 'live' at 10, but had plenty of technical setbacks (Ethernet not working, of course I forgot to make sure I plugged into the video cards instead of motherboards, oops.) The shift flew by, honestly. I met some cool guys while volunteering there, Timothy, Nathan (a chat noir cosplayer) and Niko (head dude in the room) and a few others. It felt nice to actually be able to help and not need explained to.

Shift was over at 11:30 and I wanted to throw my cold things into the fridge, so I did. My first shoot of the day was waiting for me since 11ish, and I felt so bad. But I was running behind, wanted food, a break, and to see the dealers room. Messaged her and she was down for a 2:15 shoot. So yay! I'd spotted her once while I was on my way to my shift earlier, didn't say hello since that can make things awkward sometimes.

So I dashed off to the first thing I wanted to do! The Epona Equestrian Team was hosting a mounted fighting and medieval combat demo. The guys doing the demo seemed awesome, and they do jousting and mounted melee. Anyway, loved that and talked to them after. They have two female members already, and meet/practice 3 times a week, annnnd would totally let me join. I really really want to. Everyone was friendly and welcoming and just the right amount of sass and humor. (This con, btw, is SUPER G rated. It's insane. For me who loves her innuendos, I'm suffering.). Loved that panel.
The next one I dashed to was the Kimono Demonstration, which was how you get dressed in all the layers and what they're called. It started immediately after the Epona one so I was a couple minutes late. Walking in at 1:10 and missing some of the undergarment segment. Still, really cool!

My client was actually in the Kimono Demo room, so I watched her leave and then headed out shortly after her. Both my people this weekend, I'm their first pro tog to shoot with. This 2nd girl loved my energy and fed off of me really well, and of course laughed at all the crazy ass positions I get into.   I don't feel like I'm doing my "BEST" this weekend, but it's really fun still. It's hot outside, but not overly humid like I thought it'd be. Uncomfortable but not unbearable.
Lots of people say Western Washington is so much better.   I'm a little sad I'll be living out East, but lots people are looking forward to it? Lots....by everyone I've managed to talk to. Which really still isn't as many as I want to be... meh.

Shoot went great, I got a good tip out of it too! Once that was over I dashed to the cosplay contest that was starting at 3pm, the line was so long! Room capacity was 400 and it filled up just a few people behind me. I enjoyed it, sorta. Too many dancing/singing girls in the skit part. The cosplayers aren't really the level I'm used to with Colorado. Their "Masters" are more like our "intermediate" but that's alright. Colorado's got some very competitive and insanely talented people. It really just inspired me to really enjoy this last con... I want to see the cosplay competition and all that jazz.

Dynai was in the competition, and we were planning to shoot a little after it. Which we did, I found her and kidnapped her. Unfortunately we found out her car had a parking violation on it, and she freaked out (quietly, but was clearly really upset). I dialed some numbers with no luck, but told her she should be able to dispute it. Unfortunately we had to move on, try not to let it bother her too much and we went and shot around the (BEAUTIFUL) hotel. The contest ended at 4pm... photos started by 4:40... I got a ton of "wow" comments from bystanders from my acro-tography. hah!

Dinner was set to meet up at 5, but Samantha (who I met/chatted with at the volunteer thing) was ok with me bumping it forward 15 minutes. I went and met up with her and we went to Sushi.com for food, and it was good! I had Chicken Teriyaki rice and a Tarantula roll, which honestly was WAY too much food for me. $24 later and having barely eaten half of my food (chicken was fatty, and 8 HUGE cuts of sushi is a lot... of one flavor)

We finished up food and I was headed back to the hotel, which I had to walk through the parking lot that Dynai's car was parked in, and found an attendant. Ended up explaining what happened (legit ticket was face down, rather than face up) and found out that the charges could/would be removed if we brought it back to her! I texted Dynai like 'we need to talk' then called her, mildly set her into a panic, OOPS. Anyway, told her the good news and she came out to meet me and we got it all settled! No more parking ticket, and a huge weight off her shoulders!

I wanted to get to the BJD panel AND the dating game panel but couldn't be two places at one.. So happy Dynai and Jordon decided to stay for a little, and we all attended the dating panel. It was cute, but seriously don't enter your name to be drawn if you're going to be lame and not have a good personality... Dynai and I get along pretty well, I think I managed to make a new friend 8D I make her laugh a lot, and she's cool with my random innuendos (and by cool I mean practically face palms and rejects me loudly). But we have a lot of things to talk about (helps that I have verbal diarrhea) and things we can relate to eachother on. Yay! First Spokane friend! She's also in the masters category at the competition, bwahahah!

2nd client of the day is a military brat and headed off to Okinawa soon. I'm a little jealous of that! She does sonar stuff. Pretty cool!

Ummmm... yeah, so then after that I went back up to the room to sit my butt down and play catch up!

Tomorrow probably won't be too exciting, I'm volunteering from 930 to 4 so... nice long day. Bleh!   Not many pictures to share from today, I'll try and take more around town tomorrow!