We made it back safely from Baltimore. The weird thing is that I could actually almost envision myself living in a place like that. Here were the highlights of the trip/convention:

• Cool Costumes
• Radio Station that actually plays anime and J-Pop music
• Same radio station providing breakdancers
• Free manga books
• Free posters
• Hilarious anime music videos
• 13.5 hour drive/music listening spree
• Watching anime on the laptop in the motel
• Halfway home, a fellow motorist saw our "got anime?" bumper sticker and honked and held up their badge from the convention
• Robert DeJesus, a manga artist from Indiana, and his funny jokes
• Witnessing the irony of "Security Boulevard"

Here were the downfalls of the trip:

• The insecure feeling you get when traveling on "Security Boulevard"
• Terrible restaurant service (at least they're consistent!)
• B.O. at the convention (which we aptly named C.O. [i.e. convention odor])
• It rained on the last day
• Parking close to the convention is expensive
• Con only lasted 3 days
• Too much to see in too little time
• Not enough pictures or video footage taken
• Would have been more fun with friends along

Well, perhaps next year, we can bring (drag?) some friends along. The van proved to be very reliable, and also a nice comfy place to take a nap. We removed the middle seat which provided a nice little padded area (with our comforter) to sleep on. This was very handy when trading off driving duties. I actually believe that there were people at the convention who could not find a hotel with any available rooms. This assumption was based on the people who smelled of C.O. and the ones who were sleeping in odd places all around the convention center. The convention center is approximately 3 large city-blocks in size and 4 stories tall. I'm getting ready to dump the video footage onto my hard drive, although there is only about 30 minutes of footage AT the convention, which includes walking around the cosplayers, the center itself, and the Dealer's Room which is the size of Roberts Stadium. The other hour of footage is a Workshop we attended on how to make anime music videos.