…down in Ducktown
DogCon 5
This year, our fictional con trip report is dedicated to Winker (2004-2012), who was with us in person as we took the previous four trips and will be with us in spirit as we take this one. We all miss you, Winky.
DogCon 5, Trip Day 0
(Notes: As always, comments by our pets are in italics. Additionally, if you are a new reader to these faux con reports, I urge you to read the first four, which were reprinted over the last couple of months on this very blog.)
Yes, folks, it’s that time of year again when we pack up our old kit bags, round up our critters both real and imaginary, gather together friends (at the very least, that means our petsitter, Sharon), climb on board the recently released from storage Magic Bus and set out on the fictional open road for Critter City, Texas and DogCon 5, the greatest imaginary gaming & sci-fi convention in the world..
This year, we start our trip without our sweet Winkerdog, but with our sporty little basset hound, Sasha,
Sasha: Hi everybody!
our big girl hound, Lucy,
Lucy: Hello, folks!
our imaginary Dwarf Portuguese Jungle Cat, Flash,
Flash: Yo! Wassup?
our imaginary Dwarf Nigerian Goat, Abigail,
Abby: Greetings, folks!
and…
Apparently, going more than two years without getting a new imaginary pet is unacceptable to Grace. Thus, allow me to introduce our SECOND pet Dwarf Nigerian Goat, Beatrice.
Bea: Hello there!
She’s a fine, sweet tempered, brown & white, well behaved girl, but I have had to put my foot down on any more pets. No, really, Grace, I’m serious. Stop chuckling.
Flash: Yeah, right Dad. My money is on Mom.
Abby: Can You really ever have too many goats?
Lucy: Apparently not, according to Mom.
Sasha: I think having too many goats is like having too many dogs, not a real problem.
Bea: Unlike, say, having too many cats.
Flash: D’OH!
In other trip related news, we (meaning myself and Joe, our quantum mechanic) have made some modifications to the Magic Bus for this trip. Despite the total coolness of the three story (actually seven stories, if you count the 4 basement levels that nobody sane would go into) setup we had last year, at the urging of Grace, we went to a single level plan for the interior of the bus. I’ll miss the Bradbury Building style elevator and the firehouse pole that could let you go up or down, but the new setup is pretty swell.
The main room is now 60 X 60 feet with a 10 foot ceiling. Heading off rearward from that room is a long hallway that has 8 bedrooms (each with a bathroom), the critter bunkhouse (which is pretty friggin’ nice, even by human standards)
All Critters: It’s pretty friggin’ nice by animal standards, too!
and terminates at the greenhouse.
Abby & Bea: Mmmmm, the greenhouse.
The left hand hallway off of the main room is where you’ll find the gym (with pool), game room, library, room of shoes (an 80′ X 80′ X 20′ tall room full of big…like, 15′ tall…piles of all kinds of shoes. The animal love it and most humans like it, too.)
Lucy: Oh man, do we ever love that room!
Sasha: Shoes, glorious shoes!
Abby: King/Queen of the Shoe Pile! Best. Game. Evar!
the warehouse (where, sooner or later, you can find anything)
Flash: Dad and Zach found a jet pack in there! But don’t ever remind Mom about that.
Abby: Mom was so pissed off after that incident, she was cursing in tongues!
Lucy: I think she even breathed fire!
and the theater, which seats 50 and has an amazing inventory of movies not from our reality.
Flash: One of which is “The Adventures of AirCat”!
Off to the right of the main room, the hallway contains the kitchen/dining room, the pantry (which is about the size of our house),
Flash: The pantry…such a sacred and wonderful place.
Storage Room Alpha (where all cleaning supplies are stored), Storage Room Bravo (where we store and recharge the little SmartBots that use those cleaning supplies),
Flash & Lucy: Aargh! Those fucking robots! Oh, how we hates them, my precious!
Sasha: You two are crazy. Those robots just do their jobs. It’s not like they’re squirrels.
the meadow room (which sports a one acre meadow & woods for our critters to play in)
All Critters: The Meadow Room is the best place on the bus!
the hot tub room
Flash: Soaking for hours in hot water? Humans are nutty!
and, new for this year because sometimes odd rooms just pop up, the slide room.
All Critters: The Slide Room? Oh. Hell. YES!
That last room needs some explaining. See, partly because of the TARDIS Unit that allows our bus to be bigger inside than out and partly because of some quantum shit that makes my eyes glaze over and my mind start thinking of pizza when Joe tries to explain it, this room has a half dozen interconnected slides that cover all four walls, the floor and the ceiling. It’s all very Escher looking, but crazy fun, since once you start down a slide, you’ll keep sliding all over the room until you say “Enough!”, at which point you slide out onto the small slideless patch of floor just inside the doorway. When we first discovered this room, all of us spent about an hour sliding.
Flash: It was hella fun!
Lucy: I like the corkscrew slide part!
Sasha: I was sliding up a wall and across the ceiling upside down! UPSIDE DOWN!
Abby: There’s that one long straight stretch where you go like 60 miles an hour!
Bea: And what about the loop dee loops? Wow!
As always, the normal looking door next to the picture window in the main room leads to the Room of Chocolate, which is a smallish room that is always full of gourmet chocolate products.
(Flash: And off limits to animals, which we think sucks.)
We also have the multiversal QM radio on board, which means that we can listen to satellite radio stations from many other versions of Earth.
Bea: I hope we get to hear some roots reggae and maybe some ska.
And the destination sign on the bus has had many new places added to it.
Unfortunately, or maybe not, depending on your point of view, the part of our Tardis Unit that often lets us screw around with spacetime is not working. Joe has parts on order, but as of now they haven’t arrived. This means that for at least part of our trip, there will be no choice but to drive on the roads of our world, in the present day. Oddly, most everybody but me thinks this is a swell idea.
Lucy: Count me in that group!
Flash: Yes! Me, too!
Abby: Oh yeah, you betcha!
Sasha & Bea: That blows, because we’re new and haven’t got to do the timey wimey spacey wacey stuff!
Finally, our fellow travelers for this trip are the three members of the Jones family, the three members of the Mystery family, my nephew Zach, our good friend and petsitter Sharon and our friend Avis (who, for quantum blah blah blah reasons has split into two people again this year). I’ll write more about Avis and Avis tomorrow.
Just like past years, our trip will be long and meandering and include many stops at roadside tourist traps & attractions, especially any that are World Famous.
Ok, time for some sleep. The trip starts in a few hours.
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