San Diego Comic-Con 2015 - Part Three of My Journey

Sorry that this is going way over what I had planned.  I keep thinking of things as I write, plus I'm known for rambling on about the smallest details.  I sometimes bore myself.

On Wednesday, Dan and I had dropped in at Full Circle Tattoo to set up an appointment.  I had gotten a tattoo at another place the previous year, but the artist who had worked on it was no longer there.  Besides, Kristina had gone to Full Circle once before and she liked the parlor and the artists. Kristina was also going to be the one to escort me there, while Dan and Sarah held our places in line.

The choice of the tattoo had been an on-going discussion since I got the original anchor last year.  I loved it and have had folks say nice things about it.  After the fact, I can see that the only problem was placement on my arm, which had been my spur of the moment decision. It is way too high and is hard to see even in some sleeveless shirts I own.

I had considered the idea of having Hellboy or his glove, as well as a Popeye and even a ship. Finally, I decided, with input from the family on getting a ship's wheel with crashing waves.  I discussed the artwork with artist Johnny Bones and with a few minor changes we picked the size and placement of the new ink.  While my first tat had taken less than an hour, this badboy took closer to two.  I'm not ashamed to admit that there were moments there when I wanted to just put a stop to the process, just leave the outline and skip the color work.  When it was finally over however I was happy that I had gone through with it.  Kristina was great keeping me calm and documenting the process.  I'll skip some of the bloodier stuff and just show you the finished product.

We were back in line before 7:30 pm and told that they would begin handing out wristbands to those in line shortly.  Of course, you had to show that you actually had a badge and folks had to vouch for others that they had been standing in line and not simply jumping in.  It was probably around 9:00 pm that Volunteers actually began handing out the bands.  Once you had them you were told that you had two options.  The first was that you could stay in line over night, thereby ensuring you were going to be at the front of Hall H as that is how they sit you moving folks to the front of the room and filling it in.  The second choice was that you could leave, but had to return before 7:30 am on Friday, to be guaranteed a seat even with a band.

The four of us were pretty exhausted at this point and opted to head back home.  This time around we had decided to forego mass transit and with the car service, Uber. We had used them that morning and I want to thank the fine folks at the Unofficial San Diego Comic-Con Blog for putting out a code that gave you a free ride after you registered with Uber.  We used all our free rides over the three days and even used another service called Lyft a few times.  It seemed that a lot of the Uber drivers also worked for Lyft, and you saw stickers for both on a number of cars pulling into hotels and other pick-up locations. Most of the drivers we had for both companies were very nice, with only one exception who was a complete jerk and got a pretty crummy review when we got home.

It looks like we'll have a couple more of these to get through, so I hope you'll stick around.