Here is the report of the sixth day of the trip to GenCon 2017. The report on the fifth day can be found in this journal entry. Note that this blog entry is quite long and has some photos in it, so be warned. :)


August 20th, 2017

I woke up this morning in the bed at the Westin Indianapolis hotel feeling groggy and somewhat tired. I didn't sleep well the night before, and my right foot felt very bad. Both my feet were swollen but not as badly as they had been the day/night before. spross and I went through the morning ablutions and I showered and all, after which SteveR replaced the dressing on my right foot. He told me that it looked a bit better than it had the night before, so I was relatively optimistic, but Goddess did it hurt like heck. We ended up having a late breakfast at Shula's, due to the medical attention that I needed first and then the wheelchair trip to the hotel restaurant.

I told SteveR that I wanted to go to the Exhibit Hall, if possible, for a last look around at stuff, and because I wanted to say goodbye to several people there. Then the afternoon and evening would be spent back at the hotel hobbling around and packing for the flight home to Ottawa on Monday. The trip from the Westin to the ICC was interesting and different because we had to take elevators rather than escalators, but we managed to get to the Exhibit Hall in good time. The ICC hallways were still relatively busy, though not to the degree they'd been the previous three days, but there was still good traffic.



ICC hallway traffic on Sunday


There was still a good amount of business going on in the Exhibit Hall, even though it was Sunday, and lots of vendours were selling some stuff at discounted prices. Stopped near the Cheapass Games booth as I loved the sign, and took the photo seen here.



Booth business at Cheapass Games on Sunday


It was rather awkward getting around with SteveR pushing me in the manual wheelchair, as the various convention folks just didn't really want to get out of the way. SteveR and I wandered the Exhibit Hall for a bit, and stopped at the Ulisses Spiele NA booth to say goodbye to folks. Everyone there wanted to know what had happened, and I told them briefly about Saturday's "incident". SteveR and I headed for the R. Talsorian Games booth so he could say goodbye to some folks as well, and that was kind of nice to see. We paid a visit to the Modiphius Entertainment booth after that, and I was pleased to learn that they had sold out of the copies of Tales From the Loop that they'd brought in, but also that they'd sold several copies of Coriolis - The Third Horizon based on the two games of such that I'd run at the convention.

From there, we wandered around a bit, and came to the author's section once more. I had heard about Doug Bedwell's novel, Robot Captain, and decided to stop by the booth and pick up a copy of the book for myself. Chatted with the author a bit, too.



Doug Bedwell and his novel, Robot Captain


We then headed over to the Paizo booth to say goodbye to the rest of the Ulisses Spiele NA gang and the folks behind The Dark Eye RPG, and that was somewhat bittersweet. Fond farewells. Made the mistake of going past the OffWorld Designs booth, and I am ashamed to say that I picked up three more t-shirts. *sigh* From there, SteveR and I visited the Pelgrane Press booth to say some goodbyes. Finally got to say hello and goodbye to Gar Hanrahan. We talked a bit about our lives and the gaming we were doing at the moment (both work and play). He's a lovely fellow, and I'm sorry I'd only got to see him on the last day of the convention.

By this time, both SteveR and I were a bit tired, and my feet were just too painful to keep going, even in the wheelchair, so we headed out of the ICC and headed for the Circle Center mall and the food court. We grabbed a couple of hot dogs and a bottle of water each at the A&W there. A decent hot dog there, of course, but I found it a little bit greasy for my taste. We headed back for the ICC and the Westin, but on the way saw the display of costumes called the Dragon's Hoard once more and had to take a photo of them. Just sorry that I forgot to take one of the side area where they had the Firefly costumes worn by Inara Serra (played by Morena Baccarin). *sigh*



The Dragon's Hoard of costumes


SteveR and I headed back to the Westin from the mall, and stopped off at Capital Grounds to pick up a chocolate chip muffin. We then got back to the hotel room, and when I got out of the wheelchair my feet were swollen and both were hurting badly, as well as my thigh muscles from sitting in the wheelchair. I sat for a while with my feet elevated and that helped, as did the water and the muffin. SteveR relaxed somewhat as well, and he clearly needed it as he looked a bit pale. I called down to the Westin lobby and learned that I could take care of checking out of the hotel the next morning from the hotel room. That was something of a relief, as the wheelchair limited my mobility and I didn't really want to get caught in a line-up for check-out the next morning. After a bit, we both got up off the beds and started in on the packing of the suitcases and the like until we were ready for supper.

We decided to go back to High Velocity in the J.W. Marriott for supper, but at the last minute remembered there was a decent place in the Marriott Downtown, though neither of us could remember the name. We made our way to the Marriott Downtown and found the place - the Circle City Brew and Grub - where we had our final supper in Indy. We ordered our food, and when it came I couldn't believe the size of the Emerald Garden (salad) and the huge Troll's Delight (turkey leg)! Here's the visual proof.



Emerald Garden (salad)


The Troll's Delight (turkey)


While the turkey was delicious, as it had an interesting smoking method applied to it as part of the cooking process (and thus its reddish pink colour), that was just too much food for this Canadian boy with Type 2 diabetes. I did it justice, I thought, eating about half of one side of the bird leg and enjoyed the meal for the most part.

SteveR and I returned to the Westin hotel, and continued to try and finish off most of the packing for the trip home. The trick was to distribute the Coriolis - The Third Horizon, the old TORG RPG supplements, and the Terraforming Mars materials between us so the check-in suitcases wouldn't be too heavy. Once we got that sorted out, the rest of the packing for the night was relatively easy. After finishing off the packing, I took my second insulin shot of the day, had some Cheerios with a bit of apple, and then relaxed for the next 30 minutes or so just re-checking some of the packing and keeping my feet elevated. And at least I was out of the damned wheelchair. We crashed around 12:35 am, though I couldn't fall asleep until around 1:15 am. Foot pain.



In any event, the next post will be about the trip home to Ottawa, and then I'll be writing just one more post about this year's GenCon 2017, a retrospective of sorts, some thoughts on the convention, and some photos of my loot from the convention. As always, thoughts and comments are much appreciated.