Shore-Leave 44 was well done and over with, so this is just the story of my journey out of Lancaster, PA and back to Jacksonville, FL. I started out by leaving the hotel around 8am and driving about an hour and a half closer to Philadelphia and made a pit stop at Uncanny! Comics, which initially had some Google Maps struggles, as it seemed to want to put me in the middle of a parking garage instead of inside the mall. I eventually found the place and it was a fantastic store, but I think I walked about a mile inside that massive mall trying to find it, then took about 2 minutes getting out. If I remember correctly I bought a couple movie novelizations in comic form and one of the 2 missing Energon covers that were recently released. The guy behind the counter was very friendly and they had a ton of product on the shelves.
Next up was a shop about 30 or 40 minutes closer to Philly named Showcase Comics and Games. It had a more lived in and dusty feel to it, but their back issue bins were insane, literally dozens upon dozens of boxes all lined up, with about 2 long boxes dedicated to Trek books, of which I bought my fair share. The staff was pretty friendly and the downtown area they were located in was pretty fun to walk through. I looked for the final missing Energon cover and they had the fourth one that I needed, yay! I may put all four together to show you what they look like in that form, but it’s not necessarily Trek related, so maybe…not?
My next step was to get into Philadelphia proper, which wasn’t as painful as I was expecting, Google Maps had all the suggestions I needed for which lane to be in and what to expect, but it was still a bit of a surprise when I came around a corner and saw the gorgeous city doing it’s thing in the distance:
I made two stops to two different shops, both of which had decidedly different feels to them. The first was Brave New World, which had a touristy feel with about 4 or 5 long boxes of back issues, but still had the LCS charm that I enjoy feeling. Only problem was that with limited back issues there wasn’t much for me to do, but on my way out the door they had a 20 pack of science fiction comics for $10, wrapped in brown paper. A mysterious grab bag of comics? Yes please! I still haven’t even opened them yet to see what I have, but I’m definitely going to do that on a video of some sort. Will there be a Trek comic in there? Who knows!
My final stop was at Atomic City Comics who has an amazing sign out front with an amazing logo and had a huge back issue area that had just a few Trek comics, of which I bought half of. The guy behind the counter was super friendly and we chatted for about 5 minutes and I would have stayed longer but I was getting super nervous about turning in my rental car and making it to my flight back home. Sure I still had about 2 hours before I needed to be at the gate, but I didn’t want to get stuck in any kind of TSA situation, so after paying for my books, I headed off to PHL.
PHL turned out to be an interesting experience for all the wrong reasons. I made it to the rental car place, turning in the car involved just showing up, leaving it in a lot with the keys inside and just walking away with no paperwork or signatures at all, which was super weird and I didn’t like the experience at all. I caught the right bus, made it to the right terminal, got my bag checked, and made it through TSA security, almost. For the first time in my admittedly light flight history, my carry on backpack got flagged and I had to go to a special area to have it searched. It wasn’t anything major, but the solar cells on the phone battery pack caused them some concern, hence needing to let them see the thing to make sure it was what I said it was. After that slight delay I made it to my gate with about an hour and a half to spare, so I walked around the entire terminal to see what I could see, grab a bite to eat, and get my 10k steps in. I did all that, made it back to my gate with about 30 minutes to spare, so found a seat and started the last parts of The Autobiography of Benjamin Sisko. About 2 minutes before we’re supposed to board at 3:45pm, the gate attendant came over the speakers and said:
We were delayed! I think! I conferred with fellow passengers and they agreed that they think the same thing but had no idea what was actually being said due to loud crowd, the restaurant next to our gate, the tvs that didn’t mute when the announcement came over, the accent of the person on the mic, and the fact they were wearing a mask while trying to talk into that same mic. We sat around until about 4:30 when we were finally able to board and the pilot came over the onboard speakers and said that there was some maintenance done to the plane but the maintenance crew didn’t sign the maintenance log, so we’d have to wait for them to come back out to do the paperwork. We didn’t push back from the gate until about 5pm, but then promptly discovered that the maintenance that was performed did not do the needful, and one of our engines just would not start. We spent the next hour and a half just sitting there in the jet listening to that one stubborn engine cycle up and fail to start, then cycle down. Luckily it was all figured out and we were finally in the air at 6:45pm. No problems in the air, and we landed safely in JAX around 9:30, my sister picked me up and I got back to my car around 10pm and I was on the road at 10:05pm because there was a three hour trip across the top of Florida to make it back to my own bed so I could get back to work that very next day.
The only way I made it home.
I did finally make it home around 1:30am, unwound my brain for about 30 minutes and was sleeping by 2am. The entire week after this I was in a fog and trying to catch up on work that I missed, both in my day job, my side job, my other side job, my other OTHER side job, and all the Trek stuff that I need to talk about is still sitting around, waiting to be talked about. I still need to catalog the books I bought, need to see a couple movies to do reviews, and now there’s a hurricane that by the time this post goes up will have already either wiped out my city or fizzled out and gave us a ton of rain.
I’m hoping for the latter.
