Journals Russ Reads

In talking about the Renaissance Center in the past bunnyhugger warned it was really easy to accidentally drive into Canada. My scouting the route we were to take indicated it was really easy to get there --- I-96 to I-696 to M-10 and that drops us off downtown where we can follow the signs, with an icon of the Renaissance Center that does not at all make it look like it's giving you the middle finger. And it was really easy and sure enough, it drops you off in the lanes to turn off into Canada. We avoided this fate --- we had friends who did not --- and got to the parking garage where I had, through the courtesy of a link on the Motor City Furry Con chat, reserved three days of parking with in-and-out privileges. We never once took the car out of the garage until it was time to go home, although I did move it from the third floor to the second, right by the pedestrian bridge to an entrance of the Renaissance Center that was now permanently closed. We'd add a bunch of outdoor walking time hiking over to the bridge from the next parking garage over, so, we could have had a more convenient time of it but the parking charges would have been higher. Something to consider for next year, though.

I had never been to the Renaissance Center before, nor had reason to, so I didn't know what to expect, but ``gloriously 70s architecture'' was what I received and what I would most hope to receive. There were so many oddly placed walls of that staggered-vertical-brick styling, and weird curves, and levels that slowly rose or fell, and it was beautiful. The main tower is a circle, of course, and what we came to realize was that between the elevators at the center, and the conference hall space around the rim, and a ring partway in between, was that the conference spaces had the pattern of a wheel with spokes. And the spokes were not the same on all floors, nor all one over the over. There's hope of telling where you are just looking around, although it could be better. Maybe the renovation will add carpet coloring or something.

We got there with something like an hour before we could check into the hotel, so got our badges and pocket guides and bunnyhugger got the last full program book they had in the room. We figured they'd restock and we could grab another one, and they did restock, and we never got back there. So bunnyhugger has our only tangible evidence of whatever the full conbook looks like.

Checking in led to our discovery of just how aggravating the elevators could be. There's a central bank of a dozen, with half of them going only up to the 40th floor (the fitness center). The other half go through the convention space floors (one through five), and then 40 and up. We were on floor 53, for the record, which meant we got very familiar with that sense of relief that we had passed floor five, or floor 40, and were in the express section, which the elevator labelled 'EZ' for some reason, to the other half of the hotel tower world. Also we got very familiar with the elevator's voice recording about how to access the guest levels, by tapping your key card to this sensor while pressing your floor button.

Or maybe pressing it and then pressing your floor button. Nobody seemed to agree what to do, but some of the time it didn't work whatever you did, and maybe someone would give you helpful advice to do it the other way. Also sometimes it wouldn't let you enter a higher floor if the elevator was going down, or vice-versa, except sometimes it did. It will stun you to know the elevators spent a lot of the convention going slowly, or down entirely. The one happy thing about spending Friday night going out to the car in the vain search for bunnyhugger's hat is I got to experience the thrill of going all the way from 53 down to 1, and vice-versa, without an interruption.

Our room turned out to be on the side with a view of the Detroit River, and the ice flowing past it, all the way into Canada. At night, the farther lights of houses would twinkle, just like stars would. Also we could look down into towers that I suppose were former GM Headquarters places; one was clearly an abandoned office, with torn-up carpeting and construction stuff littering the floors. I loved the view; bunnyhugger, more worried about heights than me, did not, but she got a little more accustomed to it over time. Still, being this high up meant we had an elevator wait and a good-sized ride whenever we wanted to go back to the hotel for anything. This was more convenient than MCFC's where we were at the hotel across the street, but was still a price in time if we wanted to get to the room.

Unpacked and, we figured, prepared, we got

Now let's spend some time with Six Flags America again, back on the 1st of July.

Oh yeah, I realized I should take a picture of the carousel's ride sign. I don't know how far back the sign goes but it seems plausible it's something like a pre-Six-Flags design.

Then to the more clearly Six Flags stuff; here's a water fountain with a heap of Looney Tunes characters.

And the inevitable statue of Pepe Le Pew and Whatsername in the romantic setting of ... outside a Johnny Rockets.

Camp Groove seems like a name that might predate the Six Flags takeover of the park. There weren't any shows scheduled, of course, as it was the 4th of July week and who goes to amusement parks for shows for that?

I believe the Prop Warehouse was a funhouse and that we were too tall for it, or maybe too tall unaccompanied by kids.

Ah yeah, see, that part of the side is why I thought it was a funhouse and also that I don't have the knees to go on such.

Trivia: The United States sent two hockey tems to the 1948 St Mortiz Winter Olympics, one selected by the Amateur Athletic Union with the support of the United States Olympic Committee, and the other selected by the Amateur Hockey Association with the support of the Ligue International de Hockey sur Glace (the body responsible for endorsing the participation of national hockey teams for the Olympics). The AAU claimed complete amateur status, while the AHA accepted professional players. The controversy over which to accept and which was in line with the Olympics spirit led, briefly, to the elimination of hockey from the schedule and then a compromise where hockey was kept in the program, but the AHA team's games were not counted in the final standings. Source: Encyclopedia of the Modern Olympic Movement, Editors John E Findling, Kimberly D Pelle.

Currently Reading: The Red Planet: A Natural History of Mars, Simon Morden.