Road Trip Origins, Part 2 of 2: Our First Wizard World Chicago

Wizard World Chicago 1999!

July 17, 1999, a day that shall live on in the hearts and minds of at least two geeks.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Every year since 1999 Anne and I have taken a road trip to a different part of the United States and seen attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home in Indianapolis. Every tradition begins somewhere. As longtime friends and readers might expect, ours began with a convention.

Enter Wizard World Chicago 1999. It was probably the largest comic con within 500 miles of home. We figured if we could handle a 2½-hour excursion southeast to Kings Island, then we could handle driving three or four hours northwest to Chicago.

Thus did two twentysomething best friends embark on their first real road trip, arrive at their destination in the Chicagoland town of Rosemont, and walk into the largest geek convention they’d ever seen in their lives.

Right this way for our grainy 35mm photo gallery and a big batch of exhumed memories!

Road Trip Origins, Part 1 of 2: From Wallflowers to Wanderers

Anne + Randy 1999!

Flashback to 1999: two twentysomething youngsters enjoy a church fish-fry with no clue what their future held in store.

Every year since 1999 Anne and I have taken a road trip to a different part of the United States and seen attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home in Indianapolis. From 1999 to 2003 we did so as best friends; from 2004 to the present, as husband and wife. My son tagged along from 2003 until 2013 when he ventured off to college. From 2004 to 2011 we recounted our experiences online at length for a close circle of friends. From 2012 to the present we’ve presented our annual travelogues here on Midlife Crisis Crossover for You, the Viewers at Home, which I’m grateful includes some of those same friends. (For newcomers to the site, our complete road trip checklist will direct you to hundreds of previous entries covering our explorations, including remastered retellings of our pre-MCC outings in 2001, 2006, and 2011.

Every tradition begins somewhere. As longtime friends and readers might expect, ours began with a convention.

Right this way for a very special presentation starring our 1999 counterparts!

Cincinnati 2016 Overnighter Photos, Part 6 of 6

Cincinnati!

Our hotel room’s view of downtown Cincinnati high above the nightlife.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s convention time yet again! This weekend my wife Anne and I have driven two hours southeast of Indianapolis to attend a show we’ve never done before, the seventh annual Cincinnati Comic Expo. With her birthday coming up in a few weeks, which usually means a one-day road trip somewhere, we agreed this would count as her early celebration.

Growing up in Indiana, we Hoosiers rarely had reasons to visit next-door Ohio until and unless it was time for another one-day family road trip to Kings Island Amusement Park, a few miles north of Cincinnati. If you believe the movie Anomalisa, the only two reasons to visit Cincinnati itself are the Cincinnati Zoo and Skyline Chili. After we wrapped up our Cincinnati Comic Expo experience, we did none of those things and found a few reasons not to be bored anyway.

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Shortest Presidency, Tall Memorial

Harrison's Tomb!

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Bow Down Before “The Genius of Water”

Genius of Water!

Honesty up front: “The Genius of Water” is the name of a fancy fountain, not a movie or a pet name for whoever invented Evian.

Sometimes when it’s freezing outside and newly dangerous open air stings at every uncovered part of you, it’s therapeutic to look back on warmer, prettier times and remember what sunshine and comfortable temperatures felt like. The past few days’ weather advisories had me yearning for flashbacks to our September visit to downtown Cincinnati, where, among other points of interest, my wife and I dawdling in scenic Fountain Square, one of the prettiest city blocks the Queen City had to offer.

Also, sometimes it’s good to finish a project you started two months ago and then suspended halfway through for no quantifiable reason. Triple bonus points to any readers out there who noticed and were kinda wondering. Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s convention time yet again! This weekend my wife Anne and I have driven two hours southeast of Indianapolis to attend a show we’ve never done before, the seventh annual Cincinnati Comic Expo. With her birthday coming up in a few weeks, which usually means a one-day road trip somewhere, we agreed this would count as her early celebration.

(Anne subsequently spent the birthday itself hanging out at home. It was a bit anticlimactic, but on the upside she still looks half her age.)

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Our 2011 Road Trip #29: The Season Finale — NYC Outtakes

Empire State Building!

One of several Empire State Building shots taken from the Top of the Rock. Collect ’em all!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: we guided you through our first trip to New York in twenty-eight episodes — July 9-17, 2011. The original version of this travelogue was posted for friends on another website but was remastered for archival posterity here at my permanent internet hideaway on MCC. Dozens of never-before-seen photos were added. Several chapters were expanded, rewritten, or torn apart and glued back together in different order. And I fixed a sad number of typos I never caught the first time around.

Here, in our grand finale: a selection of outtakes from various chapters, most of these also new to readers far and wide. A few were technically deficient but held just enough quirk not to be junked. A few were redundant. A few that captured isolated moments were disconnected from the rest of the narrative. A few came out as pure settings in need of a foreground subject. One memento required me to scan a page from my wife’s NYC 2011 scrapbook with her gracious permission and the promise that I wouldn’t damage her own diligent handicraft. Enjoy!

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Our 2011 Road Trip #28: Last Call for Roadside Attractions

Flight 93 Born Hero's!

They did it! Congratulations! World’s greatest 9/11 marker! Great job, everybody!

The highway and back roads leading to and from the Flight 93 National Memorial included a few token expressions of belief. This was the most eye-catching. As a Christian, I wanted to cry. And to drive over it. Several times.

Setting aside questions of topical relevance and basic composition (is Jesus trying to catch the plane? or is the plane buzzing disrespectfully by his scalp like Maverick in Top Gun?)…out of all the townspeople it took to assemble and erect this heartfelt expression of free speech, not one of them volunteered to proofread. Or do focus-group duty.

I just…no. No.

Right this way for the penultimate chapter in this special MCC maxiseries!

Our 2011 Road Trip #27: Sacrifice-That-Was and Salute-That-Would-Be

Flight 93 Flags.

Once it was an unassuming plain owned by a local coal company. Fate would turn it into something else entirely.

[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]

Our next hotel was only a few hours from Weehawken in the town of Somerset, PA, but offered us grand luxuries that our previous hotel had denied us — free cookies, free coffee in the lobby, free stale popcorn, and (in a hotel first for us) an extravagant lap desk to use with our laptop. We settled in by the end of the afternoon, then walked away from all the amenities for something more important. We got right back in the car, headed north of the town of Shanksville, and paid a visit to the local must-see: the crash site of United 93.

By this time we were far from New York City, but no less connected to it by heart-rending 21st-century history.

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Wizard World Chicago 2016 Photos, Part 8 of 7: On the Occasion of Rosemont’s 60th

Rosemont 60th!

If you attended Wizard World Chicago 2016 and stayed at the Hyatt across the street, or at another nearby hotel linked through the same skybridge network, you missed this mural.

(Consider this entry the scene after the “Wizard World Chicago 2016 Photos” end credits.)

Though it’s named for the Windy City, Wizard World Chicago is held each year at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in the suburb of Rosemont, which was incorporated January 20, 1956. We’ve done WWC eight times and still find something new in Rosemont every time we visit. That three-story mural in the lead photo adorned the free parking garage attached to our hotel for the weekend, known to WWC fans as “The Other Hyatt” — i.e., the one a mile north of the con and far away from all the good parties. It’s cheaper, quieter, and easy to make reservations there by accident if you don’t pay attention to the differing street addresses on Rosemont’s two Hyatts.

The Other Hyatt’s mural was our first notice about Rosemont’s 60th anniversary. On Saturday as we walked through the center corridor of the convention center parking garage, from the con over to MB Financial Park for dinner, we discovered another tribute to Rosemont’s 60th in the form of famous paintings brushed large but altered with homages to various Rosemont points of interest (some more interesting to the locals than to us out-of-towners). Anyone who didn’t walk the same walk, or who didn’t look closely while driving in our out, would’ve missed them easily. We caught a few of our favorites to share here for posterity as a sort of post-con epilogue. Enjoy!

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Our 2011 Road Trip #26: Hamilton’s Final Show

Hamilton Death Rock!

I haven’t seen a rock with this many compliments engraved in it since that time the Bedrock Bugle gave five stars to a new bronto-rib joint.

[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]

We were finished with New York City for the year, but our road trip wasn’t over yet. Our Indiana home was a few states away, and nicer parts of New Jersey had highlights to share with us before we left.

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Our 2011 Road Trip #25: Our Last Times Square Parade

New Year's Eve ball!

This New Year’s Eve ball may be retired, but it’s still got enough magic in it to perform random countdowns to nothing in particular. Kids love countdowns.

[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]

Sooner or later, everyone who can’t afford to live in New York has to leave New York. With a handful of hours left on Day Six, it was our turn to start spreading the news and leave here today. We voted unanimously for one last walk through Times Square — one last chance to immerse ourselves in that vibrant hodgepodge teeming with life and lights and wonder and costumes and tourists needing directions and open-air claustrophobia, often not in that order.

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Our 2011 Road Trip #24: Washington vs. Columbus

Washington Square Arch!

[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]

After lunch at Peanut Butter & Co., we walked another block-‘n’-a-half northeast through Greenwich Village to Washington Square Park, one of those diverse, bustling, happy public places that all the best city parks aspire to be so they can attract the attention of Hollywood location scouts.

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Our 2011 Road Trip #23: Peanut Butter and Dragon Fruit

Dragon fruit lady!

This outgoing saleslady spoke just enough English to SELL! SELL! SELL!

[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]

When we had been brainstorming alternatives and last-minute requests the night before, a return to Chinatown was at the top of my son’s list. Those four hours of walking ourselves to death on Tuesday had yielded very little in the way of strange new foods for him to try. We can’t get him to touch pasta at home unless he can make eye contact with a Chef Boy-Ar-Dee logo, but he bore no such prejudice against the untested grounds of Chinatown merchants.

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Our 2011 Road Trip #22: Winnie the Pooh and Ghostbusters Too

New York Public Library!

Hi, we’re the lions at the New York Public Library! You might remember us from such films as The Wiz and Roland Emmerich’s The Day After Tomorrow! We have a terrible agent.

Considering how many films have been made in New York, it wouldn’t be hard to create a vacation itinerary made entirely of sights Hollywood has already shown us. Retracing the steps of those filmmakers can be fun, but it’s especially rewarding when they lead you to unexpected treasure.

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Our 2011 Road Trip #21: Grand Central to Fifth Avenue and Back Again

Trump Clock!

It’s 7 p.m. Do you know where your billionaires are?

[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]

The back half of our Day Six was like a Family Circus cartoon where a dotted line struggles to keep up with li’l Jeffy while he cavorts and frolics and gambols and flits about from one distraction to the next until he ends his five-mile run roughly three feet from where he started. From Midtown to the East River to Fifth Avenue and back to Weehawken — we were all over the Manhattan map, alternating between those blessedly convenient subways and some overenthusiastic walking whenever the railways fell short of our goals.

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Our 2011 Road Trip #20: Welcome to Our World of Toys

Anne + Lego Harrison Ford!

As a lifelong fan of Harrison Ford, Anne accepts that Lego Indiana Jones is the closest she’ll ever come to meeting the real deal. But she can dream.

[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]

When you bring a kid or two with you on vacation, assuming you don’t secretly hate them, and assuming you’re not one of those negligent parents who needs to learn a special life lesson about how not to be a selfish jerk, then it follows that your itinerary should have some stops that the kid will enjoy more than you do. And if you should happen to find something interesting about those stops for yourself, then hey, everyone wins.

Thus our family set forth on the trail of the last remaining FAO Schwarz in America. If nothing else, it would make a nice bookend with our visit to the Times Square Toys R Us.

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Our 2011 Road Trip #19: The Long Road to the United Nations

Chrysler Building!

Hi, I’m the Chrysler Building! You might remember me from such films as Armageddon and Roland Emmerich’s Godzilla! I have a terrible agent.

[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]

On this trip we limited ourselves to two modes of transportation: walking and subway. Cabs and buses are popular options with some folks, but cabs are expensive and buses…frankly, I have no idea why we avoided buses. Soon we would learn that New York City’s subway system is extensive, but it doesn’t make every attraction an easy convenience, especially not in 90-degree temperatures.

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Our 2011 Road Trip #18: A Day at the Met

Chinese Tapestry!

After spending some time resting and admiring this Chinese mural, a trio of young European girls asked me to take their photo for them. One tourist to another, it was the least I could do.

[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]

After the Sony Wonder Tech Lab, we returned to the subway, rode to 86th Street, and walked due west to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Seeing this entire ZIP-code-sized labyrinth of a museum would take months and require camping gear. In gracious deference to the member of our party with the shortest attention span, we kept a narrow focus on the Asian sections. On our next NYC trip someday before I die, it’ll be my turn to see what I want.

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Our 2011 Road Trip #17: The Empire State Building on $0.00 a Day

Empire State Building!

That precious sight everyone treasures whenever they find it in Manhattan: a real live tree.

Because every tourist is required to check in at King Kong’s favorite scratching post, pretend old-fashioned romance awaits us on the observation deck, and then run like crazy before Roland Emmerich finds six more ways to destroy it while we’re in striking distance.

[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]

Right this way for mandatory Empire State Building pics!

Our 2011 Road Trip #16: Bright On Broadway

Lion King Mask!

“MUFASA WELCOMES YOU AND REMINDS YOU TO TURN OFF YOUR CELL PHONES.”

[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]

After plumbing the depths of Grant’s Tomb we had an afternoon appointment for our very first Broadway show: The Lion King. But first we had to get there. The trip down from 122nd Street to 45th Street wasn’t a short one.

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