Well, folks, we made it to Baltimore, on a red-eye flight that had us arriving at 4 a.m. our time. After a shower, breakfast, and a loooooong nap, we’re ready to … wait for the North American Discworld Convention to really swing into being tomorrow morning. T’s panel is Sunday, so until then we’ll have just a few things which we must attend, but not many.
“Bawlmore” so far is diverse and colorful, and filled with that East Coast dazzle makes you wonder how they do it. It is BEYOND warm, and wiiiiindy, yet we’ve seen gentlemen in three-piece suits, ladies in heels, jackets, and in a couple of instances, hats (and a feathered headband…thingy.). We’ve seen well-coiffed ladies, and the bewigged. They’re making we rumpled-cotton/linen Californians look bad.
Some things remain the same, however. We found the local Whole Foods Paycheck and stocked up on healthier fare than can be found at the hotel – same spendy stuff as Cali. In the course of the walk we determined again that it’s not the heat that’ll get to you, here, but the horrible humidity. It’s only about 90°F / 32°C outside, but muggy enough that we were ready to bathe after having walked only about 4 blocks to the store and back. People here must have fabulously moisturized hair and skin.
This breathable mist is quite a shift from yesterday, when we were down to see D’s family and visited the San Bernardino County Museum (D. worked there, years ago). Temperatures there were approaching 100°F / 17°C but it was dry (being the desert, really). The museum was a bit of a disappointment, all in all – lots of dead things, cataloged, hung up on the walls behind glass. It’s a natural history museum, so this was to be expected, but many of the specimens just looked … well, dead. The photos turned out better than the experience itself, because the photos could be white-balanced after the fact, to remove some of the odd lighting colors used in the exhibits. (A side note to museums: charging your guests one admission price for locals and one price for out-of-area visitors really doesn’t encourage people to want to return – and not putting this pricing plan on your website really makes people angry.)
We did get to visit D’s family, though, and enjoyed the cool breezes in the evening (their house is way up on a hillside), and the sunset.
We’re settled in for the evening, wondering lazily whether we want to go photograph fireworks over the Baltimore Harbor, and have decided that we really cannot stand television (this happens every time we visit a hotel).
We hope you the weather is reasonable, if your part of the world. If not, well, viva the cool shower and fans.
-D & T