Comic-Con 2008 started off with an early morning, supposedly easy two-hour drive to San Diego from my nephew’s home in Fullerton. We departed at 6:30 a.m., took two cars, and quickly got to San Honofre with clear, easy driving all the way there. At San Honofre, we came to a full stop. At first we thought it was just traffic, but then saw the signs reading major accident at Las Pulgas. Still, we figured we'd be fine and get there in plenty time for the opening of the doors of the Convention Center to the eagerly awaiting throng of over 125,000 expected attendees. Two hours later, we were still sitting in the parking lot that was the 5 freeway. The worst part of the traffic was that we were stuck in between a nuclear power plant and a military base. No place to turn off, no exits, no way to pull over and walk around. We were trapped, plain and simple. I spent a lot of time Twittering my frustration and giving updates on the weird things I saw people doing to pass the time. We saw a woman reading a book while driving, balancing the book on her steering wheel; a woman on the other side of the freeway was running down the shoulder holding up a sign; a guy was beating drumsticks on his steering wheel and another was driving with his feet. From somewhere behind me, Felicia Day was Twittering as well. Wil Wheaton was Twittering away, sending out warnings to other Twitterers to stay off the 5. Twitter kept me sane, although at one point I pretended to hang myself with my seatbelt. My niece Krista kept changing the CD player, trying to find something to keep our spirits up. By now, three hours had passed, and we had moved two miles. The clock on the dashboard was eating up time, and we started to despair as I read Tweet after Tweet from the now open convention. We missed Stan Lee, and we missed Keanu Reeves. Frustration mounted. Finally, we started to move, and I thought we’d still get to Comic-Con in time to get to some of the panels I was slated to cover. It was not to be.We were moving, but excruciatingly slowly. Inch by inch, we moved forward and could see the clogged vista ahead. It was disheartening. At exactly five hours from the time we came to our stop at San Honofre, we finally broke free and saw the horrible wreck that had caused our hours of discomfort. A semi-truck, one of Von’s, was completely burnt and broken and beyond that, the charred skeleton of what appeared to be a car sat on a tow truck. The road surrounding the truck was charred black, and firemen and highway patrol men surrounded the wreck. I was able to snap a few photos of the truck, but missed the charred car. Felicia Day took video, which, she Tweeted, she would post later. We got to San Diego at 2:00 p.m., stiff, sore, starving, and grumpy, only to find another challenge awaited us, that of finding parking. It took us another 45 minutes to find parking a mile away from the convention center. We stopped to eat at Subway where we met a woman who said she was a model and then hiked to the con. Wow.I’ve been coming to San Diego for Comic-Con for years, and I have never seen an opening day like this one. It felt like Saturday Comic-Con, not Thursday. The halls were so packed it was hard to walk. We managed to maneuver our way over to Dark Horse Comics to have a quick meeting with Jeremy Atkins to figure out my interview schedule. We agreed to meet after the panels I was running late for, and I set off to the meeting rooms where I found everything running a little behind. Lucky me. I hadn’t missed anything.
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