Day 2

All that was left now between us and Comic-Con was about eight hours of driving through California.  This stretch seemed longer that the whole day as there is really nothing in California.  Sure, there were some cool looking hills to start off...

Cool Looking Hills

But other than that it was just a flat wasteland.  The area is so boring in fact, cops patrol by air instead of driving.  I've yet to figure out how this is even possible, being a non-Californian and all.  We were making good time though, doing about 85 in some areas, but then the hills started up again and it slowed us down quite a bit.  Not as much though as what waited for us on the opposite side of the hills... Los Angeles.  LA alone took us about an hour and a half to get through due to the mass amounts of traffic.  Note to LA: Don't let any more people move to you!

Low and behold, we finally made it to our hotel in San Diego.  After a quick look around the hotel we were off to fill our bellies with some authentic Mexican cuisine.  Instead we had to settle for what appeared to be some sort of franchise Mexican restaurant.  Now I'm not saying the food wasn't good, I just didn't like it.  Anyways, we made our way out the emergency exit (in your face Alarm Will Sound sign!) and off to find the convention center!

Finding The San Diego Convention Center wasn't that bad.  Parking was bad.  Seeing as we had no idea how to get around in the area, we had to settle for a $10 parking garage that was conveniently right next door to the Con.  Surprisingly we got our badges pretty quickly, being it was only preview night.  I'm glad we got them when we did though, because lines were ungodly long in the following days.

Oh yeah, GRAB BAG!

Aww, she puts up with me

So after we picked up our badges we went straight to the freebie line!

With a line this long it has to be good!

I couldn't wait to fill my grab bag full of great freebies!  After a good long wait I was let down to see that most all the freebies were advertisements of some sort, about things I didn't really care about.  Be that as it may and let it be a learning experience.  It was the only let down of the whole Con.  Being it was preview night, only the exhibition hall was open.  So that was where we went.

First person in costume we saw

Being this was our first time at Comic-Con we thought it was pretty cool to see someone dressed up as a Stormtrooper.  Little did we know that this was to be the cop-out costume of the year.  Anyways, we wondered the exhibition hall some more and discovered one of the most fun booths there, Sideshow Collectibles.

I imagine this costs more than my life

Sideshow Collectibles basically had a bunch of amazingly detailed busts and statues on display, all, I'd imagine, out of any normal person's price range.  I mean seriously, look at this stuff.

I almost felt like it was some sort of nerd museum.  They had everything from Alien and Predator to Lord of the Rings and Star Wars.  Plus they were giving away gift cards for free worth $10-$100.  We picked up a couple just for kicks.  One of ours actually ended up being worth $50 but after visiting their website, we realized $50 was still just a drop in the bucket for anything worth getting.  Dang-nabbit!

Lego Batman = Awesome

The Lego booth was quite impressive with the gigantic Lego Batman stealing the show (Take that Bionics!  No one likes you!).  They had some nice displays of some upcoming Batman themed Legos as well.  Oh how I wish I were young enough to play with Legos and not be frowned upon again.

Close by they had a pretty cool Optimus Prime display.  This one is for you Jordan!

Ooo battle damage!

I'm not a huge video gamer, but apparently this guy is from Kingdom Hearts

It was quickly getting late and the exhibition hall was about to close for the night.  We were only there for a few hours but it was fun to walk around before it got insanely crowded.  As we walked back to the parking garage we saw a crowd forming outside.  We wondered was great glorious event could be happening that drew such a crowd!?

Just some nerds wielding lightsabers

Everyone quickly dispersed realizing the crowd was way too big for what was happening.  A quick walk later and we were back to the car.

Aww perdy...

We got out of the convention center to find we were to sit in traffic for way... WAY too long.  I had to make some quick dangerous moves to cut across traffic and whip a U-y, but we finally made it home to the hotel.  We were pretty exhausted after the long day of driving/conventioning and fell right asleep.

Nerd your way to Day 3 >>

Jaybird currently resides in Seattle where he reads comics, works in a library, and writes for this site.  He has also been known to blow your mind, rock your world, and eat pizza.