Saturday at WorldCon

Four things to carry when running in a strange city:

1. Map
2. Water
3. Camera
4. Taxi Money

Four things Erik didn't take with him while running this morning.

1. Map
2. Water
3. Camera
4. Taxi Money

Got to the promenade at Mt. Royal and saw the 7 a.m. light shining over the city. The river was flowing with white light, and the windows of the cars going over the bridge flashed silver as they headed into the city.

I tried to figure out where I was going from there, but couldn't and headed down the mountain. then I saw an interesting road. So I took it.

Erik's rule of running in a strange city: Never fall for the voice in your head that says "hey, what's over there?"

I fell for it. I ended up going through the McGill campus and then the restaurants of the student quarter. Saw nineteenth century tenements huddled together, their fantastical rooflines -- turrets and crenellations-- facing down the bland squareness of the 1970's high-rise apartments across the road. I saw the beautiful Parc de la Fontaine (if misspelled, I am sorry) and discovered I'd run about 4 km further than I intended and had to backtrack, get back, shave, shower, and rush rush rush to my 9 a.m. panel --- to which no one came.

Obviously I missed blogging on Friday. I was completely exhausted. But during the day I went to interesting panels on the importance of covers and podcasting SF/F, and ate shish tauk for lunch and went to the launch party for Tesseract 13 and heard six of the authors to read their stories. They are all amazing, I bought it, and I am adding it to the "must read" stack.

There were a dozen parties happening Friday night, and a hundred good restaurants near the convention. And I went back to my room, dumped my stuff, got pizza and a salad from the restaurant in the food court near my hotel read most of Sojourn by Jana G. Oliver which I cannot say enough good things about, and went to sleep early.

Yes, I am a wild party.