On The Ready Line # 2

Revielle.
*Grin*

"Christ, you guys better hope there are no shipping lanes nearby!"
Must have been the chinese food the night before.

Up, showered, and down to the restaurant for breakfast.
Scrambled eggs alá tabasco sauce, bacon, sausage, mushrooms.
That'll do me!

Then off to the Space Centre for Day One of the actual event.

We arrived pretty early - We weren't going to be part of the actual Encounter on Saturday anyway, but still wanted to make a good impression.
Got in, and the greenroom was already quite busy.




It's something of a bizarre sight to see a room full of half-dressed predators, marines trying to find a way to shuck into their armour and get that pesky strap to hang where it should and still keep some dignity. ( Bloody motion tracker sling! :( ).

We found Terry English moving his stuff inside, so helped him fetch and carry, before Fraz and I went off to get into our gear.

Sandy hung out and helped Terry set up his stall - Ended up getting some free prints as a thank you, and I think we all made a friend of Mr English that day.


Appropriately suited and booted ( Note : When you're gonna be standing around for ~10 hours, with the odd bout of running, canon be damned, Magnums are COMFY! I'll be keeping my cheapo replica jungle boots for the mannequin, I think. Just gotta find me a mannequin is all. ) Fraz and I headed in to get our weapons checked.

"Yeah, I'm checking weapons" says Kev... "It's not just an excuse to play with everyone's toys at all!" :)

Our duties for the day were pretty much "Wander around, stay in character as much as possible, and pose for photos".
Easy :)

I was somewhat nervous at first - For a start, the only folk who I knew there were Fraz and Sandy.
But the other marines seemed very cool - Approachable and friendly to a man, and many feeling the same way as I was, it later transpired.

One person I'd been looking forward to meeting was Harry Harris, of the Harry Harris Aliens Archive.
This man has a quite frankly stunning collection of original props, and is one of the nicest and friendliest folk I've had the pleasure to meet.
Here's his "modest collection":


I apologise in advance if I get any events mixed up - The whole weekend kinda ran into one, as we stayed up so late on Saturday night and were up again so early on Sunday.
Don't bother correcting me if any of you read this and something at the Space Centre happened on the other day to when I say :p

Publishing now, so this is less of a gargantuan post...