Because this has been a very tough year for me all around, I fully expected that I would not be attending Mythcon, in spite of the fact that it was relatively near, in Berkeley. I just couldn’t afford it, not when I’ve been barely scraping things together to make the rent. But happily, in a very humbling turn of events, a dear friend offered to cover my registration and room & board. All I had to do was get myself there.
I wasn’t sure how that was going to work out. It turned out that my friends who were going from this area either already had full cars or they were doing before-and-after side trips with or to family. Well, I wasn’t entitled to a ride, so I had to consider other means. And then, blessing of blessings!, a second friend gave me some funds specifically designated for transportation costs to Mythcon.
I was on my way! (figuratively speaking).
The best option looked to be taking the Greyhound bus from Los Angeles to Oakland, and then either public transportation or a taxi from the station to the Clark Kerr Campus. And, I discovered, one could make advance reservations for the bus ticket and pay for them at a local 7-Eleven store! Initially I thought “I can get a ride back to LA,” so I made a one-way ticket reservation going. But the next morning, before I headed out to pay for the ticket, it occured to me that I shouldn’t presume on a ride, so I made the return ticket reservation (which turned out to be even less expensive that the departing one! Ah… advance purchasing!).
I went over to the 7-Eleven with my confirmation printouts. I paid for the departing ticket and all went smoothly. But when he tried to process the second ticket confirmation, the system said the ticket had already been paid and printed! We both knew it had not, so he wouldn’t take my money. I was flummoxed as to what to do. Reading the fine print on the confirmation, it says that if there’s a problem, call the service’s number from the store.
Well, it took a bit of juggling between the service and Greyhound, but eventually we got it worked out, I paid for my ticket, got it, and was ready to go.
I’d chosen to take the very late bus between Los Angeles and Oakland, so that I could (supposedly) sleep on the bus, and arrive in Oakland fairly early on Friday morning. A friend dropped me off at the LA Greyhound station at about 9:30 p.m. My bus wasn’t departing until about 11:30.
I stood in line, to check in my suitcase. Other than one trip to San Francisco not long after I moved out to California, I hadn’t ridden Greyhound since my days of living and working in Austin, Texas. But the throngs of people traveling by bus felt familiar from those days. Eventually I got to the head of the line, checked in, got my suitcase tagged and handed it over to the woman at the counter, so that it could be loaded on the 11:30 bus. That was at 10 p.m.
There’s a side story about the suitcase I was using for this trip. I have three wheeled suitcases, of the carry-on size (though I usually check the one I’m using when traveling). For several years, I’ve used the “fanciest” one of the three exclusively, as it has a number of very cool zippered pockets. But two weeks before (at the Writers Conference, in fact) one of the tires on that case got broken. I’d glued it, but didn’t feel comfortable with the idea of using it. So I’d gone to my storage unit to get one of the other two. One was a plain ordinary black bag, and the other had grey straps and tan handles and a prominent badge on the front that says JEOPARDY! The show staff had been given them as a gift one Christmas after we started doing remote shoots. On a whim, I decided to use the distinctive bag.
So there I sat in the station, watching Olympic events (Women’s Gymnastics and Men’s Swimming – I saw Phelps win one of his medals) waiting for my bus. I discovered that many people choose the over-night bus ride, for the bus was nearly full when we finally pulled out.
Off we went, and I discovered that there is no easy position for sleeping when you share a row on a bus. I did not sleep well or much. Plus, it seemed that for nearly two hours, one guy a few rows ahead of me felt compelled to talk and talk and talk. I don’t know if he was talking at his seat partner, the bus driver, or on the phone. But it was a distracting drone.
Be that as it may, the bus pulled into the Oakland station not long after 7 a.m. Most were going on into San Francisco, but there were a handful of us getting off at Oakland. We stood by the bus, waiting for the baggage guys to do their things. And waited. And waited. Eventually, my cohorts got impatient, opened the compartments and hauled out their bags and disappeared. So I looked for my small bag. Now, mind you, I’m standing there with my computer bag on my shoulder, which in addition to some other stuff contained my five pound laptop. But my bag was nowhere to be seen. The baggage guys came out and they looked and shifted. But it wasn’t there. And the station’s supervisor didn’t get in until 9.
When you’ve been living with existential stresses for months, problems like this rub you raw very fast. So, yes, I freaked out a bit. Because I’d realized a couple of things: although the bag did have a baggage claim tag on it, it did not have an identification one (I’d forgotten about that); and more drastically, the manuscript of my fantasy novel was in that bag. Now, most of the chapters have been typed into the computer, but the current chapter that is being written had not been. I write the first draft long hand. On top of that, with the manuscript was a work notebook that had passages the story hasn’t reached yet, including the ending, and none of that material is copied on a computer at all! It would be awful to loose that! Stress on stress.
The one good thing was that I had plenty of time. Registration for the conference didn’t officially open until noon. So I could wait for the supervisor. And I had some reading material with me, and the laptop. So I whiled away the time.
The supervisor arrived and I spoke with her, explaining that even though I had checked in my bag an hour and a half before departure, it somehow had not gotten onto the bus. She called Los Angeles and spoke with them (outside my hearing range). When she came back to me, she said that they said that everything that had been tagged for Oakland had gone out, it was not at the Los Angeles station.
If I wanted, I could wait for the next bus to come in, at 10:30. The ones after that would be arriving after noon. I waited some more. But no, alas, it was not on the next bus. She and I discussed matters further. I had money to take a taxi to the campus, but not to return to pick up anything. (The campus was about 5 miles away, but the cab ride would cost about $18.) And I couldn’t stay at the station for the afternoon buses, since there was programming in the afternoon at Mythcon. So she agreed to call me when my bag showed up, and she would make arrangements to have it delivered.
Now, my freak-out session had cooled off fairly quickly after I’d started talking with her, and it occured to me that if God had taken the trouble to make it possible for me to attend Mythcon, perhaps I could trust Him to keep track of my rather unique looking bag and get it back to me. So I accepted the supervisor’s proposal, and she called a cab for me. She even waited outside with me, to be sure what turned up was a legitimate cab and also to keep me company in case a local dubious street person might be around. All went well.
I arrived at Mythcon, very happy to see my friends. What a joy it was, after months of survival concerns, to just have a weekend of good companionship and conversation.
At 4 p.m., I got a call from the station supervisior. My bag had finally shown up and she was sending it over to the campus. It’s about a 15 minute drive, so I waited outside. She sent it by taxi – and Greyhound was going to be paying for the delivery! I thanked the driver profusely, I was so happy to see my bag! And I promised myself I would definitely thank the supervisor again when I headed home on Monday.
I’d packed the puppet dragon Yu in the suitcase, as well as the novel. The theme for the conference was the influence of Asian mythologies on fantasy literature, and there were to be plenty of dragon presentations. So he was an eminently suitable traveling companion for this conference.
The dragon puppet Yu traveled to Mythcon
I unpacked him and took him along to dinner. But the rest of my adventures at Mythcon will go into a full-on PDF report that I’ll post on the website in the near future (with pictures).
But… I had gotten to Mythcon
This has always been a work of scholarship that I have regarded with satisfaction, both because of the source material (Garner’s small novel) and the analysis itself. I felt as if the whole analysis unfolded itself like a blooming flower. Very little wrestling with the material was required.
I won’t go on a length about the myths in the story, for those elements are covered in the paper itself. But I do want to observe that I was fascinated by the myth of Blodeuedd, the girl created of flowers to “serve a purpose,” but who turned out to be all too willful and human.
Garner’s story raises the question as to whether or not the youngsters (who hover in the edge of adulthood) will resolve the issues at hand, or whether they too will become trapped by the power of the valley.
Photo credits:
The kids are very eager, and the MacQuarries give them full attention, even in such large groups. They do a good job keeping everyone in order on the line.
All in all, I had a great morning at the range. It was delightful seeing so many kids seriously paying attention to the instruction and enjoying their achievements. And I got in some shooting myself, as well as some much-needed exercise.
