Musings on BaltiCon 60, Part One…

I’m here! I’ve attended a few panels, passed out some Ectoverse, LLC business cards, had lunch with a college chum who lives in the area, and experienced a marijuana flashback, thanks to the pictured hallway.

Yes, I said “marijuana flashback.” It’s a thing. Because I said it is.

So there.

First things first, the flashback. I was on a band trip to Los Angeles during my senior year. It was the day before we’d all depart, it was fifteen minutes before our (soft) curfew, and my drummer friend and hotel roommate was upset because we didn’t get the chance to smoke the monster joint he’d had since the beginning of the trip. You see, our band teacher at the time believed in packing our agenda with so many activities that the students wouldn’t even have the time to think about getting into trouble. We’d be too pooped. He was right. Mostly.

But my friend and I still had a monster joint to smoke.

So we did. In an outside stairwell. In less than fifteen minutes.

On our way back to our room, on our floor, in a hallway that seemed far more daunting than the one pictured, we traversed. Not unlike a whirlpool dwindling to a point, the hallway started to swivel. The length never ended, despite our steps onward, to our room, which just happened to be at the other end of this psychedelic corridor. I might have even asked my friend, “Are we there yet?”

It was that kind of high.

On our way, we noticed an open door, filled with underclassmen boys. We stopped and looked in.

“Look,” said my high-as-a-kite friend. “ A party.”

We stepped into the room.

“Oh no,” he continued. “It’s a nerd party.”

And with that, he left.

I stayed, and, since I was wobbling so, found my way to the bed and crashed onto it. The two underclassmen I squeezed between looked at me aghast, inching away after I landed. I then heard conversations, but could not make any of them out. Perhaps they were having fun at my expense. A bit later, I heard them talk about magic. Not the card trick, saw your assistant in half, pull the sylvialgus leporidae from the top hat, kind of magic. The real kind. Like with wizards and stuff.

At one point, I interrupted their conversation with an “Oh yeah?” and then floated my hand above the phone.

It then rang.

I kid you not. I put my hand above the receiver, and it rang.

So I answered it, and found a prom date and a girlfriend. She was the one who was calling, from the hotel room below us, complaining about the stomping around that the underclassmen boys were doing before I arrived.

As it turned out, my soon-to-be girlfriend and I found a spot on the outside stairwell and got to know each other. So much for the soft curfew.

Now I chuckle to myself every time I turn the corner and take that long hallway to my hotel room. And I’ve done it often, easily hitting my step goal both days so far.

That’s my Balticon 60 Musing, for now.