After waking up at 7am and having showers, we set about packing everything up. By the time Nathan and Michelle arrived to take us and Jen to breakfast and the airport, there were just a couple things left to be put away – and a couple of additions thanks to Nathan and Michelle! Thanks so much for the pucks and game programs!!

Zipped up and ready to go we carried out stuff down to Nathan’s truck – well, Nathan carried a lot on his own. He’s a strong boy!! Anyway we were away! We went to Dennys for breakfast where we were served by this really nice albino guy. The food was good! Pancakes, scrambled eggs, sausage, bacon and toast. So yum!

By the time we finished eating though it was time to head to the airport. We said goobye to Michelle in the parking lot while Jen and Nathan came inside with us, Nathan carrying both our hikers backpacks because of our tattoos, and because he’s that strong!! Though he really did love our backpacks, thought they were brilliant, which they are!

Anyway we got checked in and then it was time to go through security, where Nathan and Jen can’t go with us. Trying hard not to cry, we hug them both goosbye really hard and thank them for everything, especially Jen for without her we couldn’t have gone to Texas! And as they walk away we go through customs.

There was no issue going through Dallas other than we had late numbers for boarding the plane. It meant that by the time we got onto the plane, we couldn’t sit together. I was lucky and two guys who knew each other moved over so I could have the isle seat, while Sam sat in the row ahead on the other side. Sam doesn’t like to fly so flying apart wasn’t a great thing at all.

I spent the 40 minute flight talking to the guys next to me. We talked sports and about our trip. They had been in LA and were flying home to Austin after seeing the TU Longhorns play in the semi finals for the Rosebowl which they won. The Longhorns now face Alabama in the Rosebowl final on January 7 2010! GO LONGHORNS! Anyway they were really nice. I explained to them the rules of cricket after one of them asked how it worked because it had always intrigued him.

When we got to Austin, we had 30 minutes to get off the plane, buy a shot glass, go to the toilet and board our plane to LA! We managed it and this time, the guy Sam had been sitting next to on the flight to Austin had saved us a seat so we could sit together because he doesn’t like to fly either so he knows what its like! Wasn’t that lovely of him?

We talked to him about our trip and how much we love Dallas and he told us how he was going to LA from Dallas on business but he lived in the Frisco area. We love Frisco, its so beautiful there.

Anyway we got to LA on dusk, and we had to find our way to the correct terminal, go upstairs, check in and then go through security all over again! While we were waiting to check in to V Australia we got to chatting with this lovely young lady from the south island of NZ who was going to Bible College in Virginia and very excited about going home to see her family for Christmas. She was on the flight to Australia ahead of ours, destination: Sydney.

We checked in and headed to security. This time, customs didn’t like the look of my carryon duffle – the pucks came up as unusual on the x-ray! I was amused. I was pulled aside and “asked” if they could search the bag. Of couse I giggled and said sure. He riffled through the bag and pulled out the pucks, frowning. I told him they were hockey pucks. He said that some of them had monoliths on them. I replied that they were autographs, actually! Anyway satisfied that I wsnt carrying dangerous goods he zipped up my bag and sent me on my way!

We went looking for dinner then. Our choices were Starbucks, Burger King or some cafe bar place that was expensive. Since we were down to our last $20 we chose BK. The line was long and the place packed so when I saw a spare table for 2, I took the bags and sat down with them while Sam stayed in line and ordered. Food tasted goooooood. Actually cardboard would have tasted good at that point!

We had about a two and a half hour wait for our flight to Australia. Sam read, and I reorganised my duffle that Mr Customs ruffled. Sam went and got us coffee with the last of our change and when he came back, he told me that a cop had staryed talking to him at Starbucks and she looked remarkably like Kate Beckinsale! Its only fair since I got to talk to Jensen Ackles I guess!

We were tired by the time we boarded the plane and we actually had the last row in the plane. Turns out they are GREAT seats! No one behind you! But down side: last pick of the food unless you request a special dish.

The flight was pretty smooth I think. I don’t really know I was passed out for 10 of the 12 and a half hour flight thanks to some Tylenol night sinus because I was still sniffling from the previous 3 weeks. Sam slept for about 5 hours which is awesome for him. He watched “District 9″ and was disappointed. I didn’t get to see the end of “Public Enemies” but I really want to!

Anyway we landed in Brisbane at 6.05am and we were at home by 7am.

We have had the best 6+ weeks ever on this trip, and have met amazing people (Paola, Sue, Emma, Cynthia, Julie, you all kick ass), seem some amazing sights and had a load of laughs, tears and a rollercoaster of emotions. And of course special thanks and love to Bel, Terry & the kids – we miss you guys so much!! Thanks for everything!!

These last couple of weeks however has been better than ever.  It was beyond fantastic to see our friends again.  No, not friends… family.  Rhonda, Jen, Jesse, Kelly, Val & Nathan, Julie, Mickie & Frederick, Clay & Harry, Leni, Amber & Grady and the Short family… all of y’all are more than just friends, you go beyond that.  We are blessed to have you as friends.  While we may be miles away in Australia, our hearts will be in Dallas.

We will be back.  Our plans to return will begin as soon as we land in Australia!

For those back home, our flight lands at 6:30am Friday morning local time.  Thursday will not exist for us at all, as we take off Wednesday evening and land 13hrs later on friday morning.  Wiggy eh?

To the cities we visited and our friends… we love you all.

This isn’t goodbye.  It’s Seeya later

We were up packing until 1:30am this morning before we fell into bed. This time we made sure we had everything. We were up at 7am, departed the hotel by 7:45am and were at O’Hare International Airport by 8am. We caught the Omega Shuttle from O’Hare to Midway – much cheaper than a cab at $17pp. We had a lovely chat to this lady from Chicago who was going from O’Hare to Midway to pick up her car upon her return from Florida.

We booked into our flight, went through security and then went in search of breakfast. It wasn’t the healthiest, but it was certainly delicious. It was this puff pastry scroll that was filled with mushrooms and cheese. After that, we headed towards our gate. Sam had to make do with McDonalds’ coffee. Poor baby.

The flight to Buffalo was relatively uneventful. It was half a planeful of people, and there was nothing to see thanks to the clouds. And we were sitting right on the wing – not such a great job in picking the seats on my behalf. My bad.

When we got to Buffalo, we made our way down to baggage claim and got our bags, and then tried to figure out how we were getting from Buffalo Niagra International Airport to the Greyhound Bus Station in downtown Buffalo. For $18 pp we could have taken another shuttle, but we talked to this lovely lady at the information counter who said for just $2.05 we could catch the 24 NFTA-Metra bus to downtown which would get us maybe a block or two away from the Bus Station – just to tell the driver that’s where we were going. $4.10 total is much better than $36, so that’s what we decided to do.

We didn’t realise that in order to get from the Airport to downtown, we had to go through Cheektowaga, which is basically the low-socioeconomic area of Buffalo. We went on a public bus through the ghetto, people! With our backpacks and everything. It was the scariest bus ride of our lives. We didn’t talk because we didn’t want to give away our accents. We just looked out the window at the houses. Sam saw a prostitute on the street corner, and a drug deal going down outside a drug house. Yup, really living in the fast lane now!

We did survive the bus ride though, and the bus driver did manage to get us a block away from the Greyhound Bus Station. Once again there were revolving doors, but Sam found a normal door that he could open to get inside so we used that instead. We checked with the ticket counter if we had to do anything but she said no, since we already had our tickets. Our bus wasn’t until 6:30pm, but the lady behind the counter said the next bus was at 4:50pm and we could see the driver about catching that one if they have room. Since it was just before 3pm, we eagerly jumped at this opportunity. Sam went in search of sustenance while I watched the bags, and he came back with a croissant and a danish each, along with a cappuccino made from some powered concoction. There’s not much to choose from at a Greyhound Bus Station in Buffalo. And we were thankful that they had anything at all since we hadn’t eaten since 9:30am.

We ended up chatting to this nice old lady who was going from Buffalo to Niagra Falls on the bus to leave her husband for 2 months, why I don’t know. I didn’t ask. Thought it might be better that way. The 4:50pm bus arrived around 4:30pm, and the driver told us that we could by all means jump on his bus rather than waiting. Unfortunately for the old lady who was sitting beside us, this bus wasn’t going through Niagra, so she had to wait for the 6:30pm bus.

The process of going through customs via Niagra/Buffalo boarder is different to the West Coast of Canada. We were not given any customs declaration forms. We weren’t given any tags for our bags to put on them before we put them on the bus (I think this had to do with us printing out our ticket from home and bringing it with us). The border was literally 10 minutes drive from the bus station. We did go past the HSBC Arena, so we know what the building looks like. Anyway we get to the border, and we’re told to stay on the bus but gather our belongings. The driver gets off and unloads all the bags onto the curb. We then file off the bus, pick up our luggage, making sure we have all our belongings together and then file into the building. One by one (or travelling party by travelling party) we get called up to three counters, each stationed with a Customs Officer. He takes our passports, we have a conversation – in which we discuss hockey, our trip so far, where we’re going next and that Australia actually does have a national ice hockey league. He let us through no problems (we didn’t say anything about the Maple Leafs. Promise! We did mention we’re going to the Hockey Hall Of Fame tomorrow!) and told us to go get back on the bus.

When we did, I noticed that ooh, our bus has free Wi-Fi through Greyhound! So that’s what I’m updating this post on. Currently we’re somewhere on the way to Toronto, in Ontario. Man, it is good to be back in Canada!

We did have a great time in Chicago, and though the Supernatural leg of the trip is over, there’s so much more to look forward to, including seeing Bella, Terry and the rugrats on Thursday when we fly to Saskatoon, the Short Family in San Antonio, and our new friend Tammy, when we travel down there on December 1 and of course our crew in Dallas – Jen, Rhonda, Jesse, Kelly (and finally meet the infamous Pookie!), Clay, Harry, Karin, Val and Nathan, and Leni and meet up with Mickie, Frederick and Alex, as well as hopefully getting together at some point with my friend Wendy, who also lives in Dallas and is another Supernatural fan. And I definitely can’t forget about meeting up with my girl, Sue in Houston. We will make this happen!!

Anyway I’m not sure how much longer we’re on the bus for, so I’m going to sign off now and get this uploaded. If we do anything interesting tonight – which I doubt we will, we’re both knackered, I’ll add to this post, but if not – we have returned to Canada in one piece and are really looking forward to the Hockey Hall Of Fame in TO tomorrow, and then glass seats at the Buffalo Sabres Vs Florida Panthers game back in Buffalo! It’s gonna be a big one, folks!

ETA: Just passed a large accident on the highway with firetrucks putting out a fire on a massive roadtrain. Good times.

ETA 2: We got to Downtown Toronto, which is freakin’ huge, people! HUGE! (AND WE WENT PAST THE AIR CANADA CENTRE – MAPLE LEAFSSSSS!) Anyway we got off at the Toronto Bus Station for Greyhound. We looked around and tried to work out the public transport maps, but man were they confusing. So we followed a security guard and headed for the main building for the Bus Station and thank god their visitor information booth was still open! We asked the lovely lady behind the counter what the best way to get to Pearson International Airport was (our hotel has a free shuttle from the airport to the hotel, and we love the word FREE right now). She told us how to catch the subway and the bus to the airport and all it would cost us was a total of $2.75 each. BARGAIN. It helped when she said when you go through the shopping mall area, you’ll see a Tim Horton’s on the right – and we were like HOMG TIMMYS! THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU WE HAVE BEEN SAVED!!! She found that rather funny.

Anyway we followed her instructions (catch the southbound subway from Dumas to St George, then get off and go down the stairs to catch the westbound train all the way to the end to Kipling, and THENNNNN go upstairs and walk to the END of the platform and catch the 192 Rocket to Pearson. Simple, right? And it was. It was just TEDIOUS with the bags on our backs. I’m so glad we decided to get hiking backpacks for our trip. I can’t even begin to imagine how tedious this trip would be with a normal suitcase and having to carry that around everywhere.

It was fun on the subway with a driver who was very fond of the accelerator… and heavy handed on the breaks! I was nearly flying everywhere with inertia, and Sam was just cracking up laughing at me. Some of the other passengers were too. But that’s okay! It was rather funny. We made it though, made it to Pearson, and figured out where the shuttles were. Then we had to go INSIDE and order the shuttle. Thankfully, by the time we got back out to where the shuttles pick people up from, it was just driving up. That was awesome. And we were ecstatic to see there’s a Subway literally outside the hotel’s front door. That’s awesome.

We checked into our hotel, room 504 – once again the number 9 follows us everywhere (5+0+4=9). But the best part is that our room comes with free wi-fi, and we can use it in our room! Anyway definitely time for bed!

ETA by Sam: Figured I would add, upon driving into Toronto on the bus tonight, one of the best things we saw was what Wendy and I have come to refer to as “Wendy Ho’s”. That’s one of those heavenly buildings that have a Wendy’s restaurant right beside a Timmy Ho’s. Lunch & Coffee in 1 spot… Wendy Ho’s, remember the name people, remember the name!

After yesterday being such a long day, we decided to sleep in a little. Well, the alarm went off at 8:30am, but Sam and I lazed in bed until 9:30am when we decided that rather than run ourselves ragged today we were just going to stay at the hotel, rest, catch up on the internet stuff and just recoup after the big weekend we had.

When we got dressed and headed downstairs with the intent to go to breakfast at Pine Grove, we caught up with one of the girls we’d been talking to over the weekend. She was packed and ready to go, so we stopped to say goodbye. She unwrapped a Supernatural Charm Bookmark that she bought to wear as a necklace (it’s a visual thing) and wrapped it around my neck.

“I can easily order a new one,” she said. “You can’t.” It’s adorable. One end has a pentagram and the other end has a Colt Revolver, to symbolise The Colt made by Samuel Colt in Supernatural. It was pretty amazing. Then she introduced us to Tammy, who lives in San Antonio now, and we got talking. Tammy is one of the Volunteer supervisors for Creation Conventions, and is the “handler” for Jensen and Jared. No, I don’t have any “inside gossip” to share. But I can say this – the boys were happy with Sunday, so that makes me happy.

We did end up talking to Tammy and her friend “GI” Joe for like 5 hours. It was very entertaining and we talked about conventions and the differences in Australia, New Zealand and the US. Tammy also raises snakes. I know. I’m so not a fan. In fact, snakes terrify me. But she has two baby snakes, a ball python named Bub and a dumeril’s boa named Dagan. We got to meet Bub and Dagan, as this is a pet-friendly hotel. They’re about a two feet long. Bub will grow to around 3 or 4 feet, and Dagan will grow to about 6 feet long, though he’s the smaller of the two right now. And I did the unthinkable. I touched them. I didn’t hold them, oh my goodness no. But I did touch their scales. Bub felt soft like satin, but he has bigger scales than Dagan does. So when Dagan gets to full length he’ll feel almost like velvet. It was weird. But oddly felt like an accomplishment!

Tammy also said that we should volunteer at next year’s Chicago Convention for Supernatural. It would be free entry, but we’d still have to foot the bill for flights and food and things like that. We have her phone number and we’ll talk about it between now and San Antonio. We’re going to hook up with Tammy down there and get together to do something. This has me very excited, because I thought that this would be my only convention but the thought of being able to work one really has me excited. It’ll be very, very different to being a fan in the crowd, but that’s okay. I’ve done the whole package once, I don’t need to do it again.

Anyway after Tammy and her son, who is just charming by the way, headed back to San Antonio via Kansas, and Joe was on his way home (he lives here in Chicago), Sam and I braved the very cold wind to get some food for what was now a late lunch (it was around 3:30pm). Heading back to the hotel, we went upstairs and grabbed our computer stuff and spend the rest of the afternoon and night in the lobby online, catching up on things back home, our hockey teams, fantasy leagues and researching our travel requirements for tomorrow.

Tomorrow we’re off to Toronto via Buffalo. I can’t believe it has gone so fast! We’re up at 7am, checked out by 8am and on a shuttle to O’Hare International Airport to catch another shuttle to Midway International Airport for our flight to Buffalo International Airport, where we’ll more than likely catch a cab to the Greyhound Bus Station which will take us to Toronto on a bus, then it’s another cab ride more than likely to our hotel which is by the Toronto Pearson International Airport. It’s going to be yet another long day! Our flight out is at 11.05am. We should land at 1:45pm in Buffalo. Our bus is around 4pm I think. My book of our tickets and things is upstairs.

Now I have to go up and pack! Night all!

This morning we woke up at 8am, after Sam spent until 12:30am down in the lobby accessing the free internet (YAY FOR FREE WI-FI!!). Getting up and having showers, we then went to the front desk and found out the best way to get downtown was to catch the free shuttle from the hotel to O’Hare International Airport, then catch the Blue Line train/subway to Jackson Station. $2.25 per person will get you anywhere on the train in Chicago on one line, and $0.50 for a transfer. We had to work out how to use the ticket machines but once we did, we were on our way downtown. It takes about 40-50 minutes by train to get downtown – and that was an experience. Seeing Chicago by day was like stepping into Save The Last Dance!

Eventually we got to Jackson Station and we got off the train – along with nearly everyone else because it was a transfer station. Finding our way upstairs, we were on the corner of Jackson Blvd and Dearborne Street. We were only 4 blocks or so from what was Sears Tower, but is now Willis Tower. Finding our way to the Skydeck Entrance, we had our first experience of going through the revolving doors. Yeah, I don’t like those. It’s kind of a race to see if the door can squash you before you get to the other side! Not a fan! But we made it through and were ushered into the lifts to go down, yes, down, to the ticket counter for the Skydeck. Once we paid, we went through the little display on how awesome Chicago was (basketball, baseball, Chicago Blackhawks – now we’re talking! - Oprah, etc) before we got to the lift that goes to the top.

Now, if you’re wondering, Willis Tower is the tallest building in the Western World, and is 103 storeys high. It takes less than a minute to get to the 103rd floor, and to give you an example of how tall this building is, it’s 262 times the height of Michael Jordan! I’m 5’6″ tall, so it’s around 280 x my height. Before I go on to talk about the view, I have to make mention of a sign we saw when we paid for the tickets to go up. On the counter there is a sign that says “NO REFUNDS DUE TO NO VISIBILITY FROM INCUMBENT WEATHER” – yes they tell you if there’s no visibility that day and some people don’t believe them so they buy a ticket up anyway and then get mad when they can’t see anything and want a refund. Can you believe it?! I couldn’t!!

Anyway the view was just spectacular. It just went for miles! We got a TON of photos, which Sam will upload the best later on and edit the post with a few. Once you go around, there’s the glass floor side of the Skydeck, where you step out onto this glass floor and it’s just glass all around you. You kind of feel like you’re in Willy Wonka’s Great Glass Elevator, to be honest! Sam is terrified of heights – it’s one of the reasons he doesn’t like flying, but he went out on it first – at my insistence – and we got some awesome photos. It was interesting watching people’s reactions to the glass floor too because a lot of people who are terrified of heights just refused to get on it, or they were shaking when they stepped out there.

A few kids were doing jumps while their parents photographed them, and one kid did a handstand, while his 3 yr old sister got in there behind him so he looked like he had pink sneakers coming out of his head. It was kind of neat. There were this group of four guys, and three were fine with it but one was just terrified. After about 10 mins of pushing and prodding and finally lifting him up and getting him out there, he finally relaxed enough to pose for a couple of photos, but it was just brilliant the way that his friends wouldn’t let him miss out on the experience just because of his fear. It was great to watch – and they were quite entertaining too!

From there, we then walked from Willis Tower down Jackson Blvd to find something for lunch. We didn’t even have breakfast, so we were hungry. There was this pizza place we passed on the way to Willis Tower, so we stopped in there and had a slice of pepperoni pizza and a small coke each. It was only a total of $8.65! But the slice of pizza was the size of three of ours back home, and it was more than enough. I couldn’t have eaten any more if I tried. It was good, so so good.

Looking at the shops as we passed, I nearly jumped for joy when I found Barnes & Noble, a large bookstore chain here in the US. We went inside and looked around for a book I’ve been looking for for ages – Life’s That Way by Jim Beaver. Jim plays Bobby Singer on Supernatural and his wife Cecily passed away from cancer a year or two ago. The book is a memoir of the emails Jim would send out to his mailing list of family and friends to let them know how the family was doing. It’s had rave reviews, and of course, since Jim will be at the convention on Saturday and our tickets have complimentary autographs for Jim included – so I’m going to get him to sign my copy of his book! I was very, very happy to find it!

From there, we walked down Jackson Blvd all the way down to the Chicago Institute of Art, and then past that to the park on Lake Shore Drive. There were squirrels everywhere. And they were fast little buggers too! They were grey, unlike the black or brown ones in Canada. But they were everywhere. As we walked through the park, with the barren trees and the yellow and orange trees all over the ground, it was just beautiful. we walked the 10 blocks (felt like it anyway!) to the Museum Campus and headed to where Sam wanted to go the most on this leg of the trip: The Field Museum!

No doubt he’ll edit this post to put in a touch of Dresden Fandom (I’ll let him explain that), but it was 2.15pm by the time we made it to the Field Museum, so we were thankful it was Free Admission Day! We saw SUE the T-Rex, which is a female T-Rex that was discovered (skeleton complete) in South Dakota. Then we went into the Americas exhibit, the Ancient Egyptians exhibit and then the gift shop. We didn’t spent more than an hour and a half there, because we had to walk back to the blue line station before it got dark so we could catch our train back to the hotel.

Edit by Sam: Yes indeed, I will be adding a few things here. The Field Museum is mentioned a few times in the Harry Dresden novels, but the main one fans of the books will remember is book 7 “Dead beat”, where Harry brings Sue the T-Rex to life and rides her to take on a group of Zombies. My description isn’t really all that good, but the book is killer, and seeing Sue in person was outstanding! The Dresden Chronicles is to me what Supernatural is to Wendy. The books are set in Chicago, so naturally, there are a lot of locations around the city that are mentioned in the novels, including the Shedd Aquarium, which we will be visiting on Monday.

We walked back downtown and were looking for a place that sold DVDs, but didn’t find one. We did manage to find a store that sold t-shirts and hats of all the sporting teams of Chicago, inluding the Blackhawks. They had a special on so we got 2 Blackhawks t-shirts for $27. Not bad!

Then we caught the train home and the shuttle back to the hotel. We walked down to the Pine Grove Family Restaurant for dinner again, and now we’re in the lobby using the free wi-fi and watching all the other fans of Supernatural check in for the convention. It’s eye-opening! Pre-registration for Gold tickets (us) starts at 8pm and people are already lining up. Supernatural airs at 8pm so we’re watching it now.

ETA: We watched Supernatural in Maxie’s Bar & Grill, where they put the show up on all the televisions except one right on the bar. It was kind of awesome to watch it in a room full of fan girls! And a guy or two (not including Sam, who we all know is here for Jared! P) Sam realised when we were watching the show that the Impala we saw in Vancouver was THE Impala! He recognised the license plate! So not only did I miss it… I MISSED THE REAL ONE! I did see the tail-lights and heard the rumble so it’s okay! Once the episode was over, I suggested we go straight to registration and get our stuff sorted for the weekend. We picked up our tickets, our lanyons, our gifts (Supernatural Shot Glasses! YAY! More to add to our collection!), and of course my photo op tickets. The schedule looks jammed, but it shouldn’t be too bad. We’re in row 9, so our wait for autographs and photo ops shouldnt’ be too long at all. And there should be enough time between the Jensen & Jared Duo photo op and the J&J QNA for us to duck out and get some lunch. We were trying to think of what we could get the actors to sign because we have 7 autograph tickets each:

Tracie Dunwoodie – played Pamela Barnes in Season 4 (autograph is on Friday)
Aldis Hodge – played Jake Talley in Season 2 (autograph is Saturday)
Jake Able – played Adam Milligan, Sam and Dean’s half brother, in Season 4 (autograph is Saturday)
Misha Collins – plays the angel, Castiel in Season 4 and 5, and Jimmy Novak, Castiel’s “meat suit” in Season 4 (autograph is Saturday)
Jim Beaver – plays Bobby Singer in all Seasons and is a recurring character (autograph is Saturday)
Jensen Ackles – plays Dean Winchester (autograph is Sunday)
Jared Padalecki – plays Sam Winchester (autograph is Sunday)

What we’ve decided to do is get everyone to sign a white t-shirt that I’ve purchased, and with the second autograph ticket, get everyone to sign the back of one of our GOLD TICKET VIP PASS so that I can get it framed along with the t-shirt! All except Jim. Jim I’ll ask him to sign the t-shirt and also to sign his book for me, like I said above. I looked at the prices of everything and we decided not to buy any other merchandise. The photos for autographs were ranging from $6-$20, and the t-shirts were $5-$25 each but there weren’t any of just Dean that I liked. I decided that I’d skip the merchandise in favour of the autographed t-shirt which I can treasure forever, and get framed when we get home along with the autographed ticket.

Anyway after registration, we came out to find a line of fangirls waiting for registration that went all the way from the ballroom back to the lobby! Sam said to me that I was a genius for doing registration when we did because there was no one there and if he had to wait in line with all those people he would have killed me! I told him to suck it up and admit I rock. Which he then did. We did, however, bump into Sue in line and stopped to say hello! We were happy to see she had landed here safe and sound.

Now we’re in the lobby using the WI-FI again and listening to the chatter of fangirls around us. It’s pretty phenomenal watching the amount of stuff people are purchasing. I mean someone walked away with like 20 pictures, all in plastic sleeves which are an extra $3 on top. Just amazing.

We were hoping to catch the Stars game on the net, but it looks like that’s a no-go. But that’s okay. There’s plenty of other things to do and if nothing else, Yahoo can give us a score update! Day 10 is done. Bring on the Con!

Today started only 2 or so hours after the last one ended.  After spending til 1:30am packing and getting ready for an early start today, we were rudely awoken by our alarm at 4am to get down to the Greyhound station by 5:30am to catch our bus.

A note to anybody thinking of doing this… don’t!  2hrs sleep is not really conducive to an active mind, and we’re pretty sure when that 4am alarm went off, only a fraction of our brain cells actually woke up. Not only that, Wendy ended up throwing up due to exhaustion before we even left the hotel! She’s fine though, so no need to anyone to worry!

Vancouver has been the most amazing place to visit, and captured our hearts from the first day sitting in Timmy Ho’s and walking over to Granville Island (see the photos, they’re amazing!) to the last day walking through the rain and going up the Vancouver Lookout.  For those who’ve never been here, we encourage you to find a way to do so.  We don’t want to leave to be perfectly honest, “but love, and a pesky curse defanged me”… oh wait, that’s a quote from Buffy   – Chicago and more of a journey await us so depart we must.

The bus trip was uneventful, and even though we did intend to enjoy the sights that we missed on the bus up to Vancouver (it was night after all), we both ended up pretty much passing out by the time the bus hit its first stop in Coquitlam and slept for about an hour, waking up just before we arrived at the US Customs office on the border of Canada and the United States.

We had been told horror stories about the US Customs people on the border, especially those on the buses.  I don’t know if it’s our amazing personalities, or the fact that we already had Visas, but the Customs officer was incredibly cheerful, even joking with us.  We literally took less than 2 minutes to clear customs and get back on the bus.

The rest of the trip was a blur or sleep-wake-sleep-wake, and we don’t really remember all that much.  We did get some photos as we passed through Seattle, and will be uploading them as soon as we can.

We were sitting in SEA/TAC (that’s Seattle Tacoma International Airport for the uninitiated) drinking “Seattle’s Best Coffee” and eating a Turkey Croissant when we decided to see if there was some free wi-fi.  Rod, if you’re reading this, you’re right, Seattle’s best make some damn good coffee! Though the Hazelnut Coffee is… unusual. Very… woody in taste.  Back to the wi-fi… there was none that was free, but for $8 we could have 24 hours access. Since we’re not going to be here for more than 3 hours, we didn’t think it was worth it. So instead, we found our gate, curled up with a book and our Ipods and settled back to rest up for the trip east to Chicago.

The flight to Chicago seemed to go on much longer than it should have, most probably due to us being so tired.  Wendy spent much of the flight catching up on sleep but managed to get some amazing photos out of the plane window as we flew over the western part of Washington State. I don’t sleep well on planes, so read a book and watched a movie on the ipod.  It was night when we approached Chicago, so we got a good look at the true size of the city from 15,000 feet in the air… and wow, when they say this is a big city, they’re not kidding!  It just goes on, and on, and on, and on!  We finally landed at Chicago Midway Airport and after chatting with a Chicago police officer for some time (great guy) and getting our bags, we headed over to see about catching the shuttle that runs from Chicago Midway to Chicago O’Hare Airports.  It turned out that we missed it though, so had to catch a taxi instead.  40 minutes and $70 (fare + tip) later we arrived at the Wyndham O’Hare Hotel, tired, hungry and pretty much over being on a bus, plane or in a car!

Being a hotel, it doesn’t have the luxuries we had at the Vancouver hotel, so our first stop after checking in was the local dinner restaurant down the road where we got an Angus Burger each.  It was either that or Maccas, and we figured the restaurant, while not a bowl of veges, was the healthier option.

Upon returning to our hotel, we grabbed the laptop and headed down to the lobby where they offer free wireless internet and did our daily email catch-ups.  That done, we’re now off for a hot shower and some much needed sleep!