It’s been nearly four years since the Triffid Ranch officially launched, and the Czarina still goes into a slow burn over the celebration at Convergence 14, the big goth culture convention in Ybor City, Florida. It wasn’t because of the show itself, or the people, or even the drive from Dallas to Tampa. No, the grinding of her molars, like tectonic plates, was when we tried to make a nonstop straight burn from Dallas to Tallahassee, based on my memories of moving back to Dallas from Tally six years earlier. What I remembered, in my vague sleep-deprivation hallucinations, was a 12-hour drive, which was extreme but still doable. Apparently, I actually did closer to 17 hours of straight driving, and we learned that the hard way on the rush down the Florida Panhandle. Oh, and did I mention that we arrived in Tally about five hours late on her birthday?
Not that the trip itself wasn’t worth the effort. Convergence and its attendees were still recovering from the disastrous show in 2007 in Portland (often referred to by Convergence survivors as “Gothapalooza”), and we started our trip right at the beginning of the big economic meltdown of 2008. Naturally, gasoline prices peaked the very weekend we made the trip, so when we were done tallying costs versus returns, we chalked it up as a working vacation and left it at that. Not that we wouldn’t do it again: we met a considerable number of people who are still good friends today, we had a chance to see Ybor City at its peak (as well as understanding why everyone talks about the food there), and we both learned exactly how far we could drive at one time before the Czarina threatens to go Big Barda on my skull.
In subsequent years, we’ve considered bringing jewelry and plants to another Convergence, but the logistics kept getting in the way. Moving large numbers of carnivorous plants across the US is problematic at the best of times, and the trip has to be balanced between the cost of fuel and vehicle maintenance versus the actual return. In the meantime, we both figured that if a future Convergence was held in Texas, we’d both consider the possibilities.
Welp, it’s good news and bad news on that front. Alt.Gothic just released the bids for next year’s Convergence, and the devil vomits in our faces again. The first bid is for Seattle, which is a great city for spooky things, but it’s scheduled the weekend after next year’s World Horror Convention in New Orleans. That’s in addition to crossing a fair amount of the North American landmass and at least three mountain ranges to get there. Sorry, but with that kind of distance, this is the sort of road trip where Oscar Zeta Acosta himself would stay home and say “Let’s just watch television instead, okay?”
And then there’s the second bid, in Austin. Unlike other events in Austin that seem to go out of their way to run during the hottest part of the year, the Austin bid organizers understand that visitors to the city might actually enjoy it at times when the big yellow hurty thing in the sky isn’t trying to destroy all life on the Texas prairie. Besides, the date for the Austin bid coincides with the return of Mexican freetailed bats to the Congress Avenue bridge.
The only problem? If Austin gets the bid, then Convergence is two weeks before Texas Frightmare Weekend, and previous attempts to do shows with such short time between them hasn’t worked out well. We may have to reconsider that thinking for next year, because this looks too good for us to miss out.
EDIT: naturally, after all of that agonizing, I got word from this last weekend that Austin has the bid. Time to make plans for a road trip next year, eh?