Urgent: Get this message to Reithejelly at Katsucon!

Post by **sensei** » Fri Feb 16, 2007 1:09 pm

If anyone can help get this message to Brenda at Katsucon, I'd appreciate it.

I'm absolutely stuck up here in Pennsylvania: none of the highways are open, and the local roads are too icy to use them to get to an open route south. So I won't be able to make the Cel Collectors' Panel at Katsucon tonight.

I sent Brenda a copy of my PowerPoint presentation by email. If she can download it, she can show it on my behalf tonight.

Thanks to anyone who can pass the word to her.

Post by **sensei** » Sat Feb 17, 2007 8:59 am

Did Rei get the message? I tried this way, and also called the Hotel and sent the Katsucon organizers an email, plus of course the email I sent her directly.

I really hated to miss this, but the more we've heard about the highway situation, the more it looks like a perfect storm of awful conditions (snow, saturated by sleet and freezing rain, then frozen solid and covered with more snow) plus incompetent highway workers. Even knowing that the Interstates were impassible and covered with wrecked and abandoned vehicles, they continued to let motorists and truckers enter the roads from all directions until they had three 100-mile-plus parking lots right on top of the ice and snow they were supposed to be clearing away.

I spent 45 white knuckles minutes yesterday trying to find a way out of this region. If I could have gotten to the PA Turnpike, I could have made it, but I-80 shut down just as I got there (just as well, or the accident that closed it for good could have been me) and the only alternatives to get to an entrance were mountain roads that are risky even in warm sunny weather.

The double frustration was that I'd thoroughly revised my PowerPoint to include some of my new sketch stuff, including some things that aren't even up in my gallery yet.

Let me know, someone, if Brenda ever did get any of my messages.

Baakay · Post by **Baakay** » Sat Feb 17, 2007 9:44 am

Hey Sensei, I just got the latest saga from Chuck Rozanski at Mile-High Comics -- he's in the same spot you are with respect to trying to make it down a highway in PA. From his description of the roads I think you did the right thing by staying put.

Presentation on one hand ... life on the other.

Yep, you did the right thing.

Post by **sensei** » Sat Feb 17, 2007 3:56 pm

To: info@katsucon.org
From: Bill Ellis <wce2@email.psu.edu>
Subject: I have to cancel my presentation

Please notify Brenda Zera, organizer of the Cel Collecting panel (Friday 9-11 PM) that I will be unable to participate. I am stuck in NE Pennsylvania, with all highways out of the area closed due to accidents and ice.
----- Transcript of session follows -----
<info@katsucon.org>... Deferred: Connection timed out with mail.katsucon.org.
Warning: message still undelivered after 1 day
Will keep trying until message is 6 days old

Yes, and I bet the person I talked to at the Omni lined the bottom of her circular file with the message I asked her to take down.

Thanks, Baakay. What I saw of the roads yesterday morning was enough to make me swear off driving, at least between Halloween and Easter. (Though we've had memorable blizzards here as late as early May.)

ReiTheJelly · Post by **ReiTheJelly** » Wed Feb 21, 2007 8:20 pm

Heh. Yeah...I never got any of your messages. The Omni Shoreham makes you pay $10/day for internet....so I never got my hotel room hooked up.

I'm sorry that you couldn't make it - I hope that we did an okay job on your portion of the presentation!