When Motor City Fur[ry] Con finished in October 2021 it was with the promise they'd be back in 2022. And not in October, the more sane choice: they wanted to return to their usual spring haunt, on whatever the last winter weekend of late March/early April would be. It's daft to try to do a convention in five months, even if you're doing it in the same spot with most of the same people as the last time. I'd have been fine if they had planned an 18-month gap and waited until March 2023 for the next con. I bet the con staff would have appreciated that time too.
But also there's, you know, the pandemic. I didn't think in October it likely the pandemic would be over by now and, sure enough, it's not. But the infection rates, statewide and locally, are considerably lower than they were even in October, and they've been trending down too, so I guess they dodged a bullet. With considerable luck given the refusal of governments to attempt to preserve the public health. Motor City Furry Con would insist on proof of vaccination to attend, and would recommend masking indoors, and put signs at key spaces insisting on masks. Still ... would attending be a wise idea?
So that all is some of why we didn't buy sponsorships to the convention until a couple weeks before it was held. And didn't look for a hotel room until then either. This kept us out of the main hotel, a tradition of ours for MCFC. We would get a great deal on the overflow hotel, though. When we bought tickets for Pinburgh 2020, ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger got a hotel credit card offering a free night there. Pinburgh stopped happening, but the overflow hotel was part of the same chain, so we got to stay this weekend at just the annual cost of the card. Which turns out to be well below the cost of a one-night stay, and we get a new one each year, so the card might be worth keeping for this one event.
So it made financial sense. Did it make any other kind of sense? And, well, that's something we could only know after going. Five to seven days after, properly, to give time for us to incubate and to run the at-home tests. (We got our second kit delivered with our held mail this Monday.) I've been watching Twitter and seen no reports of people testing positive at or after the con, unlike at Furnal Equinox or Texas Furry Fiesta. But that might reflect Motor City's being a smaller convention, rather than one being luckier or (compared to Texas) not being held in a state where you're required to get Covid-19. Still, bunnyhugger's parents wanted me to not stick around for dinner when I picked up Sunshine on Monday --- I didn't want to either, for the same caution --- and I kept checking how many meals we had stockpiled and confirming that, if need be, we would go a ten-day quarantine without having to go to the store. Except that we'd need to get fresh vegetables for Sunshine at some point, but we could call in an order.
Well, we went and that's that.
A glimpse out onto the patio, one of the designated smoking areas. And beyond that was the Glass pavilion where, last year, the fursuit parade ended and where, this year, the Trash Animals and the Raccoons SIGs were to be held. Turns out to be a very, very echo-y place.
Back to the hotel lobby looking at people all dressed up. And hey, what's that three-headed dog on the right there?
Another group hanging around the lobby.
Trivia: The International Hydrographic Bureau's General Bathymetric Chart uses a 1:10,000,000 scale for Mercator-style projections of most of the oceans, with the Arctic and Antarctic areas (above 75 degrees north latitude or below 75 degrees south) a polar stereographic with scale of 1:6,000,000. Source: Maps and Civilization: Cartography in Culture and Society, Norman J W Thrower.
,p> Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine #18: Popeye in the Navy, Tom Sims, Bela Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle.