Sunday, December 11, 2016

MWFF Recap – Wednesday – The Night Before



It’s been a long time waiting, and a long report at hand.

This will be the first of five posts on Midwest Furfest: one for each day. I figured I wouldn’t overwhelm y’all with one giant post!

Prologue – Wednesday – The Night Before
Epilogue – Monday – Sleepy Birthday

Glazing over the obvious wide scale news, this year has been busy personally. Work took over the life I would use for cartooning, to my chagrin. The flipside was that the added income made me freer than I ever was, and enabled my second passion of travel. 

The end result being I’ve been abroad more this year than ever before… perhaps I’ll retroactively add some travelogues of the year’s past. 

Anywho, in the time I was active in the fandom, this con just…kinda sprung up as a surprise hit. In these past couple of years, more and more furries just couldn’t stop talking about this con. It soon became the one convention to check out (Besides, well, the little big one).

I booked and prepared my flights, my rooms, and my animal companions months in advance. As the days rolled by, I wondered…. What would it be like? Was the hype real? What could possibly go wrong? Would I have time for anyone? Would there be gas? Would I be frozen or disappointed?

I played scenarios in my mind… I watched videos on YouTube of cons past… I researched the best placed for deep dish. In the end, I wasn’t disappointed. Let the recap begin!


Wednesday had a simple, concise plan:

  • Work until 4:30, hop on the commuter shuttle to Colma BART
  • Take BART to SFO and meet Fraddas, my one of many vulpine roommates and travel companion. 
  • Grab Dinner at the airport
  • Take BART to South City and sleep at a friend’s place because early flight.


One typical office day, long commute, and screeching bart ride later, I arrive at a decked out San Francisco International Airport. 



Seriously, this was the most magical thing to have seen at an airport. Gliding by on BART with all the trees alit. Nothing could beat an entrance like that. 

I hopped on the AirTrain to Terminal 2 to meet with Fraddas. I ate light so at this point we were starving. Opting out of Airport food, I suggested we hit the Tanforan mall nearby before hitting the hay. We needed to grab a few more items beforehand anyway.




Nothing like an anticipating calm before the madness as well as surrealism of constantly carrying well over two bags with you to a mall. I was worried about odd looks for a moment, but given the malls proximity to the airport, I guess we weren’t as out of place.
I had a craving for Panda Express, and apparently so did everyone else: it was the only stall with an actual line. While the fox joined the hive mind, I went for some personal nostalgia.



I lived in the Philippines for a couple of years as a kid and remember frequenting this place. The food items are charmingly named (ChickenJoy, Yum Burger), and honestly, it wasn’t so bad for the price.
We both kept talking about the game plan tomorrow and how we needed to sleep early. Fraddas voiced concern about making the 7am flight, so I agreed with pushing our wake up time earlier. It was around 8:30 or so and we had finished some last minute supply shopping. I called for a Lyft to get us to my friend’s place in South City in the hopes of getting some extra sleep
What we did get was introduction and further chilling with some more furs before the actual trip, in the process introducing Fraddas to more of the local community. It was a pleasant evening… however when all was said and done, we had only three hours to sleep.
But enough about that, adventure awaits!
Click here to continue onto Day Zero.

1 comment:

  1. I am just getting around to reading your posts. Those trees do look awesome, and then in Chicago you had some around the convention center, but not quite as nice.

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