Mikaela’s Journey To SDCC 2019: Part I

It’s been a few years now of watching Derek prep for SDCC, helping to pack up his belongings, and hiding secret love notes for him to find throughout his week away.

The past couple of years, I’ve begun to dip my toe in the Geekscape waters… well, more like wade in all the way to my lady bits! I’ve been playing some games, doing some writing, jumping on podcasts, and most importantly turning our @GeekscapeForever insta into a cosplay dream scene. Last year I was able to funnel the on-site Geekscapist’s experiences at SDCC onto our Instagram page from afar.

But this year is a game changer. This year I’m diving in head first!

This year Mikaela is on scene at SDCC, taking it all in for the first time ever, and documenting every step of the way for the world to watch on @GeekscapeForever.

I am so incredibly excited… and nervous… and stoked about all the incredible things that are about to happen!

My journey started with a 2 AM wake up call from Derek, after sleeping a grand total of 3.5 hours, and a trek out to the airport with a Grumpasaurus Rex at my side! (Apparently Derek got even less sleep than I did, zero hours, and was not up to his usual perky standards!)

Despite our lack of sleep and moderate ability to function, we arrived at the airport and got off the ground without a hitch! I was once again reminded of how lucky we are to live on the west coast, watching a ferry float by as we began our flight toward Seattle. And on the next flight we got to fly right next to a mountain top poking through the clouds, so freaking beautiful! I have to remember how freaking fortunate we are to be on this amazing adventure when we are standing in yet another line a couple days from now!

On our flight from Seattle we listened to the pre-SDCC 2019 edition of the Geekscape podcast, and oh man was it ever funny, and not SDCC related at all! I don’t think I’ve ever laughed out loud so much while jammed into a giant flying air sausage with a bunch of other humans. It was also super cute to watch Derek get increasingly excited as we simultaneously got closer to San Diego and got closer to him seeing his friends after so long. I’m excited to see Jonathan again, to meet the rest of this posse that Derek loves so much, and to experience this amazing event that has such a huge impact on his life!

It’s funny – I’ve been so focused on prepping for doing the work we’ve come here to do, and figuring out what I want to check out, who I want meet, visiting people etc., that it never really hit me that we were actually just going on a sweet adventure to another part of the world as well! That is until we walked out of the airport and up to a sidewalk lined with freaking palm trees! Oh Hiiii California, we are in you!! So now I’m just getting extra excited. What a freaking adventure this week is gonna be!

We arrived at our hotel, which is basically 2 doors down from the convention centre and I felt like a small town poor girl showing up at a super fancy place where I didn’t belong, but was so thrilled to be there! Our hotel has amazing views of all the activities that are being put assembled around the convention centre and it’s pretty freaking great! And to top off the hotel experience somehow Jonathan, Matt, and Derek and I somehow all managed to arrive, from all over the place, there within minutes of each other!?

As quickly as we assembled, we peaced outta the hotel room and headed over to the convention centre to put together the booth. First though we had to stop off at ROCKIN BAJA For the infamous mango salsa! Honestly, it totally lived up to its hype and I would eat it any day! While there we also met up with Gui, another Geekscapist! This is my first time meeting Gui and Matt and I can see why Derek loves these people. These are truly his people, and all three of them are lovely!

After eating we truly went to set up the booth. Walking into the convention centre was pretty insane. I’ve been to a few different conventions now, though none of them at this scale, and I’ve never been behind the scenes on it before. It was super neat to walk into the chaos of hundreds of giant booths being madly assembled in a rush to be ready for Wednesday. It’s so crazy to have the curtain pulled back and see that all of this comes together just like anything else, with hard work and man power.

Setting up our booth was fun, I got to figure out how to put up the back drop, and meet a couple friends of Matt’s who came to help out. At one point we realized that the table cloth had been forgotten in LA. But then Gui and I came up with the great idea of covering the entire table in Geekscape post cards and the table top ended up looking soooo badass. So if you’re around come on by and check it out at booth 3919, just don’t set anything down on it cause you’ll never be able to find it again 😂

After getting the booth half set up, sweating sooo much, and deciding the rest could be done tomorrow, we split up and Derek went to track down a sweet Stranger Things Soundtrack cassette tape At the FYE shop. Meanwhile Jon, Gui, and I finished the sweet table top and headed out to meet up with everyone else for dinner. We ended up at the Coin-Op Game Room for dins and drinks and loud conversation. Then split off again to do a couple errands before rendezvousing back at the hotel. What a freaking day.

It’s been a pretty crazy, unbelievable, overwhelming day. My heart feels full and my body feels tired and we haven’t even started yet!? And I am so ready to see what tomorrow brings!