Archon 29
Archon 29 was held over the weekend of September 29 to October 2, 2005, at the Gateway Convention Center and Holiday Inn in Collinsville, IL, one of the Metro East suburbs of St. Louis. Archon is one of the largest conventions in the Midwest, and has recently expanded from three to four days.
We arrived Thursday afternoon and got checked into our sleeping room. We were staying in one of the outlier motels rather than the Holiday Inn. Once we got our personal belongings into our room, we went over to the Convention Center to get my art on the art show. Since we weren't able to get our con badges yet, we headed back to the motel and used their Internet connection to catch up on e-mail.
In the evening we went back to the Convention Center to get registered. However, after standing in an interminable line, we discovered that badges for dealers were going to be distributed separately when the dealers' room opened the following morning. So we returned to our hotel in some disgust and took a nice, long soak in the hot tub. Fortunately, the hot tub was actually hot, which felt really great after the long drive. We also ate the supper we'd brought.
Then we went back to the Convention Center for the artists' reception. Fortunately word had gotten around that dealers didn't have their badges yet, so we were able to get in and look around the art show. They also had a very good catered refreshment bar, which included some truly delicious chocolate bar cookies. After the reception we headed back to our sleeping room for bed.
Friday started bright and early with breakfast. Then we headed over to the Convention Center to get our merchandise into the dealers' room. We were able to get in fairly rapidly, and actually were set up before the dealers' room opened. Business was reasonably brisk, even if we were somewhat cramped for space and weren't able to put everything out.
Since the dealers' room was open late on Friday, we decided not to bother with any of the parties. Instead we just went back to our hotel to have supper and a soak in the hot tub before turning in for the night.
Saturday was our main sales day. After breakfast we headed over to the Convention Center and got our tables open for business. Business was pretty good, although not so busy that I couldn't do a little writing now and then.
After the dealers' room closed, we went back to our hotel to get supper and a soak in the hot tub. Then we headed over to the Holiday Inn to catch the parties. As it turned out, the only party was the Chicago in 2008 one, which was being held in the con suite. They had Chicago-style hot dogs and plenty of munchies. Since there weren't any other parties, we headed back to our sleeping room to get some shut-eye.
Sunday we had breakfast, then got our belongings out of our sleeping room. After that we headed over to the Convention Center to open our dealers' tables for the last day. Sales were fairly good, even after we had to start packing in order to be able to load as soon as the dealers' room closed.
When the dealers' room did finally close, they didn't immediately open the big loading door, so we had to take the first two loads out the side door. But once we were able to get the big door opened, we were able to load out much more rapidly. We actually made better time that we'd expected, and hit the road for home.
Copyright 2012 by Leigh Kimmel
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Last updated October 21, 2012.