MOCHI > The Scrapbook > Convention Memories > Anime Iowa > 2001

This year's AnimeIowa was a big change for MOCHI. Although members like Toasted Mochi had always had a strong volunteer presence, this year, more members of MOCHI were directly involved with the convention: running panels, working on fund-raising, and running the video rooms. It was a strange experience sitting on both sides of the con staff - con goer fence, but we all managed to survive.

Pre-con shennanigans

As usual, there were two contingents heading to Cedar Rapids. Contingent A (Sugar Bomb, Toasted, and Daifuku) headed down Thursday evening. The combination of 1) heading out about an hour earlier than normal and 2) a new route shaved nearly two hours off of the road trip. The sun was still in the sky for most of the drive, which gave everyone a chance to read the road signs. Which, it turned out, wasn't much, except for a lot of Laura Ingells Wilder memorials. [But it's still not as bad as South Dakota. - Sugar Bomb]

It was great returning to the Collins. While it was nice to have the elbow room at the Crowne Plaza, it was almost too much elbow room. It was easy to miss people by just a matter of minutes and then spend an hour or so trying to catch up. In the Collins, all you needed to do is just stand out in the main atrium, which is visible from the main con area (main programming, dealers' room, and registration), second floor (which had the video game room, art show, and some panels), and the seventh floor (the con suite).

As soon as Contingent A had unloaded, Toasted Mochi went into Engergizer Bunny mode. He started putting up posters and moving some AV equipment into the secure storage area. He also met up with one of the long-time staffers (Marty Milder). This was a Good Thing (tm), since Marty was able to loan Toasted some video tapes for titles that Daifuku had forgotten to pack. [My bad! - Daifuku]. Together, they started to set up the video rooms, working at it until 2 AM.

Which was, co-incidentally, when Contingent B (Spiky) was due to arrive.

The fact that Spiky got in about an hour later than expected has nothing to do with the video games found at certain truck stops. Nope. Nada. *grin*.

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