Flagstaff Con Day 8: Riding Through the Desert in a Car with No Name

The final day.

The last day of a con is often the most emotional and sentimental--at least, it often was to me. Since moving to Tucson, though, Starmen.Net conventions have become more of a regular vacation and less like a rare meeting with family.

Before coming to Tucson, Starmen.Net conventions were one of the few times I'd ever get to see these people who mad become like family to me. They were less a relaxing vacation and more like a week in which I needed to spend as much time with these people as possible while I could before returning to regular life. Nowadays, they're much more relaxing, particularly since I'm working with many of those people on a daily basis now.

Funny enough, now it's trips home that are like emotional roller coasters, trying to spend as much time hanging out with everyone as I can, though there's never enough time to spend with all my friends and family.

It's funny how things flip around.

It's kind of a tradition to go out and eat breakfast together somewhere before going our separate ways. So, after cleaning up the house as much as we could, we loaded into cars and headed for a place called Crown Railroad Cafe.

Crown Railroad Cafe is a nifty little place--like a diner, but with hours posted on the door. There was also a toy train running on tracks overhead, sort of like the ones I remember from pediatricians' offices when I was a kid. Or like Booster's Tower from Super Mario RPG.

We enjoyed out breakfasts, chatting away about this and that. I recall a conversation about Nintendo cracking down on Let's Plays, as well as talk a conversation about whether Fangamer will ever get licensed by Nintendo.

Once it was over, we headed outside for hugs and goodbyes. Jeff and I drove Marty and Eyes5 to Sky Harbor, enjoying the magnificent mountain views between Flagstaff and Phoenix. Soon the pine trees gave way to Saguaros, and once again we were in the desert. We were too full from Crown Railroad to bother stopping at Raising Cane's again.

I hear next year's con might be at Lake George.