Cluster at the Expo

Once again, Marine Corps Marathon's expo returned the the Gaylord Convention Center. And, boy howdy, was it a cluster!

To start with, I took the blue line to Van Dorn to take the shuttle. (Previous years at the convention center, I parked at Eisenhower and took that shuttle.) After coming down from the platform and going outside, there were no apparent signs anywhere. So, where the heck are we supposed to go. Well, I chose to go right, figuring that the bus would stop around the end of the platform away from the normal buses that drop off there (which is what was done at Eisenhower). And given that I was wearing my red Marathon Maniacs pacer jersey and walking with purpose, about 30 people who got off the train to also go to the expo fell in right behind me. After all, I knew where I was going. Nope! Someone else was able to quickly get online and find something that indicated we should have gone to the other set of shuttle shelters. Sure enough, when we got to those, there were 8.5 x 11" signs on the shelters pointing out where to be, and one person on a camping chair who was able to call up one of the nearby shuttles to pick us up. Really? You couldn't have a sign pointing the correct direction at the exit -- a simple sandwich board saying "Expo This Way"? sigh

Fine. Get the snafu out of the way today, have a flawless day tomorrow. So, the directions that this volunteer in the camping chair gave the driver (and the driver double-checked we was understanding correctly) wound up with the driver taking us to the wrong place -- the employee entrance around the back side of the hotel. A couple of minutes later, she was pointed to the correct location around the front of the hotel. "We're getting Murphy out of the way today" I yelled in the bus. Try to get the others a little more relaxed.

We finally make it to the front of the hotel, and there's a huge line. At first I wondered if it was merely a line of people done with the expo waiting to board buses. But, no, NONE of them had the bags from the expo. Clearly, this was for entering. Really? WTF? It took about 30-45 minutes to make our way down to the expo. To make it worse, we noticed that there was SEPARATE expo being held at the same time, with its entrance further down the same hallway as we needed to go. And they didn't have a good system for getting the flow of people exiting -- both lines crossed each other, where they totally had no need to. Come on, these logistics are EASY, and you had tons of time to figure it out in advance. And given the fact that this took so long, I had no opportunity to get lunch. (I figured I'd be able to get a relatively quick bite before going inside, but no. And there wasn't anything in sight anyway -- no food vendors.)

Inside, it was speedy to get the bib and the shirt -- no lines at all. Why it took so long to get in when it didn't look like the security was bothering to look at any of the bags being brought inside is beyond me. It was very tight inside a relatively small ballroom (given the number of people that were crammed inside). Some booths had long lines (especially the ones with samples), others were relatively empty. (Pretty standard, actually.)

Relatively quickly, I made my way to the Marathon Maniac table and joined in for my shift (and a little longer) answering questions from plenty of people about what pacers are and how we do it, whether they need to sign up, how to find us, what our strategy for the race is, etc. Lots of people. Hopefully they wind up finding the pacer they want to start with tomorrow given our instructions. I also hope that the colored bibs/"corrals" don't wind up messing anyone up, assuming they actually do enforce the corrals (which most of the time they don't).

While it was very quick getting back to the bus after I decided to leave, traffic was at a crawl getting to and onto the highway. What should have been about a 15-20 minute drive was definitely longer. (I didn't look at my watch, though, to know just how much. Likely an extra 10 minutes.) Fine. Back on Metro, I had a fair bit to go, since I had to go the ~10 stops up to Rosslyn to transfer to Silver for Reston/Wiehle, where I parked. Finally at my car at 4:15pm, having last eaten at about 8:30am. and barely had anything to drink since I got out of my car, I went directly to the Italian restaurant in Herndon that has become my traditional pre-MCM dinner. Quite good, and definitely had me feeling human again. Glad to have gotten some food and a decent bit of water in my system. (More water upon getting home.)

I've been back home for a while, and everything is ready for tomorrow. (And hopefully my "insurance" for getting to my parking garage works. More on that with my race day post.) 

Let's get 'er done!