The Car Deck

Steampunk! It seemed fitting that my first experience driving a car onto a giant boat would be the day I went to a steampunk festival. The reason this is fitting is that the alternate history/anachronism themes in most steampunk films and books usually serves to increase the physical scale of the objects: bigger trains, bigger planes, bigger boats, bigger tanks, bigger rockets, etc. The steampunk thing itself turned out to not be so big. In fact, it was like the opposite of the grandeur scales you see on the screen. It was, in fact, a single room. The "panels" and the vendor boths shared a single room, roughly twice the size of the living room you would have if you lived in a house. Maybe 4 times. Whatever.

Here is a picture of a ferry:

You like the birds? I'm an awesome photographer. I was going to post on craigslist pretending to be a photographer that needed models in order to meet girls, but a bunch of creepy guys already thought of that, so I didn't. Also my cheapass bottom-of-the-line Best Buy camera wouldn't fool anyway. But I digress. That picture has nothing to do with our trip, and I took it weeks ago, but thats probably the same boat we were on. Or one just like it. Anyway, here is a picture of what I was sure was a B-17 Flying Fortress:

If you don't know what a B17 is, well, that sucks for you. My grandfather made a model of one once. It kicked ass. This also has little to do with our trip, except that it happened to be on the camera just now when I uploaded my steampunk pictures. Also, I think that a B17 is a bit steampunk-ish. You have a giant airplane with a big crew manning gun stations. Either way, that is awesome.

Ok this one is the first picture that I actually took on our trip today:

Thats the terminal in Victoria we pulled into. We visited a foreign country! Fortunately, most places took American dollars. It was quite fortunate, in fact, because I didn't think to deal with exchanging money, or even bring extra money. Or even print the ferry times for the right home. Hey, I love sitting around in McDonald's in the middle of the night. All I had was whatever was in my wallet, and my ATM card didn't work.

Ok this is another shot of the harbor. There were boats there. The hotel with the one-room expo is there in the background with the green on it. You'll find out what the green stuff is later.

Here is...yet another shot of the harbor. We had to wait a while, while they hooked up the plank. Or walkway. Whatever you call it. Oh, and this boat looks nothing like the boat in the first picture. That is because this is the second ferry we took. The first one was really cool. This second one that you see here bounced around a lot despite the fact that we were going through pretty much calm water the whole way. It would probably just flip onto its back and sink if there was a storm.

Here are some steam punk people. They look pretty cool. I think I like steam punk better than anime, because anime fans usually dress up like its halloween, wearing cardboard for metal and generally looking like a walking cartoon. Steampunk people however...most of them just look like they are wearing snazzy suits. And...well the googles give it away a bit. I think they look pretty normal. Oh, and corsets. Corsets are involved, which is an aspect shared with goth. I like corsets. Also boots. Steampunk boots tend to have lots of buckles, which is slightly different than the ones I prefer. They are still cool though.

The one drawback was some of the people were nerdy. It seems like no matter what the common interest, there are always people with this certain personality that I find annoying. Dungeons and Dragons has them in the greatest quantity. But I've seen it with video games, sports, anime, goth, ...anything. Maybe I'm not shy, but simply anti social.
These next few items are some accessories you can buy if you were worried people might confuse your steampunk outfit with a snazzy suit:


Each of those pieces was like $400, and it would probably break when dropped and stepped on, like with all my sunglasses. I don't think I would ever want to pay that much money to make people look at my funny--I can do that just by talking. Then again, maybe thats just because I'd rather be more of a pilot or train steampunk guy than a walking bioshock robot steampunk guy. To each his own.

Hey more expensive steampunk gear! I wasn't taking these pictures. My friend was. There was actually one of just the wall of the hotel. I elected not to upload that one.


Gauntlets. I like gauntlets. I tried to come up with a reason for purchasing these or the far cheaper black leather gauntlets as I walked by the vendor table while avoiding eye contact so they wouldn't talk to me, but I could think of no compelling reason to buy them. I also saw flasks, but I was pretty sure that the "steam punk" flasks were about 5 times the price at the convention as they would be at whatever store the vendor origininally got them from. I mean, they were flasks. Gray, steel (or some other metal) flasks in a leather pouch thing I wasn't going to use anyway.

Ok here is the hotel. The green is the ivy. It made me think of The Great Gatsby--which has nothing to do with steampunk.


This is the friend I went with. I don't like using real names or posting pictures of people I care about, but she is in costume and I shrunk the image size. Her scarf didn't really fit--it was like bright and silky. Not the kind of thing you'd expect to be tossed about behind the adventerous aviator of some biplane amidst a battle against giant Victorian-era robots.



This is another picture out the front of the lame, turbulent ferry that took 90 minutes to go about 18 miles. My imaginary amphibious motorcycle goes way faster than that.


This next picture is from inside my car in the cool Seattle-Bainbridge ferry. It was awesome. I was in a car, on a boat.


I was in a car on a boat! Someday, perhaps, I might be in a car in a plane on a boat. In a car, in a plane, on a boat, in a giant spaceship? One can only imagine.

We tried getting out the car and walking to the front and being adventerous, standing at the front watching Seattle approach. It was really cold and windy though. We got back inside the car.

Oh, and get this. You go through customs, right? Well they ask you a bunch of stupid questions. Like "what do you think you're doing coming into our country, bitch?" only they word it differently and ask it five times. Going from Canada back to the U.S. was even worse. First, before we get on the boat we go through customs. They ask if you've bought anything, to which I was about to list off the button, and the coffee, and--but they're only interested in beer and seeds or whatever. They also ask where you live and what you do for a living. Why is that their business? I'm a citizen. You don't need to know what my job is. What if I got layed off? Would you not let me back in the country? So anyway, then you take the boring boat ride all the way back to our fabulous (not) country, and....and....ready for it? And...go through customs. Again. Its like the first customs didn't count. Or like we're in Nazi Germany and they are just playing with us. I wanted to ask why we had to go through this twice, but any deviation from the standard answers just promped more questions. For example, the lady asked where we live, and my friend said "Seattle," but I added a snide "for now" because I don't like the idea of people thinking I'm from Seattle. I'm not going to let people say I'm "from" Seattle until the amount of time I've lived in Seattle is greater than the time I've lived in Philly but a factory of 1.2, at least.

So...but then the lady asked, "oh where are you moving to?" but in a tone indicated she wasn't curious but instead I have to answer. And then I had to say "oh no I just moved here to work for A==== from Philly." Where? "From Philly." Then she asked what I did. "I'm a programmer." Who do you work for? "For A====." Which I had just told her. I think they don't even listen to you--they just want to watch your facial expressions. Next time I go, I'm going to give all the standard answers in once sentence and see if they just ask all the questions anyway. "I did not buy any alcohol or visit any farms I left this morning by ferry to go to a steampunk convention I live in Seattle and I am a programmer." I bet their very next question would be: "why did you go to Canada?" Oh, and she told me to take my hands out of my pockets. She didn't ask what was in my pockets, she just seemed to want my hands out of them. I think they just do that stuff for fun. I felt like Malcom Reynolds dealing to the Alliance in Firefly.

So anyway, my poor friend got to here about why did we go through customs twice?!? the rest of the way home. Except for when I was driving fast to make the next ferry (you should always print a schedule so you know you don't have time to stop for food) and had to tell her about the cop that I thought was behind us. And dude...twice in one day I encountered people driving below the speed limit. Who does that? Twice in a single day. And it wasn't just one or two miles under, it was like ten miles under the limit. We're talking material for a horror movie. There was a little rain, but not where the people were driving under the limit. They were driving slow on dry asphalt on a non-foggy, fairly clear night with no cops in sight. Oh, and Jessica dominates in rain.

Whatever. At least we didn't see any Twilight fans. I don't know if you know this, but the Port Angeles that we took the ferry from--the very same port angeles that I may or may not have taken my first cross-country flight to--is the same port angeles in the twilight books. I actually bought a twilight book for a friend of mine. That was before I read it, or even suspected that anyone could take a lame romance novel and pretend it was about vampires. Thats almost as uncool as driving below the speed limit. Not as bad as not using your turn signals, though, or driving a giant white amphibious tank and running over people at stoplights and not paying for the damage to their cars. I wish there was some small thing I could do every day to harm their business. So far the only practical move with no consequences that would hurt no one is to give everyone on the boat the middle finger. Yeah, I'm not very creative. I mean, you could fill a super soaker with pepper spray and hit the tourists with it, but I think you'd get arrested for that. Also, super soakers are only designed for water, and using other substances allegedly damages the firing mechanisms.

Oh, I don't know if I told you this: the one girl who works at the office that I thought hated me, but then briefly thought liked me because someone kept leaving notes in my mailbox telling me I had a package when I didn't, for which the only explanation is she likes me or some idiot can't tell the difference between a 6 and a 0, and who also said "hey you" to me but who definitely still has a boyfriend so I don't ever want to talk to her again, told me that those boats have plugs in them. All you have to do, actually, is just get them out into the water and uplug something and the duck boats sink on their own. No drilling...no reverse-bilge pump. Just unplug...whatever. Maybe I could take a ride on the duck boat, and leap forward and yank the plug up. People would remember my face though. And the water is probably cold. I could wear a wetsuit under my clothes. You could only get away with that, max, like three times though before they really caught on to you. Those bastards have way more than three boats. I think what I really need to do is find all the other people they hit and do a one-night boost. Sink every boat in the same operation. Can you imagine an extended car chase through Seattle's waterfront area? But instead of an old Mustang it is Nicolas Cage in a giant white amphibious tank? The aged duck-boat thief comes back from retirement because a duck boat runs over his little brothers parked car. They could call it "Gone in 60 minutes."

Yeah, I have a wish right now. I wish you would run your lame duck tourist trap boat business into the ground and die in a fire while getting run over by sports cars with gaudy spoilers.