VB Nats and Cape May

Hello all. As many of you may remember I starting up with the scale modeling again to pass the time after Peter was born. As you may know I'm also a joiner. I either get into things 100% or 0%. So being into modeling 100% I joined a national modeling organization. This past half week their National Convention was held in Virginia Beach, VA. We had a nice drive down the DelMarVa and over the Cheasepeake Bay Bridge and into Virginia Beach. We stayed in the Double Tree Hotel which was next door to the convention hall. Only a slight inconvenience was that the hotel was about 8 looong blocks from the beach ... just out of walking distance. But driving the 2 minutes down there was like driving into a cross between Greenwich Village and the old (pre-casino) Atlantic City.

There was street musicians, and lots of people walking up and down the boardwalk as well as Atlantic Ave. Very interesting and very entertaining. There was also a lot of delicious places to eat including the Abbey Road Pub, and Fishbones restaurant. It was at Fishbones where we met up The Schorry's, our friends from Cincinnati. Rob Schorry, a fellow space modeler, (space geeks to Betty) ;-) from the Yahoo Group and we met up a number of times for the seminars. The Group even had it's own seminar to discuss what we've been doing and also as a reunion. I also had the pleasure of meeting Mat Irvine. Mat was the special effects guy for the BBC for such shows at Dr. Who, Red Dwarf and a number of others. He also worked on a little biut of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Anyway, after dinner, we ended the night with a nice walk along the promenade. Of course Peter gets tired and who has to carry him the rest of the way back to the car?? ;-)

We also hit a couple of attraction in between the modeling seminars and trips to the contest room and vendor room.

BTW, to see more about the convention check out the IPMS/USA site. I was also on the photography cmte., so some of the images you see were taken by me. I told you I was a joiner! ;-)

But anyway we made it to Motor World, which was a go cart racing track. We thought there was only 2 tracks that Peter was tall enough to drive on (it all goes by height) but in fact there were a number more. We started off on the kiddie ride, which was quite slow and he finished the ride looking as bored as can be. But then progressed to a ride that went quite fast in a figure 8 shape. Peter and another kid must have raced each other 5 or 6 times.

Here he is in the pits hooping the attendant will start his car before the other kid come around the track.

The other nearby attractiuon was the Virginia Beach Aquarium. Even though parts of it were under cdonstruction, the place is extensive. Besides the local aquarium fare, they also had a swamp that you could walk thru (on a boardwalk) to see the various plants, birds and oh yes alligators. A very cool time was had by all.

All too soon the Convention was over and it was time to pack up. Normally what we do is take a couple of extra days in the convention city to make it a little vacation for all of us. But originally I had forgotten to add these days in, and when I went to add then later it was too late; the hotel was all booked up. So we decided that since Cape May was on the way home we would spend a few days there. Thius is where the nightmare started and thats another post.