, our stopover to get to Alberta was in the Sin City. And we have plenty of time to spend there, 7 hours to our next flight. But we couldn’t make plans as we would have wanted, since our next flight was with an airline that was closed until 2 hours before our flight, so we had to carry with us our bags (and being fursuiters, we didn’t have few or light bags). We tried to hang out with friends, but the problem was the time (it was a business day) or the space on the car. And other problem it was we couldn’t take an Uber or Lyft, they didn’t allow us to take all our luggage in their cars, for “safety” (it is the first city in the world that they don’t allow us that), and they were pushing us to order an Uber XL (3 times their cost). We only wanted to take a fancy dinner at the MGM buffet (ah, and we couldn’t use the shuttle bus of the MGM because… it costed, and we didn’t have a booking with them). So we had to wait those 7 hours at the Vegas airport. A bummer.
That was not our only bad experience at Las Vegas airport. We decided to travel with Swoop Airlines (Had you ever heard about this airline?), a very cheap flight from Las Vegas to Edmonton, but the problem of traveling with cheap airlines, is that they always try to charge you for anything. And that was our case, even if we had paid for our checked bags and our carry on (oh yeah, they charged for the carry on!), she noticed our personal items were wider than allowed, so she went out her desk to check better our items, and she noticed Koidel was carrying an extra bag with him (it was not even big, most of airlines don’t mind, I also always carry with me an extra waist bag), she told him that was not possible, and that he couldn’t take that inside any other bag anymore, so she made him pay for an extra checked bag. Then she forgot about how wide were our personal items and she just let us go, it was like she didn’t really mind about the policies, she just wanted to charge us extra for anything.
Fur-Eh starts.
I can say our experience in Las Vegas was the only bad experience we had during our trip.
We arrived to Edmonton, Alberta. Canada. But it was just to sleep, we had arrived too late. During our first day (in Thursday) we went to the West Edmonton Mall (the biggest mall in America) with Munchkin,
Raqoon, Gusty and FlurryPaws. It is so big!! It is a mall with an inside waterpark, an inside amusement park, a hockey rink, a pirate ship, show of sea lions, and a two floor record store. Koidel and I planned to go again on Monday to the waterpark and the amusement park.
After opening ceremonies, I had some few extra time to check around before the first panel I had a participation: The Fur-Eh Tonight Show. I wanted to check a Tim Hortons that, according Google Maps, it was very close to the hotel, despite that on the satellite view, it was a wasteland, I thought “Maybe this is not an updated satellite picture! It must be a new building”. Nop, it was indeed a wasteland. The Tim Hortons was a lie. https://twitter.com/panda_paco/status/1139351264607666176
Good is that later, I discovered that the hotel offered free coffee, and even better than Tim Horton’s.
The Fur-Eh Tonight Show started, hosted by Bcbreakaway, but almost nobody was there, I could see around 5-10 persons in the audience, good thing about it is that I was less nervous to talk in the microphone. But I wished more people could have attended there. Then I realized it was for the game where the Raptors were playing (and they won). So all the convention was on the bar, watching the game.
It is strange how different is the community from North-America to the Latin-American. Here in Mexico, if you ask to most of furries, they hate sports or anything related to watch games on TV, it is something they relate to “normies”, it is another different world. But in North-America I know that there are lots of furries who are very fanatic of sports, teams, stats, mascoting (I’m personally fan of mascots, I think is the only thing I like from sports).
Barley, Poutine and Creating Crazy Creatures
The second day started and it was first Artist Alley day. The place assigned for Artist Alley was a little hidden, only people who were really looking for us, or those we were attending events on the main stage during those hours, could find us. But I could hear that last year was worse, that it was a really hidden small room. Some memories from Furrnion came back to my mind. Fortunately I could fill the slots and I have work to do during those hours. Almost nobody showed up to buy merch but at least I was busy with some drawings. The best of that day was when I could finally meet Barley, it had been years since I wanted to meet that silly dog, who is part of my top of favorite fursuits ever. He has been very nice with me online, I enjoy chatting and he even has mailed me some gifts, which I appreciate a lot. But this time, finally having him in person, it was something amazing. He gave me a big cookie and a new badge, which was absolutely lovely.
Just like with Mausie, I had no idea how I was going to react when the time came to meet Barley, it was true that I almost cried, it was a very great moment.
I had paid for the Supersponsor level, since it was not that expensive as other conventions, and it was good because I received a film clapper, the t-shirt (that the washing machine already ruined it), other cool goodies, but two dinners were included: the poutine social and the guest of honor dinner, and since breakfast was included on the hotel, practically I had free food during the weekend. After Artist Alley, I went to the poutine social, that it was a buffet of poutine, with many kind of gravies to put over the fries. I ate a lot!! And just after the food, I decided to put in my fursuit to play at the inflatable panel, I had no so many energies like I usually have in fursuit, since my tummy was completely full, but I had fun anyways, I played with some furs there, despite it was a very small room for that panel.
It was the time to host my panel “Crazy Drawing Adventure Hour”. I was preparing it 30 minutes before it started, accommodating the tables, chairs, and with the help of the Fur-Eh staff to get some paper sheets and pencils for the attendees. I thought that maybe 8 or 10 people playing with us on the panel were going to be too much, so I only settled 10 chairs. At the time it started the panel, we had more than 25 people playing with us, which was a very decent number, a lot more than I expected, and people were really having fun during the activity. The activity was about creating some characters in three parts, by three different people, but without knowing what exactly the other person had drawn. So one only drew the head, the other the torso, and the last one the feet and tail. The results were so crazy, people were really having fun and laughing for watching the results. The last activity was creating a comic strip with 4 panels, but the stories were unplanned, and the story was going to be created by 4 different people. On the 1st panel, they had to start a story; for the second panel, you give your comic to the person to your right hand, and you were receiving another comic from the person on your left, and you have to continue that story, same with the third; for the 4th panel, you had to conclude a story with 3 previous panels. That way, you could see 4 different stories: the one you started, the one you concluded, and other two that you just made in-betweens. It was so absurd and funny, people seemed to have a blast during it.
It was my first time running that activity, and it is for sure I’ll repeat it on future conventions. At least, it is for sure that I’ll host that activity during Anthro Northwest.
Fursuit Parade
Something I loved from Fur-Eh, is something that also NordicFuzzCon does: to give a break to artist alley and dealers den, so that way the can enjoy the fursuit parade, or be part of it. That was very cool for me because I was planning to interrupt my second working day for an hour to be part of the parade, but it was already scheduled that way.
It was a great fursuit parade, it is an outdoors parade (my 4th fursuit parade outdoors: Anthrocon, Confuror, NordicFuzzCon, and now Fur-Eh), we could see a hare running on the fields, it was my first time seeing a hare, they are really big bunnies! Best of the parade was that Barley was very close to us all the time. I was loving seeing his energy in front of me. That was making me have same energies. Problem with my excess of energies, is that I was losing the fursuit badge that they had given me in the beginning of the parade, some volunteers of the parade had to stop me to tell me I was dropping my badge. And when I was back to my room, I realized I had lost my fursuit badge. Before going back to the Artist Alley, I had to ask to the volunteers of the parade if they had seen a dropped badge, and indeed they did. So I got it back!
Fursuit Games
One of the most fun fursuit games I’ve ever lived happened at Fur-Eh. Huscoon is a great host for the fursuit games. They were simple games, and sometimes improvised, but it was how we made us play them, his funny comments, how he made everyone to participate, including the audience. It was so great. I really loved them. I lost at most of the games, including a very simple game as Simon says (It is not to excuse myself, but it is very hard for me when games involve something with audio related, I’m part deaf so those are very challenging for me). The last game was THAT game that I hate that fursuit games include on their acts: the musical chairs. But very like at BLFC, these musical chairs were very different. But in my opinion, even better than at BLFC, because Huscoon decided to combine the game of the musical chairs with the Hot Potato Game. The potatoes were two inflatable gators. Sadly, I lost the game for the hot potato game, I was having a gator when the music stopped. But I had a lot of fun during those games. And wow, the prices were Disney watches. Honestly I’ve loved when they give special badges to the winners and participants of the games, but wow, giving real prices to the actual winners was awesome. Oh yeah, and points were weird, we had to be making maths in our mind because Huscoon were giving us not exact points on every game, if I had won or I was close to win in a game, I could receive 63 points, 78 points… or even in a game that my team was second place, all of us received 342 points. I was really adding all those numbers in my mind, so I can say I ended up with 531 points.
Cutthroat Artist
And then, my 3rd time playing on the Cutthroat artist. I think I’ve explained many times during my journals what a Cutthroat artist is about, but if it is your first time reading my journal, here is very quickly: 4 artists are gonna compete, drawing something that the host of the game requests us in 10 minutes, but we can be buying some sabotages that we can throw to other artist, those sabotages are sold by bidding, with fake money (Nbowa money). The judge, who didn’t see the game and didn’t know which were the sabotages (and don’t care about it) will decide who will be disqualified for the next round, and that way until two artists are left and the judge decides the winner. This particular edition was very interesting because for first time I was competing with my friend Koidel, so we were two Canadians (Eerie Eden and Catmonk Shiro) and two Mexicans. Also something interesting is that I’d had experience playing with Shiro on a previous Cutthroat Artist, throwing him a sabotage and making him to be disqualified on his first round. What had held a grudge against me (a fake one, of course we know this is a game, I admire Shiro’s work, we only joke about how enemies we are for that past experience during that game), so this could have been his revenge.
The game started, and sabotages were not so mean, first sabotage were against me, only being able to work with two random items from a box, which were not too bad, and the other one was against Eerie, she had to complete her drawing with the sheet upside down. Sadly it was Shiro who was chosen to not continue in the game, and this time was not my fault. The second round was drawing a superhero, it was cool that the character who was chosen it was a very cute fox cub, so it was so perfect for my style. Koidel knew it fitted so well for me, so he threw me the first sabotage, that was answering a trivia about Canada, I had to answer 3 correct questions before I could continue drawing. It was awesome that I was chosen for that trivia, because I’m such a nerd of Geography, and most of the questions were about Canadian geography. The first question was what is the province furthest west in Canada, my bad was answering Yukon. Huscoon, who was the one who was asking me those questions, told me that he was feeling so bad to take that answer as wrong, he wanted to take it as good, because indeed, Yukon is the furthest west in Canada, but Yukon is not a province, but a territory, and he was very surprised I knew about Yukon. Second question was what is the province between Alberta and Manitoba, my answer was Saskatchewan, which was funny because I didn’t know how to pronounce it, I said something very weird, but they took it the answer as good, and again, they were surprised that I knew the answer, since they were supposed to be the “hard questions”. Then it was the question what is the animal that is on the 2-dollar coin, that was so easy for me because I love that they have a polar bear (sometimes two polar bears) on their coins. And final question was the easiest, what is the capital of Canada. Maybe they were expecting me to say Toronto, since they know many foreign people think Toronto is the capital of the country, but that was an extremely easy question for me since I know the capital cities of most of the countries in the world, and Canada is not a strange country so is very easy to know that Ottawa is the capital. After the game, they told me that those were the “hard” questions and after those, they were coming the easy questions only to make me keep drawing. Oh wait, I didn’t know the name of the prime minister of Canada, now I know, it is Justin Timberlake (jk). Koidel was the one who was out during that round, so the last round was Mexico vs Canada, and it was going to be challenging since it was against the Guest of Honor. We had to make a hybrid between a tiger and an owl. Well, I was not chosen and it was Eerie who won the game. It was my first time playing this game and not winning, but honestly I had a lot of fun on it.
Dead Dog Party
What? Paco… are you gonna tell us about a dead dog party? Those are usually empty! It is when most of people left the convention and only those who has no room parties or who are not tired yet attend. Honestly I thought it was going to be the case with this one, I have experience with dead dogs on small and medium size furry conventions, like Confuror, Furrnion and ANW, where their dead dog parties were completely empty, only a room with music but nobody in there. Even I remember trying to go to the Anthrocon’s, and it was almost empty, the interesting there was Fox Amoore playing the piano out of that room (one of my good memories of my very first convention).
I was telling Koidel that I wanted to be surprised on this dead dog party, that I wanted to check it out and see many people on there, and it ended up to be the best party of our lives, but we were laughing about that idea because we knew we were going to find an empty room with music. Oh boy, we were really surprised. We found out a room with really good music, some few fursuiters dancing (I can’t say they were too many), and free pizza and wings for anyone. Little by little, people were arriving to the place, the music was getting better, so we decided to suit up, and when we came back to the party, there were too many fursuiters dancing on the dance floor, 90s Eurodance music was sounding (and now the song Saturday night by Whigfield has another meaning for me). I can’t say it has been the best party in my life, as we were joking about, but definitely it has been the best Dead Dog Party I’ve been in. A really good way to end my first convention in Alberta, Canada.
I can say about Fur-Eh, it was an excellent convention, smaller and less crowded than the average of conventions I’m used to attend but definitely numbers are not translated into fun. Fur-Eh was like a big contest TV show, many of the panels and even the charity auctions were treated like the TV contest format, which was really funny. Also it was the convention of the cookies, everyone was giving cookies: Huscoon gave me cookies, Barley gave me a big cookie, people were giving random cookies to all the artists during the alley time, and even fursuiters were giving timbits. I could even see a tray with cookies on a table on the lobby, so people could grab some. It was a very fun time.
After the convention: Edmonton, Banff and Calgary.
I spent 4 days more in Alberta before getting back home, I had the company of Koidel, who was going to remain in Canada after I was gone. We stayed at the convention’s hotel 2 nights more, which was my very first time staying on the same hotel of the convention when there is no convention anymore, it is very depressing to see those places without furries and now with regular people walking around. But we had a great time going to the waterpark and the amusement park that are in the big Edmonton’s mall. Going to the Royal Alberta Museum with bcbreakaway. And going to the Banff national park and then to the Calgary’s zoo with Seylyn, Koidel and Barley (We saw a grizzly bear next to the road!!). It was a very amazing time. Really good company, incredible landscapes, yummy food and feeling lucky for ending up on this amazing community. The furry fandom is the best has happened to me.
Thanks again for reading my journal, I appreciate that I have many readers of my silly adventures. Probably I would have stopped writing all these recaps from long time ago if nobody read them. If you want to see the pictures during this trip (this time I didn’t take too many):
Sorry about forgetting that people might want to visit a Tim Hortons - I would have told you where the nearest two or three were, since some aren't too too far away - even by foot. Well, I suppose by foot depends on your definition - Google Maps says the one at 11940 111 Ave is about an 18 minute walk. There also was one in Kingsway Mall, but I'd recommend against walking there from where the con was held (oh, apparently it's only 19 minutes walking to that one, but it's also through a decent amount of intersections where drivers aren't always paying attention).
Definitely glad to hear you got to check out the Royal Alberta Museum.. I'm hoping to visit it soon myself ^_^;;;
Sounds like it was an awesome con! Sorry about forgetting that people might want to visit a Tim Hor
Ohhhh maaannn you came up here to Canada and had a good time I'm so happy for you dude. I've never been out west to Alberta, furthest I've been is Ontario, but Edmonton is pretty awesome. I'm so glad you had fun, reading your journal was touching seeing how your experience in my country played out. Just super happy you met new people and got to enjoy new sights and foods
Ohhhh maaannn you came up here to Canada and had a good time I'm so happy for you dude. I've never b
One problem with Dead Dog parties in the USA is that a lot of people have to get back to work (and usually, drive there), so leave early. In the UK, ConFuzzled's Dead Dog is packed by the end (although it does take some time to get started).
I've also been in one of those that literally had me swinging a glowstick around for a few hours, at an early IndyFurCon. Kind of a shame, since it was a nice room!
One problem with Dead Dog parties in the USA is that a lot of people have to get back to work (and u
