Proof at last that we were at Star Wars Celebration III

One Wednesday evening last April, Lisa and I packed up our little Corolla for the longest road trip we'd ever attempted, and drove off into the dusk. Destination: all four days of Star Wars Celebration III in Indianapolis. The route we'd plotted would take twelve hours driving time into southwestern Virginia, then up into West Virginia and across what came to be the monotony of Ohio before reaching Indiana... practically all backroads. This was gonna be whole new uncharted territory to us.

It was around midnight when we were headed toward the West Virginia/Ohio state line on US 35, and we saw a sign that said the town of Point Pleasant was 7 miles ahead. And that got my mind reeling: "Point Pleasant, Point Pleasant, Point Pleasant... where have I heard that name before?" Not the Point Pleasant in New Jersey where I have family, but I was sure I'd heard of "Point Pleasant, West Virginia" somewhere...

And then it hit me, and I remembered how it was that I knew of Point Pleasant. And I immediately wondered if we would be going over that bridge. Sure enough a little while later we crossed it. And I told Lisa that on the way back I wanted to take a picture of the bridge.

So a few days ago TNT was showing The Mothman Prophecies, a movie with a lot of problems but more or less is based on something that supposedly really happened: the Mothman sightings that occured in the late 1960s. The whole story took place around Point Pleasant. And the bridge we took over the Ohio River was the Silver Memorial Bridge: the one built to replace the original bridge that collapsed in 1967, claiming the lives of 46 people. The bridge you see in the movie is the Silver Bridge that's there now.

Well, seeing that the movie was on reminded me that after all these months, I've still not posted any pictures from Star Wars Celebration III on this blog. The thing of it is there were so many pictures that it would have made a single post too unwieldy. That and the fact that I was just wiped out from too much Star Wars to have put them up immediately after we got back, and then other things took bigger priority. Maybe sometime soon I'll find somewhere to store them all online and then just make a link to that from this blog, but I can provide some photographic evidence that we did, indeed, make the pilgrimage.

This was taken the first day of Celebration III: that's Deborah, a very dear friend from Texas (and super-talented costume-maker and jewelry designer) and me (note the Forcery t-shirt I'm wearing). Deborah is in her Mara Jade costume. I'm holding the lightsaber that I built for her three years ago for the costume she wore at Celebration II: it's a replica of Luke Skywalker's original saber...

This next one was taken Sunday morning, the last day of Celebration III: Lisa and me in the Artoo Builders Club room, along with Artoo-Detoo and See-Threepio. Notice that we (and Deborah in the above pic) are wearing the four-day passes - the ones with Darth Vader printed on them - around our necks. I've also got my lightsaber - the one I built for that crazy marriage proposal stunt in 2001 - clipped to my belt...

Several hours later, on the journey back home, we pulled the car to the side of the road on the Ohio side of the state line. Looming ahead of us through the fog and light rain was the Silver Memorial Bridge. We both got out of the car and Lisa took this photo of me with the bridge in the background...

And there's probably a hundred more pics that we took, and someday I am gonna find the time to get those hosted probably. But if not, at least there's now proof that we came, we saw... and then we came back :-)