Inspired by our command of the situation, John and Josh followed up the hill. Unfortunately, when they came back, neither knew how to come down. John sat down with his hands on the rocks to slow his descent.

"Not like that! Don't slide down like that!"

But he couldn't hear me.

He cut his hands up a lot. Josh tried to find a less steep part of the hill but there really wasn't any. I climbed back up, gave him a quick lesson in hill sliding and he came down relatively unscathed.

Note to self: slate is terrible for climbing.

We got the other radio working and were back on the road … for now. We stopped for gas and eats but generally kept a good pace. other than the rear van still downshifting constantly and wasting gas. It was after we stopped the second time that things got even more interesting. We stopped at a McDonald's to eat (Or was it Burger King? All that grease blends together after a while) and rechecked the van. Of course, now it was leaking transmission fluid as well. Some of the guys went off to buy some more transmission fluid, oil and windshield washer fluid for the sad, broken van. After that, we all left to get gas. That turned sour pretty quickly.

"Why are cars coming at me?"

Namely, we went the wrong way down a one-way street, drove over some guy's lawn to turn around and headed down an alley barely the width of the van to get back on the main street. Fun fun, illegal illegal.

We arrive at the gas station with the rear van nearly a mile behind us. Using our radios to navigate them to our location, they finally catch up and top off the tank as well. A bad omen of things to come appears as their van takes exactly $6.66 worth of gas. We all look at it in disbelief. All the bad stuff that's happened before, now we have Evil Incarnate to deal with. Our trek to Otakon was seemingly damned to failure...

Read 2001: An Otakon Odyssey - Part II here.