Meeting Travis Gibb
Coming to the beaches of Florida
I had such high hopes about this part of the trip. For starters, I got a chance to meet Travis Gibb. Travis and I have talked online in the past, but this was a cool opportunity to meet up and curiousity was there.
So here today is my impressions of Travis Gibb.
Will be working on getting pictures on all this soon. Promise. As soon as I get a chance to fix my phone, I’ll give this a crack.
It took a moment as our gps’ dragged us to different starbucks on the same street, but we finally connected. Online Travis is a great dude that gets very passionate when it comes to his undying love of Jonathan Hickman (I still maintain Hickman is overrated but I digress.)
Travis is a good dude. The moment he walked in he presented me one of his comics (which I reviewed for First Comics later on), and we talked. It’s always interesting to see one of the people online for real. You always wonder just what that person is like. Travis is a sweet fellow. I do believe he went to bat for me on everything he could.
He got me a way to Orlando Megacon, and even a job there while I was there to make money. After he took me to a shelter to spend my next two nights. By florida standards it was cold. (By mine, not so much.) That said, I wasn’t going to complain with the settings. The church he took me too was nice, and I got sit there and set up my stuff for sleep.
After Travis left, the curse struck. Well, in all fairness, the curse may have already been there. I was still not quite one hundred percent from Jacksonville, and that condition lingered. My luggage, which had got me this far, started to malfunction. I have a backpack, but I also have a seperate luggage for carrying my equipment. The handle that let me walk with that luggage was creaking, and the next day I woke up it locked itself inside.
My backpack is fifty pounds. With that luggage I was carrying an additional 25. I can do it, but it slowed progress. Now with Melbourne being a small town with Christian leanings, thrift stores were closed. I had to replace it with the most expensive thing I can buy because Target doesn’t do discounts the same way a good will or value village would have. My first strike with the curse was right here.
I should talk about Melbourne here, besides that. It’s a pretty place. It’s adjacent to Palm Bay which is a ritzier version of Melbourne. Melbourne’s downtown is pretty cool, and it links to the beach, and also has a decent homeless shelter. Think of Melbourne as the working class part of the area and Palm Bay the ritzier and you’ll get an accurate depiction of the area.
Orlando Megacon was about ten days away. I had to kill time to get there. My plan was to beach it up. The one great thing about the area was the transit system. For jsut a couple of bucks you could go from city to city if needed. It could almost by itself get you to Orlando, which is kind of wild. I had time though. I thought I’d sleep one beach at a time.
After the cold officially ended in Palm Bay, I decided that was how I was going to do it. Beach to beach. How bad could it be, right?
Well, turns out, it can be quite horrible actually. But’s that’s next time.
Travis, you’re a good dude. You deserve what success you get, and I’m rooting for you. You should be proud of what you’ve done, and I know good things are coming for you in comics. Keep going bud.