YSA Conference 2007 Day 1: Road trip, Road Trip!!

Well as your aware the plan was Engineseer and I were going to be taking grumpys car up to manchester. But as so often with YSA plans not everything went according to plan.Whilst leaving work my phone started to ring with a number I didn't recognise. It turned out to be the one and only Fraggle!! Yes Fraggle was going to the conference as well and he was travelling past geektown in his car all on his lonesome, and wanted to know if we had room in our car for him. Well if there was room for me there certainly was room for him. So we said yes, secure in the knowledge that there couldn't be a more geeky car heading up to the conference!

The only small downside was that I had wanted to leave early to miss the traffic but we now had to wait for Fraggle to arrive. Which he did by 4.30. I was already in the car waiting so after a quick parking of their cars on our drive and a load up of the 'geekmobile' we were off.

One immediate problem was the location of the lighter socket in the car for the powering of Engineseer's satnav. After a bit of awkward jiggery pokery we were able to sort it. We made good time initially. Until we heard Engineseer utter the fateful words " It's late in the afternoon, the traffic looks like it's easing up now" D'oohh!! I think it was shortly after that we saw a bad accident happen just in front of us. We couldn't stop to help though as there was nowhere safe to stop and we would have just added to the confusion. It was about ten minutes after this we ran into a traffic jam which kept us to a slow walking pace for the best of a hour!

As we closed in on Manchester Engineseers satnav came into it's own and we were able to avoid a repeat of the magical mystery tour of last year. We pulled into the carpark after seven. So it had been a very long trip. Before you ask we can not speak of what was spoken. There was one set rule, what was said in the car, stays in the car!

We wandered off to find where we had to register and immediately some differences came apparent. Firstly there were no 'goody bags this year'. I.e no CD, no pen, no keyring, no colour map/leaflet of the campus and no id cards with our name on with coloured ribbon to go round our necks. There was a black and white photocopied sheet with a map on one side and schedule on the other and instead of a card we got one of those coloured bands that you get at events which go round your wrist and you have to cut off! As we had to keep them on, you can imagine how fun the weekend got when trying to wash and shower etc!

A initial look at the schedule produced some laughs. Peer group scripture study every day at 7am! We found that idea highly amusing as some YSA the previous year had trouble getting up in time for breakfast which ran till 9am! So probably not going to happen for a lot of people! One thing that we did notice was that there were a lot fewer YSA around. ( engineseer estimated in the region of around 250 less then last year) The area we were in to register in last year was standing room only. This year, well see for yourself;

Half of it was boarded off, and there was floor space for things such as twister and jenga! Some other differences were also noticable. The schedule was definitely more spirtually orientated. There was no dance but there was a 'fair' which included bouncy castles outside and inside computer games, face painting and dressing up like a clown and throwing cocanuts at tins ( can't remember what that was called).

However later on they did clear the 'fair' away and started what I believe was line dancing?.

After registering we went off to find our rooms. Engineseer was in the same block of halls that I was in last year. Fraggle and I were in Richmond park which meant we didn't have to walk far to carry our gear from the geekmobile. Also they were all ensuite rooms as well, so double yah! We soon realised that the tower was being used by us this year. Which meant it look very dark and foreboding every night as it was empty. It seemed to be going for a 'tower of mordor' look. All that seemed to be missing was the eye at the top :-)

Apparently pizza was arriving but in small quantities. So as you can imagine with YSA round, you blinked and it was gone! So engineseer lead the expedition to go and aquire food from one of the numerous fast food outlets across from the campus. As the below photos prove we did find food. In a nice little kebab shop as it turns out. Which for a kebab shop seemed to serve a dizzying aray of other foods.

Thus feeling refreshed we decided to head back to the main site and wandered around catching up with a few people here and there signing up for classes etc. Fairly soon Engineseer and I both decided to call it a night. I was tied from all the driving and had a feeling that I was going to be needing all of the sleep I could get pretty soon.

I wasn't wrong!