My Story about the Skyward Book Signing

[+ILuvHats he/him]

A bit on the late side, to be sure, but I've always meant to post this story. The unfortunate tale of my first book signing.

Last year was my first year in college, and my thought process was "Wow, I'm totally independent now! I can do anything I want, go anywhere I want." And what better way to celebrate my newfound liberty than by attending my first book signing? Of course, being the hopelessly disorganized person I am, I spent all of 5 minutes planning how to get to the event using public transportation. "It's a two hour drive. I've got a 3 hour window to get there and a GPS. What's the problem?" How wrong I was .

First thing that went wrong; my lab right before the signing, which normally ended 30 minutes early, instead ended late. Then I waited 30 minutes for a train since I didn't realize the time estimates Apple maps gives you for getting to a destination don't account for how long you have to wait for trains/buses to arrive. Then I missed my second train by two minutes. The train hadn't even left yet, but for some reason they had this weird policy where they stopped letting people board 10 minutes before departure. After switching to a different train and finally arriving at the town where the book signing was, I had another epiphany. That bus schedule I'd glanced at online? Yeah, turns out it was wrong, and there weren't any more buses running today. So, I ran 2-3 miles to get to the signing, and arrived 45 minutes late, just in time to catch the last 5 minutes of open questions with Brandon. But the troubles didn't stop there. Oh no.

After the book signing was over, I walked back to the train station. And guess what. The last train had left. I probably could have made it if I'd run to the train station, but silly me, I forgot to check the train schedule after leaving the signing! So I was stranded. With a dead phone battery.

I ended up wandering about for a few hours looking for somewhere to get out of the cold. Eventually I found a bar that was open and got some dinner. Then when that closed at 2 am, I wandered around until I found a Menards. So, I went in there, curled up in the corner of a changing stall, and prayed nobody would throw me out for loitering. Come around 5:45 am, I trudged back to the train station and got on the first train of the day. Then I fell asleep. When I woke up, turns out the train had gone all the way to my stop in Chicago and turned around. I was back in the same town I had been trying to leave for 12 hours. By the time I finally made it back to my dorm room, it was 12 pm the day after the book signing. The only positive of this whole experience was that I was stuck with nothing to do except read a new Sanderson book. And that's the story of how I finished Skyward 14 hours after I got it, before I even got back from the signing.

[Lunu’anaki he/him]

I've been there. Public transportation sucks 

Glad you had that book though!!