Back in 1997, the author posted 12 costume pictures from two days of the event. In 2002, the author posted around 600 costume images from Friday and Saturday before rushing to Indianapolis for Sunday's Formula One race.

Apologizes for those whom the author bumped while rushing out of the elevator on Saturday night, but he was in a hurry to meet a series of deadlines to get to the airport on Sunday morning.

Here's how it goes: after the one-hour fashion show (one of the quickest ever) ends at 9:30 p.m., the author heads out of Hall C and sets up his portable office at one of the concourse tables that AWA used for registration. Plug in the laptop PC and bring out the PCMCIA card adapter. The 256-megabyte compact flash card comes out of the Canon D30 and goes into the computer to transfer 407 picture files to the hard drive. While waiting for the files to copy (slower than the author would like), start editing the pre-produced awards page template to reflect the trophies handed out a few minutes earlier.

When all of the files have been copied, use Thumbs Plus to make thumbnails, then select 164 files and copy them to one of the nine temporary directories on the hard drive. Use Irfanview to rotate and resize the files, then go back to Thumbs Plus and enter the Web Page Wizard to create the HTML files for the fashion show pictures. Change the picture on the link from the AWA pictures index page to the awards page.

At the same time, listen to some poor guy who seemed to have had too much to drink, and watch costumed fans wander up and down the concourse. Others head down the 400-foot distance to a group of vending machines, only to find they don't work. Make change for another person who wanted four quarters for a dollar so he could try to use one of those machines.

Finish creating the web site files, pack everything back in the backpack, stroll down the convention center concourse into the hotel lobby and ride upstairs. Get back into the room and unpack the laptop again. Connect power supply and phone line, dial up the online access number (no high-speed access in this room) and make an Internet connection. Start Eudora to check E-mail, a web browser to check Formula One qualifying results and the winner of the Busch series stock car race from Kansas that the author briefly viewed earlier in the afternoon, and also start the FTP client. When the FTP connection is done, select the web site files to upload. While that transfer is underway, start moving camera equipment from the backpack to the camera bag, put two camera batteries and four AA batteries in their chargers to recharge them for the next day's picture taking, clear the desk of the day's accumulated junk and toss it into the suitcase, move that junk out of the way and pull the next day's clothes out of the suitcase, set the alarm clock for 4 a.m. on Sunday, and try to copy the day's pictures to a CD-R.

Laptop is doing too much and two disks are turned into coasters. Author figures what he did wrong and waits for the file transfer to finish.

11 p.m.: sleep. 4 a.m.: alarm clock goes off as scheduled. Author wore up 15 minutes earlier.

Finish burning the CD-R, check E-mail and find that a fan already has asked for larger versions of pictures posted a few hours earlier on the site. Take batteries out of their chargers and stow them in the camera bag. Make sure the Chobits plushie and the End of Evangelion DVD are in the right place.

Into the bathroom where the toilet never flushed properly all weekend. Shower and shave, dry off, put on the day's clothes, stuff everything in the suitcase and lean on it kind of hard to make sure it closes. Close up the backpack and laptop. Make final sweep of the room to check for overlooked objects. Leave room. See two AWA fans in the hotel lobby at 5:55 a.m., check out and tell clerk the toilet never worked properly.

Get to the airport. Early departure strategy works when there is no line. Security check doesn't empty the author's camera bag as happened the previous week in Denver. Get on the plane. Sleep.

Wake up over Louisville. Guess the airliner's approach vector to the Indianapolis airport and guess wrong. Wait for the airliner to find a gate with a full ground crew. Wait for the rest of the passengers to force their way off the pane. Casually stroll to baggage claim and find suitcase was first off the plane.

Drive through light traffic to the industrial park south of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, pay $10 to park in a gravel lot. Walk to the track and start taking pictures of race cars, noting that the author is one of three photographers in a row using D30 cameras.

Leave the track with 30 laps to go to beat the traffic out of the U.S. Grand Prix, thereby missing the controversial finish where Michael Shumacher pulled over at the last turn to let Rubens Barrichello win the race.

The closest that AWA had to that USGP finish came during the award presentation for the costume contest. The judges said that a "Morgan" had won an award. A Morrigan costumer (from Darkstalkers) came forward instead, thinking that he (yes, he) had won something, only to have to retreat in disappointment when he told he wasn't a winner. Whatever "Morgan" who actually won something never came forward.

Some things haven't changed in the years since this site's first convention trip. Most of the guests of honor from 1997 are still going to conventions, and there's at least one costumer from that 12-picture page who still goes to events. The big difference is that there are a lot more conventions (around five times as many North American events in 2002 than in 1997), and a lot more people attending them. 

AWA's growth is remarkable when you consider that they have competition they never could have imagined a few years ago. Through schedule changes, the anime convention comes four weeks after DragonCon, one of the largest fandom events in the world. Many people go to both events, but AWA has its own collection of loyal fans who traveled through Friday's rain to College Park. 

AWA has gotten a reputation of bringing people into the convention world, Peter Fernandez, Corinne Orr and Amy Howard-Wilson among them. Their old-time stories about the days of the NBC Red and Blue radio networks and the old days of smoke-filled studios are among the best tales heard at conventions. Orr had another story, not as fortunate, about how she asked for a raise from the people who hired her as the voice of Snuggles the fabric softener bear, and was replaced by a less-expensive actor. Dub actor Brett Weaver responded by asking fans after the fashion show to sign a petition asking Unilever to put Orr back in the bear role.

The young female actors - Monica Rial, Kelly Manison and Kira Vincent-Davis - had more fun as a group than any group of paying fans. All they needed were costumes and they would have been indistinguishable from anyone else.

In 2001, AWA had the the Sheraton Gateway hotel and the Georgia International Convention Center all to itself. In 2002, they had to share the facilities with two other groups. The Probe College Fair was held on Friday and the Southeast Fabric Notions and Crafts Association was on hand from Friday through Sunday (which might have been good news for costumers had it not been a wholesalers-only event).

2001 was the year of the great elevator traffic jam. The four elevators at the Sheraton couldn't keep up with the flood of people trying to get to their room. The author had a simple solution for 2002: don't bother going to the room, just carry everything on your back all day. Sorry for the overloaded backpack. The convention and the hotel had another solution: control access to the elevators on the first and second levels until the Saturday night crush was over.

Regardless of the outcome, 2002 was the last year for AWA in the area just west of Hartsfield International Airport. With the combined hotel and convention center scheduled for demolition to make room for an airport runway, the whole mess was slated to be moved to the infamously non-liberal Cobb County in 2003, not far from the place where AWA was held in 2000. That's the same Cobb County that wants its schoolchildren to rest in the comforting arms of the 17th century by teaching something other than evolution. How will they react when Anime Weekend Atlanta brings the uncompromising, multi-cultural face of the 21st century to their back yards?