Above you see the video of the epic road trip your humble blogger took two weekends ago. In just under half an hour I take you from Dunbar to Caryville, Tennesee, to Calhoun, Georgia, into Atlanta for JoeLanta, back up to Richmond, Kentucky and then on to Columbus, Ohio for PowerCon and MEGO Meet.

I intended to have this video ready for you a week ago, but the trip took a lot out of me, which you can probably tell near the end of the video, and it took a while to clear enough time to actually edit the thing.

In fact, you’ll get to see your PopCulteer go through several wardrobe changes (the trip took five days), a few different hats and glasses, and astute viewers ought to be able to see where  my Myasthenia Gravis flared up and made me all squinty-eyed. Also, I messed up when I did the title screen you see above. We actually left on the afternoon of August 9.

It was a fun trip, but we’ll never do another like it again. 1,200 miles on the road in five days is just too much. By the time we hit PowerCon we were basically DOA and only lasted a couple of hours. Cramming this much into one long weekend basically meant that everything was a blur.

I do have loads of leftover video from JoeLanta and PowerCon, and you’ll probably get a couple of “raw footage” clips in the coming weeks. I also still have a video in progess from The Kentuckiana GI Joe Toy Expo back in July that I need to finish, plus I’ll have a short video of Chris Dortch’s amazing USS Flagg Modification job.

But for now we have the above travelogue, which is scored with copyrighted music, so I had to post it in an unusual way to avoid torching my YouTube account. Hopefully that doesn’t create any technical issues. If it does, let me know in the comments and I’ll try to fix it. (Update: I’ve switched out the original video with a smaller file that should play much more smoothly).

Below we have a few teaser photos, but there are many more photo essays in the pipeline. Just be patient.

You can expect a photo essay and short video devoted to Chris Dortch’s USS Flagg upgrade project (and book) next week.

Just a sample of the cool toys for sale at JoeLanta.

At some point we need to do an in-depth interview and photo essay with this vendor who specializes in Six Million Dollar Man stuff from Kenner. Much of it is autographed.

I think this was the Brentdollz table at MEGO Meet/PowerCon. We really need to go to ths show sometime when we can get the full effect, instead of showing up halfway through the final day.

Had I not been exhausted, I may have succumbed to the pull of collecting these gems. In fact, you can see me in the background snapping photos.

Impressive as hell, and I don’t even know what they are because by this point both of us were beyond exhausted.

Obligatory Rudy standing in front of Buc-ee’s wearing a Cocaine Bear shirt photo.