Flight to 221B Con 2026 and Waffle House Time

 Typically, at this time of year, I start writing about the road to the great Sherlock Holmes convention of the last decade, 221B Con in Atlanta. It's a twelve hour drive from Peoria that I typically split into a couple days, but this year . . . this year . . . well, direct flight, anyone?

Flying from a little regional airport into ATL is quite a transition, but for the hour and fifteen minute flight time, descending into the massive rivers of humanity at a Delta hub is not all that bad. The airport shuttles weren't hard to find and very regular and often to the Best Road Marriott. I was safely ensconced in the familiar confines before mid-afternoon after a leisurely morning.

Wandering the hotel a full 24 hours before the actual start of the Canon is always a smorgasbord of encounters. I helped unload TARDIS parts from a trailer, had appetizers with some prominent Sherlockian publishers, got dragged to an imaginary Italian restaurant by a notable Texas Sherlockian, returned to the hotel for some podcasting, then some miso soup and blackberry cobbler in the hotel bar with a world-travelling Sherlockian. 

Eventually, you have to go to bed, and if one wakes up in time and the leader of the 221st Northumberland Waffleers has assigned a time for a Waffle House breakfast, there is an All-Star Special in one's future.

And this time, Friday morning holds one more special Waffle House treat -- a reservations-only tour of the one and only Waffle House museum at the site of the first Waffle House in Avondale.

It's important to note: There is no food served at the Waffle House Museum, even though it is, truly, a Waffle House. 

The Belanger Brothers at the Waffle House Museum

It's a reproduction of the first Waffle House restaurant at the site of the first Waffle House restaurant, the building of which was sold at some point and served as a few other things, including a Chinese restaurant, before being bought by Waffle House to make it their museum.

Tours of the museum have to be arranged, and our guide was the Waffle House archivist and museum curator, Julia Buschman, who told the Waffle House story, answered questions, and scored our scavenger hunt papers after we perused the other side of the museum.

There was even a working jukebox featuring Waffle House related songs.

And, if you successfully completed the scavenger hunt, one of the prizes you could pick was a 45 record of one of the Waffle House songs. 

How could things get any better on such a day? Did someone say "comic book store restaurant/bar?"

"My Parents' Basement"

Lunch at any place subtitled "Your Friendly Neighborhood Comic Book Bar," sitting on its open air patio on a sunny day, is a lovely follow-up to the Waffle House Museum, and when we finally made it back to the hotel for the con to begin, we'd had a pretty great day already.

And 221B Con was yet to come.