I know I worried in my previous post that I’d used up all the serendipity I was allowed for 2011 last Saturday, but it seems I had a little more left Thursday morning, because as I waited for my 8:20 a.m. United flight out of Dulles, who should appear at the gate but Daryl Gregory. Unlike the old days when I could hang out in the aisle and have conversations with friends in different parts of the plane other than in my own seat, we couldn’t talk our way to San Diego, but it still made it feel as if the con had started on the East Coast rather than the West.

The oddest thing about arriving in San Diego is that except for a brief visit back in 1984, every trip I’ve taken there has been during Comic-Con, when the city has been packed with con attendees, some more obvious than others. World Fantasy is small, and so doesn’t have that affect on the place. Who were all these normies I was surrounded by? Give me back my cosplayers!

I picked up my rental car and headed over to the WFC, where I grabbed lunch in the con suite, which so far has seemed both well stocked and well run. Then a quick tour of the dealers room, a blur of schmoozing, and it was off to the opening ceremonies, which if you missed, you can watch below.

I’d planned dinner at Lucha Libre Gourmet Tacos, the first step in my Man v. Food tour of San Diego. I started accruing willing victims. First Eugene Fischer, then Tempest Bradford, then—where the heck did those dozen or so Clarionites Eugene knows come from? Luckily, there were more cars than mine, and so we made it there without all having to squeeze into my rental.

Lucha Libre isn’t that large, so we took up half of the interior of the place, but the tacos were great (I recommend the Surf & Turf Taco—”Marinated Steak, Shrimp, & Avocado Slices, Smothered in a Special Sauce”), the decor was wonderfully bizarro, and the Mexican wrestling movie that was playing was a revelation. (Believe me—you’ll want to see Santo y Blue Demon vs. Dracula y El Hombre Lobo.)

And if you arrive wearing a luchador mask, you get 10% off your meal! Sadly, I’d left mine home …

As for the rest of the evening, there was no serendipity there. I showed up for Eileen Gunn’s 10:30 reading to find no Eileen Gunn (I later learned that she didn’t arrive at the con until an hour or so later) and then a group of my friends surrounded me and performed an intervention, insisting that I not head over to Tijuana as planned. (Party poopers!) So I partied until my East Coast brain could no longer stand it, and then crashed.

But not in Tijuana.