4:00 PM: After a 9 hour drive through blindingly hot weather (and not to mention countless hours of torture from one nameless little sister *You're going to a Queen convention???*) we had made it. My whole year had been centered around getting my mom to take me (and my friend Molly) to Breakthru 2001. Molly and I (my name is Katie for those of you who don't know) jumped out of the car, giddy with excitement. "We're finally here!" we screamed and jumped about, not actually believing we could be. We come from a very Queen-deprived village, so anything remotely related to the group makes us nutty. BTW, Molly has ME to thank for her little Queen obsession. About April of we were on our way back from a volleyball game and she was sitting in front of me. Of course, I had Bo Rhap on full blast and I thought it would be funny to put it on the opera part and scare her. Well, it didn't work. She ended up obsessed like me. Funny how things turn out like that. Anyway, back to the story. Going into the hotel we saw a hotel room window with Queen posters hanging proudly and we knew we had arrived. This was our shining moment, our Holy Grail, something we worked for a long, long time to get to. I don't know about Molly, but I had a hard time keeping my "cool" as my mom checked in. She finally finished and we made our way up to our room, bags in tow. It was a pretty nice room considering I only saw it 12 hours out of the weekend total. Oh well. After settling in (and brushing our teeth) we went back down to ground floor and headed toward ballroom's 3 & 4. That's where we found out they weren't ready yet (not until 5:00) so, like any normal person, we went to the bar. Molly, my sister and I had Shirly Temple's and my mom had a glass of Red Wine. We sat there waiting until 5:00 (we had 45 mins to go) and drinking our little drinks. Needless to say, it was a bit of a de-energizer. It wasn't totally pointless, though. All around us were people wearing cool Queen t-shirts and talking, DUH, about Queen. We listened in on a few conversations and people were saying how they didn't like this tour as much as their other tour. We almost fell off our chairs. These people had actually been to a concert and were talking about it as if it were nothing at all!!! Molly and I had spent countless hours imagining what it would be like to go to one of their concerts or meeting one of them. These people actually had and were keeping their cool. If I had met one of them or seen one of their concerts, I wouldn't shut up!! But that's just me. Around 4:30 Jacky showed up (with no shoes and a Goldmine magazine) and sat down with a group of Queen fans about 10 feet from us. Molly and I were awestruck. We had just seen Jacky on the T.V. just the other day!!! Now she was here, 10 feet in front of us. She had been closer to Queen than we would ever get! This was getting better...

5:00 PM: Finally, it had started. After we had signed up and grabbed our goody-bags (very cool stuff) we snatched 4 chairs in the front row. My mom and my sister wanted to leave for dinner since we had 2 hours, but you couldn't have dragged Molly and I out of there for anything. Well, if Roger Taylor was giving a strip show, yeah, we would have left, but really almost nothing else. We got up a couple times to check out the posters on the wall, the cakes, and of course, the AWESOME auction items. There was a Roger Taylor shirt (I soooo wanted to smell it, but I wasn't sure if I would be thrown out or not), a Roger Taylor drumstick (battered and signed!), a Brian May shirt (signed and a bit dirty), and a pair of short-shorts from the clog-man himself. They read "Shorts a little short". They really were short!! There was also other items (Namely, a John Deacon glass, a signed Christmas card by all 4 of them, and a SINFULLY cute picture of Roger in the 70's) but those really stood out. After drooling-um-I mean, checking over the auction items, we sat back down and listened to the music and watched the audio-less Roger Taylor solo-videos. Trust me, they were still good! I'm not sure exactly when my Mom and sister returned, because I was too busy watching Roger....

7:00 PM: This was the part where they showed us the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction and several British news clips relating to it. I had already seen it, staying up 2 hours past my bedtime to watch it way back in March, but Molly hadn't. After watching those, we were welcomed to the convention and they made announcements. Can't quite remember what they were, but I'm sure you don't care....Anyway, after that came the good part - welcome messages!!! First they showed a couple old ones from Brian, then a couple old ones from Roger (In one he was wearing a Red breastplate....) and then one made especially for us from Brian!! That was too cool. Besides the video's we had games (ex. Who came the farthest? Who is the oldest Queen Fan? etc.).

8:00 PM: Viewing of Auction Items

8:30 PM: Since Molly and I had already seen the auction items, we just sat and talked about (give you one guess) Queen. Then the auction started. This was great fun, even though I had NO money. Well, that's a lie, I had $25, but what could I buy with that? Zip, Zilch, Zero, that's what. Oh well, I had fun being extremely envious of ERIN who bought EVERYTHING I wanted. Ooh, I envy people who have money to spend like that (she spent $1,200 on Roger's "wood!"). I nearly broke down in tears when she bought the picture I was worshipping. But, oh well, all is forgiven (at least you better hope, Erin!! j/k). Anyway, at least I got something. My mom, my wonderful mother, my gracious and lovely mother (ahem, SUCKUP!), bought me an EXCELLANT magazine from 1974 with an article on Queen (the front page was the best with a picture of Freddie in tiny little white satin shorts and a wide-open shirt!). I never thought I would get anything at the prices they were going for, but I did! I was in shock. Freddie just looked so...SEXY! Sorry..heh. Another fun aspect of the auction was when Jacky would yell "Do we have any John fans out there?" and I would be 1 of 2 people screaming. I was the loudest, of course. Then, she would yell "Do we have any Roger fans out there?" and many would scream, but not as loud as me and Heather (BTW, Heather sat next to me practically the whole convention). Jacky actually pointed at us once and said "There are a couple of Roger fans!" Fun stuff...

10:30 PM: After the auction we stood up to stretch our legs. Ooh! This weekend was not for people who couldn't sit for more than 3 hours at one time! About this time I went over to Jacky and introduced myself as the little American girl who had been bugging her with e-mails (and trust me, I was!). She remembered and we talked for a bit before I asked her when we should change for the mime contest. She said that we should change right now and she left to go make an announcement. I told Molly, and she and I booked it out of there. I was pretty nervous. I didn't know that the mime contest was to be held in front of everyone! I definately had second thoughts about wearing my John Deacon costume in front of all them, but I put in on anyways. It didn't matter how stupid I looked, as long as it was in front of people like me! I mean, Queen fan's all know that John Deacon has no fashion sense, right? Anyways, when it finally started, I was (of course) the only John impersonater up there. There were 2 Roger's, 2 Brian's, and about 4 Freddie's. I took my place right of the Roger's like John, and threw my heart into it. I thought I did pretty good and Molly kept telling me how awesome I was. Unfortunately, nobody who mattered thought so, because I didn't make it to the finals. It was fun to mime John though. Unfortunately, I was stuck in his clothes (they were modeled after the Wembly outfit) until I went back to the hotel room. Oh well.

11:00 PM: Karaoke. I'm not even going to tell you that I didn't sing (I didn't want to KILL everybody!), but there were some pretty good singers out there. We didn't get to all of them, but that was a good thing because we were fading fast. After getting up at the butt-crack of dawn and driving 5/6 hours, we weren't exactly bursting with energy. We did have a bit of a rush during the events, but after the mime contest, I cooled down. We went back up to the room at 11:45.

12:00-2:00 AM: Molly and I stayed up to rip her fabric for her costume and do a test wrap. (She was Roger from Radio GaGa and looked GREAT thanks to ME, if I do say so myself....and I do.) It took us so long, that I though when we finished, it would be time to go back to the ballroom for the next day's activities! But, we finished around 2:00 and went to bed. Our first day ROCKED and it felt like we had already been here for 3 days! The energy went on to the next day....