Side Trip to Moscow
Aug. 17th, 2015 10:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kevin_standleeBack in the 1980s in Los Alamos, long before Lisa and I met at the 1990 Westercon in Portland, Lisa shared a house for a few years with a friend. They hadn't seen each other in years, but the friend (Elizabeth by name) had moved to northern Idaho, north of Moscow, and we were fortunate to get messages back and forth just in time for us to redo our travel plans from Lewiston to let Lisa go and visit with Elizabeth for several hours.
After checking out of the hotel in Lewiston and refueling the van, Lisa drove us to Moscow, Idaho, where a passerby helpfully shot this group photo of Lisa, me, and![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
travelswithkuma.
Moscow's downtown is a pleasant-looking place. We walked around for a while, and went into the Co-op food store, where we were able to buy a case of the orange sparkling water that Lisa really likes. We then headed north to her friend's house.
When we turned onto the side road that led up to Lisa's friend's house, a coyote ran in front of us and into the field. Lisa stopped and I fumbled with the camera-phone. The coyote stopped and looked back at us for a while until I took the photo, and then ambled away, as if he'd been waiting for me to hurry up and get the shot.
We spent three hours visiting with Lisa's friend, and Lisa came away feeling very happy about the whole thing. Even better was the discovery that Elizabeth still had the Asteroids video game (the arcade model) that Lisa had bought all those years ago and stored with Elizabeth. The machine made the move to Idaho and was stored in the garage. If we can manage to rent a U-Haul trailer and redo our travel plans, on the way back from Worldcon, we'll come by again and see if we can wrestle the console out of the garage and into the trailer. We have enough space in Fernley House to house the game console in our family room, assuming it still works and the mice haven't gotten to it.
We went to Coeur d'Alene for a late lunch/early dinner at Cricket's Restaurant & Oyster Bar, where we both enjoyed the clam linguini. I'm glad I didn't order an appetizer, because we came away plenty full after the main course. From Coeur d'Alene, it was a relatively short drive across I-90 to Spokane, and, 837 miles after we left Fernley, pulled into the Convention Center/Doubletree Hotel parking garage.
The garage has a 6'7" clearance sign at the entrance. Lisa got out and I gingerly pulled forward. Clunk. The wheels of the rolling cart on the roof clip the sign. Lisa walked me forward, and it turned out that while we don't clear the sign, we did clear everything else. And, thanks to arriving two days before the convention started, we found the completely ideal parking space. It's the closest space in the garage to where the Business Meeting and Match Game SF will be, and this makes it ideal for storing much of our gear (not the expensive professional camera!) and being able to just roll it across to 300B. Of course, it means we can't move the van again for the rest of the week we're here, but you can't have everything.
So many of the Ususal Suspects are already here, and the Move-In process was well underway by the time we arrived in Spokane around 6:30 this evening. Tomorrow the move-in should complete, and we'll finish assembling our five-day village of Fandom.
After checking out of the hotel in Lewiston and refueling the van, Lisa drove us to Moscow, Idaho, where a passerby helpfully shot this group photo of Lisa, me, and
travelswithkuma.Moscow's downtown is a pleasant-looking place. We walked around for a while, and went into the Co-op food store, where we were able to buy a case of the orange sparkling water that Lisa really likes. We then headed north to her friend's house.
When we turned onto the side road that led up to Lisa's friend's house, a coyote ran in front of us and into the field. Lisa stopped and I fumbled with the camera-phone. The coyote stopped and looked back at us for a while until I took the photo, and then ambled away, as if he'd been waiting for me to hurry up and get the shot.
We spent three hours visiting with Lisa's friend, and Lisa came away feeling very happy about the whole thing. Even better was the discovery that Elizabeth still had the Asteroids video game (the arcade model) that Lisa had bought all those years ago and stored with Elizabeth. The machine made the move to Idaho and was stored in the garage. If we can manage to rent a U-Haul trailer and redo our travel plans, on the way back from Worldcon, we'll come by again and see if we can wrestle the console out of the garage and into the trailer. We have enough space in Fernley House to house the game console in our family room, assuming it still works and the mice haven't gotten to it.
We went to Coeur d'Alene for a late lunch/early dinner at Cricket's Restaurant & Oyster Bar, where we both enjoyed the clam linguini. I'm glad I didn't order an appetizer, because we came away plenty full after the main course. From Coeur d'Alene, it was a relatively short drive across I-90 to Spokane, and, 837 miles after we left Fernley, pulled into the Convention Center/Doubletree Hotel parking garage.
The garage has a 6'7" clearance sign at the entrance. Lisa got out and I gingerly pulled forward. Clunk. The wheels of the rolling cart on the roof clip the sign. Lisa walked me forward, and it turned out that while we don't clear the sign, we did clear everything else. And, thanks to arriving two days before the convention started, we found the completely ideal parking space. It's the closest space in the garage to where the Business Meeting and Match Game SF will be, and this makes it ideal for storing much of our gear (not the expensive professional camera!) and being able to just roll it across to 300B. Of course, it means we can't move the van again for the rest of the week we're here, but you can't have everything.
So many of the Ususal Suspects are already here, and the Move-In process was well underway by the time we arrived in Spokane around 6:30 this evening. Tomorrow the move-in should complete, and we'll finish assembling our five-day village of Fandom.
