Near Disaster at Pioneer Villa

Just as I was getting ready for bed after having done as much packing as I could, Lisa called from the Klamath Falls (Midland) rest area on US-97. She told me that she had had a close call. When she stopped at the Pioneer Villa truck stop in Halsey, she saw that coolant was leaking out of the bottom of the pickup truck. The lower coolant hose clamp had come loose. She was able to tighten the hose, and says she's had no trouble and lost no coolant since then. She's still going to drive for a few hours tonight, probably at least as far as Redding, because the weather is nice and because she didn't get up until about 1 PM Thursday, so it's earlier for her than it is for me.

Road to Rio

So Rio de Janeiro will host the 2016 Olympics and Chicago will have to settle for (possibly) the 2012 Worldcon.

I'm intrigued that some of the reports I read suggested Rio was the favorite of many IOC members who thought it important that the Olympics move around and go to countries it had not been before. To that extent, it's the same attitude I've seen in many Worldcon races.

Olympic Selection Triggers Worldcon Thoughts

After thinking about the "Olympics should visit new places" attitude mentioned in my previous post, I got to thinking about comments I've ready about Worldcons lately. I still see people snarking about the Worldcon being exclusively an American convention and that it needs to travel more if it wants to be a "World" con. I think the people doing the snarking haven't been paying attention that much lately, or else they're taking such narrow views, such as looking (say) at 2011-12-13 and ignoring the entire period from 1999 to 2010, as to allow them to conclude that "Only US sites host Worldcons." Of course, they may also be saying, "Canada is just part of the USA," something that annoys me at least as much as it must annoy Canadians, and ignoring the Canadian Worldcons as not being "really" non-US sites. Meanwhile, I've also read some people commenting that the fact that Worldcons have been outside the USA and not in major US markets -- Bos-Wash/Chicago/California -- more often is hurting the convention by making it less relevant to publishers, who (sensibly) are spending their limited promotional funds on conventions that actually reach readers, such as DragonCon and ComicCon.

Ironically, I saw the "Oh, it doesn't get out of the USA often enough" comment in the same discussion where people were complaining that Aussiecon 4 was some evil plot to only allow Australians to win the Hugo Award in 2010, since nobody from the USA could possibly afford to travel so far away. And elsewhere, a complaint that Reno was too far away from anything, followed by geographically challenged people who seemed to be confusing Reno with Las Vegas regarding proximity to the Grand Canyon. I didn't really have time to get involved in the discussion, or I would have challenged the people who complain that the convention isn't in their backyard to go out and bid for it. Not that they would, of course: nearly all of these people are all mouth and no meat.

SiliCon Move-In

Lisa made it down to San Jose faster than we originally expected, so she was actually at the hotel by the time I arrived. We moved all of our stuff into our hotel room -- it took three trips with the bell cart, and we'll need to get the cart again when moving in to do Match Game SF. I do hope we're able to find a way to make everything work. I still haven't heard that we'll have all of the various tables and chairs for the stage setup. While it's nice to have the main stage, in some respects it's almost too large for what we're going; however, we'll to the best we can.

After waiting more than half an hour for Opening Ceremonies to start -- a difficulty locating the Guests of Honor, I understand -- I decided that I couldn't want for dinner any longer, and Lisa and I went to have dinner at the Hawaiian Drive-In down the street. Alas for the Loco Moco -- even the small portion led to a 190 blood sugar an hour later, so we went out for a bonus walk. There are more restaurants around here than I thought there were, if one is willing to walk a few extra blocks.

Returning to the hotel, we went up to the party floor, where things were fairly quiet. Friday night at SiliCon appears to be extremely lightly attended. But a fair number of the people who are here were in the Fanzine Lounge, it appears. The Lounge had been relocated to the Boardroom, right in the middle of the Party Zone, and it suits them.

( Fan Central )

travelswithkuma has more pictures.

In-room internet is expensive, but there is free internet out in the public areas, so I took my laptop to the Fan Tables and set up to get my mail and post this message. But I'm feeling far more tired than I thought I would be, so I think I'll probably turn in early. I don't have to be up early on Saturday -- Sunday is my busy day -- although I'll need to put in time behind the Westercon table. But then again, what sort of convention would it be without me sitting behind a table hawking memberships to something?