Sheltering from the Smoke

[kevin_standlee]

Air quality is still pretty bad, and while I did go out and get a take-out breakfast from the Wigwam and later ran a short errand, I was masked up the entire time I was outdoors. (And I would have been even without a pandemic; breathing all of that wood smoke is no joke.) The rest of the time I've been staying indoors near the air conditioner and not doing a whole lot. But that doesn't mean I can't enjoy myself, with some help from a souvenir of a SMOFCon 15 years ago.



In 2005, SMOFCon was in Portland, Oregon, and every attendee received a souvenir mug that riffed off of Portland's reputation as an excellent beer town. Neither Lisa nor I drink beer (or alcohol in general), having never developed a taste for it, but we kept the mugs, which we store in the freezer for use in things like this. Thanks to some A&W Zero Sugar Root Beer and some low-carb vanilla ice cream, I could have a root beer float that didn't send my blood sugar into orbit.

There is an A&W in the Mizpah Hotel complex, but they don't have a sugar-free ice cream; otherwise I'd have gotten root beer floats there in one of their large mugs, as I think their draft root beer is one of the best sugar-free root beers I've ever had. I do, however, expect to have a lot of lunches at A&W during Westercon 74, as it's conveniently close to the convention center. Indeed, if you attend any of the convention programming in the "ballroom" (the largest available function room), you'll be right on top of the A&W, as the ballroom is located over it in the Mizpah Club building.

Comments

[garyomaha]

As a child growing up in Iowa, I heard A&W was a midwestern phenomenon (it is not; it was started in California) and I remember being told "A&W" stands for "All Over Wisconsin" (it does not; it is the founders' names, Allen and Wright). You probably knew all that!

[kevin_standlee]

I knew some of that. A&W was part of my childhood. Indeed, it's the only place I remember my family going (while driving between Marysville/Yuba City and my home in Challenge, which means it must have been when I was five years old) where the servers brought the food out to your car and hung it on your door. They didn't wear roller skates, though.

[scott_sanford]

I've got that mug!

A&W was part of my childhood too; one of my friends lived just a few doors down from the one in Silverton and I learned to ride a bike on that sidewalk.

Years later I tried going there with Lisa but they must have been shorthanded that day; after a while we gave up on getting anyone's attention and went to the Towne House.