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kevin_standleeIt may be a holiday, but I woke up before 4 AM as I usually do on a Thursday. We took our time over breakfast, but we were on the road by 8:30 AM.
Today was the second half of the trip to the LAX Marriott and Loscon 47/Westercon 73.
Because we got away so early, we had lots of slack in our schedule and could make extra stops if we felt like it.
Independence is the county seat of Inyo County, about fifty miles south of Bishop. A local group there has restored a narrow-gauge Carson & Colorado steam locomotive (I think it's currently on loan running on the Colorado narrow-gauge lines), and this small railroad park where they have at times displayed the locomotive also has a narrow-gauge boxcar.
Continuing onward, we stopped at a place I'd wanted to visit before but never had the opportunity: the Manzanar National Historic Site, where the US government interned tens of thousands of Japanese-Americans and Japanese immigrants during World War II.
Over the period the camp was open, a few hundred internees died and were buried at the camp cemetery. Most of them were re-buried after the war, but a handful of graves remain here.
A few of the camp buildings have been recreated.
This is not a proud part of US history.
We did not walk around the site, but instead did the auto tour, exiting through the historic entrance near where the camp's staff were housed. Perhaps someday we'll be able to come back and tour the place properly.
We continued south on US-395, then onto CA-14, stopping in Mojave to buy some lunch supplies in a grocery store there, then pushed on into the LA basin on CA-14, then to I-5 to I-405. Aside from a few minor slowdowns, we were clearly driving the correct direction, as traffic going the other way was often backed up for miles. Getting to the LAX Airport exit (Century Blvd), we arrived at the Marriott at about 3 PM.
Getting checked in was the easy part. I'd hoped to park in the parking garage, with easy access to the basement level where the convention programming is. Unfortunately, we were told we could only park in the self-parking lot, which is not at all convenient. Worse, our hotel room is about as far away from the self-parking lot as it is possible to be and still be in the same hotel.
I'd originally asked for a single king-bed room, but we were told that the convention had pre-booked people into double queens like this one. "As long as we're not preventing people who need a double queen from getting one," I said.
The working area is good. I'll be able to get some Day Jobbe stuff done on Monday morning, I think. There was some complexity with getting into the hotel wi-fi, but nothing a call to Guest Services couldn't straighten out.
The "bar" area is nice enough. There is no microwave oven, but there is a mini-fridge, which is excellent. There's also a single-cup hot water and coffee maker, which will make things easier.
Also good is that this room has a bathtub/shower combo, which not all of the rooms do, as I found later when going back and forth withlindadee after she arrived a couple of hours later.
It took us a total of five trips between our hotel and the minivan to get unloaded. The first three were our personal luggage and other items that could be moved on their own wheels relatively easily. Then we borrowed a bell cart (and tipped $5 for it), making two more trips to carry the other large and heavy stuff. I wish we could have parked in the employee parking lot: it's much more convenient than the public self-parking lot.
Checking Google Maps, I determined that you could fit the Tonopah Convention Center, Belvada, Mizpah, and Jim Butler Inns within the LAX Marriott's property.
After Linda arrived and Lisa and I moved the fifth load of gear and returned the bell cart, we went down to the convention level, produced our vaccination cards and ID and collected our membership badges. I also witnessed Elayne Pelz reject someone who did not have his vaccination papers and tell him that they could not register him without them, by convention policy. We straightened out our fan tables: it's convenient to have the Westercon 74, Winnipeg in 2023 Worldcon bid, and Westercon 75 Site Selection tables adjacent to each other.
Linda, Lisa, and I had booked a pre-convention Thanksgiving dinner with other Loscon staff, so we went upstairs for dinner. The convention was working to keep things safe. We couldn't serve ourselves, but had to have volunteers with food-service training serve us. It was a serviceable turkey dinner.
After dinner, the three of us walked the 850 m down to the nearest convenience store I could find on Google maps, where we purchased a few more supplies now that we knew there was a refrigerator for perishables. Oddly, the store only had gallons of milk, not half-gallons, which is annoying because the 'fridge isn't big enough to hold a gallon. Fortunately, we had the last of a half gallon from last night, so we bought a gallon, took it back to the room, drank half of it, and poured the rest into the smaller container. Drinking that much milk meant we needed some cookies; fortunately, we bought very good ones at Schat's Bakkery yesterday.
One thing I forgot to pack was sunscreen, and I should have had some. Weather today was bright and sunny, although windy and cold at times, in contrast to the snow and rain of two years ago. I've gotten sunburned.
Things don't start until about Noon on Thursday, so I'm not setting an alarm tonight. My pedometer says I logged more than 15K steps today, and I'm tired. Time to get some rest.
Today was the second half of the trip to the LAX Marriott and Loscon 47/Westercon 73.
Because we got away so early, we had lots of slack in our schedule and could make extra stops if we felt like it.
Independence is the county seat of Inyo County, about fifty miles south of Bishop. A local group there has restored a narrow-gauge Carson & Colorado steam locomotive (I think it's currently on loan running on the Colorado narrow-gauge lines), and this small railroad park where they have at times displayed the locomotive also has a narrow-gauge boxcar.
Continuing onward, we stopped at a place I'd wanted to visit before but never had the opportunity: the Manzanar National Historic Site, where the US government interned tens of thousands of Japanese-Americans and Japanese immigrants during World War II.
Over the period the camp was open, a few hundred internees died and were buried at the camp cemetery. Most of them were re-buried after the war, but a handful of graves remain here.
A few of the camp buildings have been recreated.
This is not a proud part of US history.
We did not walk around the site, but instead did the auto tour, exiting through the historic entrance near where the camp's staff were housed. Perhaps someday we'll be able to come back and tour the place properly.
We continued south on US-395, then onto CA-14, stopping in Mojave to buy some lunch supplies in a grocery store there, then pushed on into the LA basin on CA-14, then to I-5 to I-405. Aside from a few minor slowdowns, we were clearly driving the correct direction, as traffic going the other way was often backed up for miles. Getting to the LAX Airport exit (Century Blvd), we arrived at the Marriott at about 3 PM.
Getting checked in was the easy part. I'd hoped to park in the parking garage, with easy access to the basement level where the convention programming is. Unfortunately, we were told we could only park in the self-parking lot, which is not at all convenient. Worse, our hotel room is about as far away from the self-parking lot as it is possible to be and still be in the same hotel.
I'd originally asked for a single king-bed room, but we were told that the convention had pre-booked people into double queens like this one. "As long as we're not preventing people who need a double queen from getting one," I said.
The working area is good. I'll be able to get some Day Jobbe stuff done on Monday morning, I think. There was some complexity with getting into the hotel wi-fi, but nothing a call to Guest Services couldn't straighten out.
The "bar" area is nice enough. There is no microwave oven, but there is a mini-fridge, which is excellent. There's also a single-cup hot water and coffee maker, which will make things easier.
Also good is that this room has a bathtub/shower combo, which not all of the rooms do, as I found later when going back and forth with
lindadee after she arrived a couple of hours later.It took us a total of five trips between our hotel and the minivan to get unloaded. The first three were our personal luggage and other items that could be moved on their own wheels relatively easily. Then we borrowed a bell cart (and tipped $5 for it), making two more trips to carry the other large and heavy stuff. I wish we could have parked in the employee parking lot: it's much more convenient than the public self-parking lot.
Checking Google Maps, I determined that you could fit the Tonopah Convention Center, Belvada, Mizpah, and Jim Butler Inns within the LAX Marriott's property.
After Linda arrived and Lisa and I moved the fifth load of gear and returned the bell cart, we went down to the convention level, produced our vaccination cards and ID and collected our membership badges. I also witnessed Elayne Pelz reject someone who did not have his vaccination papers and tell him that they could not register him without them, by convention policy. We straightened out our fan tables: it's convenient to have the Westercon 74, Winnipeg in 2023 Worldcon bid, and Westercon 75 Site Selection tables adjacent to each other.
Linda, Lisa, and I had booked a pre-convention Thanksgiving dinner with other Loscon staff, so we went upstairs for dinner. The convention was working to keep things safe. We couldn't serve ourselves, but had to have volunteers with food-service training serve us. It was a serviceable turkey dinner.
After dinner, the three of us walked the 850 m down to the nearest convenience store I could find on Google maps, where we purchased a few more supplies now that we knew there was a refrigerator for perishables. Oddly, the store only had gallons of milk, not half-gallons, which is annoying because the 'fridge isn't big enough to hold a gallon. Fortunately, we had the last of a half gallon from last night, so we bought a gallon, took it back to the room, drank half of it, and poured the rest into the smaller container. Drinking that much milk meant we needed some cookies; fortunately, we bought very good ones at Schat's Bakkery yesterday.
One thing I forgot to pack was sunscreen, and I should have had some. Weather today was bright and sunny, although windy and cold at times, in contrast to the snow and rain of two years ago. I've gotten sunburned.
Things don't start until about Noon on Thursday, so I'm not setting an alarm tonight. My pedometer says I logged more than 15K steps today, and I'm tired. Time to get some rest.
