More Worldcon Travel Plans

[kevin_standlee]

The number of things I need to transport with me to Chengdu keeps growing. It's getting to the point where I am seriously considering taking two checked bags, even thought that will cost me a bunch extra in luggage charges. On the other hand, I won't need to take as many clothes as I typically do, because all I'm doing is flying to Chengdu, attending the Worldcon, and flying back. In fact, due to the fact that the return flight leaves at 8 AM on the morning after the convention ends and the airport appears to be almost 80 km (straight line) from the hotel/convention center, I'll have to skip the final post-closing-ceremony part of the convention (which is often one of my favorite parts of the event) and head out to TFU airport on Sunday evening to stay at a Holiday Inn Express near the airport.

That of course assumes that I've actually identified the hotel in which the convention has booked me and the convention site itself. For all of the pretty pictures on the Chengdu website, I've had a bit of a challenge trying to figure out where in the Chengdu area the convention is actually happening! I think it may be where this map shows a lake with what looks like a building site on one shore. If there is something on the Chengdu Worldcon website that gives actual directions to the convention site, I haven't found it yet. Considering that for about as how long as the technology has existed to do so, it has been my practice to "virtually walk" the area around a Worldcon using Google Maps, not being able to do so this year is yet another thing that makes me nervous.

Comments

[madfilkentist]

Do you know anything about the "lottery" reported on File 770 for attending the Hugo, opening, and closing ceremonies? Do you automatically get into all of them for coming more than 3000 KM?

[kevin_standlee]

I assume that they will let me into the Business Meeting because I'm one of its officers. (In Helsinki, the door guards didn't want to let me into a certain room with a long queue, but relented when I pointed out that I was one of the panelists.) As far as major events go, I expect that I'll be able to attend if I want to do so. But due to my luggage space crunch and my uncertainty about how it would be received, I'm not packing my WSFS captain's uniform.

Honestly, the primary reason I'm going is to keep the wheels of WSFS turning for one more year under somewhat trying circumstances. Anything else is gravy.