Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

As the Keeper of the Keys (of the Tonopah Convention Center), on account of being the person who locked the doors late last night after we finished set-up, I also had to be there shortly after 7 AM to let the people who needed to run the online/hybrid programming in the Gold Room. Consequently, I got maybe three hours' sleep last night.

The first online panels (with the Gold Room being the place people could watch the panels at the convention) were at 8 AM. The Main Hall, however, was not scheduled to open until 10 AM. I unlocked the doors so Program Operations could get started in the Gold Room, posted signs about the 10 AM doors-open, and returned to the Belvada. Back in my room, I prepared breakfast for Lisa and me and watched the first online panel of the convention on my computer. I commented that it might be the only program item I see except those on which I'm a participant.

After the program was over, I once again moved the printer and paper and program books down to Registration in the lobby of the Belvada Hotel. Lisa headed for the TCC to work on Hospitality preparations. I joined her and others working on their parts of the convention later. I also directed people who had not yet registered (and had neither read the website or the signs on the doors of the TCC) down to the Belvada for Registration today.

Shortly after 10 AM, I personally opened the doors of the Main Hall, and the biggest single portion of Westercon 74 was under way.

( Welcome )

Between 10 AM and 2 PM, I did make numerous trips between the Belvada and TCC, moving things from one place to another and occasionally being called in to make some Chair-level decisions, some of which I didn't want to do, but That's Why I Get Paid the Big Bucks, isn't it? *eyeroll* But things had settled down from the frenzy of setup, and I remembered to sit down as often as I could.

( Opening Ceremony )

I don't have pictures of the Opening Ceremony, but Lisa did record it. However, it's part of a much longer recording, and I do not have time to edit out the OC itself. It started with a video based on the opening of the television show The Wild, Wild West with a montage of pictures of Tonopah ending with a picture of me standing in front of the SMOF-mobile (my minivan). The screen then raised, I walked out, and welcomed people to The Wild, Wild Westercon.

After a few introductory remarks, I introduced our guests of honor, Kevin Andrew Murphy and Myrna Donato, each who talked briefly about their experience of being named a Westercon Guest of Honor.

It was then time for the formal opening of the convention: the use of the Gavel of Westercon to ceremonially call the convention to order. This would ordinarily be my job, but because I'm only the driver of the convention and the real reason we're here is because Lisa Hayes fell in love with Tonopah and worked tirelessly on bringing the convention here, I asked her to join me.

( Bang the Gavel )

I felt much better after Opening Ceremonies were over, but there was still an afternoon ahead and some serious programming. Continuing immediately onward after the Opening, we invited the head of the very late-submitted bid for Utah in 2024 Westercon, James Galway, to give a presentation and take questions. That led to people who hadn't read the announcements about how Anaheim was awarded Westercon 75 in 2023 to ask questions as well. I carefully explained the process whereby Anaheim was selected, and made it clear that, based on multiple precedents, no further action by the Westercon Business Meeting was required. In addition, I explained that if no eligible bid (including Utah's write-in bid) does not win the site selection election, the Business Meeting on Sunday could select a site by a 3/4 vote, or alternatively could decide not to decide, in which case the decision on the future site would be up to the board of Director of LASFS.

Lisa, who is at least as worn out from short sleep during setup as I am, went back to the hotel and got a few hours of sleep because she's on the night shift. (Westercon is open All Night Long.) Just before she retired for the afternoon, Lisa and I (and Kuma Bear) cast our 2024 Westercon site selection ballots. By rule, Site Selection administrator Sharon Sbarsky marked Kuma's ballot "No Preference," so everything was on the up-and-up.

After Lisa retired, I stayed up and dealt with some things like getting a new version of the convention program grid online. For a short time, I thought it possible that there were going to be so many changes that we'd need to print a new grid, but it was not as bad as I thought. The convention newsletter, the Tonopah Telegraph could handle communicating changes to the members, and the signs on each programming room are apparently up to date.

Speaking of the newsletter, as Registration shut down at 7 PM, Sharon came over to the Belvada where Registration had been to use the big printer to print that late edition of the Tonopah Telegraph. We printed more issues than yesterday because the first issue ran out and we had to print more.

Registration will move from the Belvada to the lobby of the TCC on Saturday, so we did some equipment shuffling. Rick Kovalcik and Fred Moulton helped me move the big printer, boxes of program books, and spare paper to the TCC, where most of it went to Operations where it will reside for the duration of the convention.

With the equipment moved, our hotel room has a lot more space.

Lisa returned to the TCC after her extended nap. I was fading. She and I took a dinner break: she took a short bath while I went to the Sweet Dixie food truck for another dinner. Alas, they are sold out of the excellent catfish, but they still have lots of good stuff, and I could call ahead and they had it ready for me when I arrived.

After dinner, Lisa headed back to the TCC and got ready for bed. I'd love to spend more time hanging around with people in Hospitality, but I'm on the point of collapse now and need a bunch of sleep to recharge. Tomorrow should be better.

About half of our pre-registered attending members have collected their badges as of the close of registration this evening. (We do have a process for dealing with people arriving after Registration closed, issuing them temporary badges for the night after checking their vaccination credentials; they will turn in the temporary badges for actual ones the next day.) I still do not know how many people will attend the convention, but I'm pleased that we have six past Worldcon chairs in attendance (including me). While there are many familiar faces, there are others I don't recognize, and that's great!

Today's pedometer count: a mere 13,315 steps. I'm slacking off. I shudder to think what it would have been if I had not arranged to have a room in the Belvada on the lowest possible floor to minimize the trip times between facilities that I knew would be coming.

Now, it's time for some sleep.

With a series of slightly warmer days, we continue to take as many opportunities to enjoy sitting on the front porch. travelswithkuma sits with us, of course, making fun of the silly quail.

( Watching the Pumpkin )

Meanwhile, I would have posted something regarding Westercon 74, but I think I'll wait until Facebook is reliably up again so I can do the news posts in multiple places simultaneously.

Yesterday, Lisa and I went to Lowe's to buy stuff for the next round of home improvements. While we were walking through the store, we found a bathtub for Kuma Bear.

( Bears Doesn't Wants Baths! )

It's probably just as well that this is actually just a miniature display for a particular manufacturer of bathtubs, or else Lisa would have had us buy Kuma Bear his own little bathtub.

Kuma Bear goes everywhere with Lisa, including grocery shopping. He gets very annoyed when people think he's a puppy. We went grocery shopping after work today, and Lisa said she wanted some ketchup. While she looked at the stuff on offer, Kuma picked out what he wanted.

( Of course he likes this one )

Lisa decided to give it a try. It's hard to say No to Kuma Bear.

I was able to get away from work after lunch and we got on the road before 1 PM. Lisa drove and I read from the latest issue of Classic Trains while we headed east on I-80. We ended the day at the other side of the state. Other people come to Reno for the resorts and game. Us, we went to Wendover.

( At the Sign of the Red Garter )

During today's trip, we encountered some pretty nasty weather at times. This morning while I was working, I heard knocking at the front door, which turned out to be the first of several bands of hail followed by heavy rain. Similar wild weather was all around us during the drive today.

( Dust, Rain, and Snow )

It's Memorial Day Weekend, so what could be more natural than to have dinner at the Coffee Garden at the Red Lion Hotel? (People who attended BayCon in the Goode Olde Days will understand this reference.) Oh, wait a minute...

( Kuma, I don't think we're in San Jose Anymore )

This weekend's trip is not primarily a railfan excursion, but we did get a few bits of train viewing done. As we left Elko, we paused at the Northeastern Nevada Railport, where Lisa got a picture of their switching locomotive. (I'll post that later, as it's on a different device than I have right now.)

( The Carlin Tunnels )

West Wendover NV, as befits its primary purpose as a place where the people of Northern Utah can come to gamble legally, is on Mountain Time, not Pacific Time as most of the rest of the state is. Thus we lose an hour tonight.

We set out on this trip not precisely sure where we would be going other than Wendover for the first night. We had options on Ely and the Nevada Northern railroad or the "Heber Creeper" east of Salt Lake City, but we've decided on a third option, about which I'll write more tomorrow.

Today was the longest day. We got up about 7:30 AM on Thursday, August 3 in Millbrae and I'm going to bed in Hamburg around 7:30 PM on Friday, August 4 (about 10:30 AM Pacific Time) with no intervening sleep. But while there were negatives (like not getting any sleep), it was otherwise a pretty good trip, and we're now safely in Hamburg for our "flying visit."

( SFO Security Theatre )

The Alaska flight up to PDX was no fun at all. Fully loaded, and I was in the middle seat. But it was less than two hours, and the flight was on time. As we came in, the flight attendant made an announcement for those of us going on the Reykjavik on IcelandAir, noting that there were 17 of us on the plane. As it happens, I only recognized two others besides me who were going to Worldcon: Charlie Jane Anders and Annalee Newitz, who we spoke to briefly in the departure lounge at PDX before the flight boarded.

( Upgrade Jackpot )

We landed in Iceland, where we found that the airport is under significant construction, but fortunately, it wasn't raining.

( Upgrade Part Two )

While on this last leg of the flight I could have possibly slept, I decided that it would be a bad idea to do so if I wanted to get onto the correct time zone, so I drank coffee to stay awake into Hamburg. We landed at Hamburg and spent a while trying to find a working DB ATM (because they are partners with Bank of America and thus I wouldn't be hit with an extra fee). We got it eventually and unlike the Barcelona trip, the ATM processed the request with no incident. That is good, because as we found, cash is still king here in Germany. Also, my credit card is US-style and doesn't have a PIN, which makes it impossible to use on automated terminals like at the train stations. I was worried that we'd dawdled on our errands, but as it happens, luggage was just starting to roll out when we got to baggage claim. We picked up our bags and cleared customs (a single bored-looking guard), then found our way to the train station.

( Training into Hamburg )

When we checked in to the Holiday Inn Express Hamburg, we had a surprise.

( That New Hotel Smell )

After getting moved in, doing some unpacking, and confirming that I could raise the wi-fi on my phone and computer, we set out to find some dinner. We knew that we needed to stay awake until early evening in order to have a chance to stave off jet-lag. We headed off a different way than we came, and almost got caught in a rain shower, but fortunately Lisa spotted a model train store, where we popped in until the rain cleared. Unlike Tokyo and Osaka in 2007, where we had to buy an extra piece of luggage to carry all of the gear she bought at the Kato Model Trains factory outlet stores, Lisa restrained herself to a single car: I nice N scale fire truck.

( Something Fishy This Way Comes )

It was after 7 PM local time when we got back to the hotel. Lisa got ready for bed as soon as she could. Once I get this posted (which hasn't been proofread well, so I may end up having to make a lot of edits later), I'm going to bed as well. Tomorrow, the included breakfast runs until 11 AM, which is a great thing because it means we don't have to be up early to get fed. We have one day of looking around more of Hamburg before we head for Lübeck and Travemünde.

I'm very tired, but happy to be here.

Today we had intended to go down to Silver Springs for the Lyon County Fly-In aviation event at the Silver Springs airport, but heavy rains and flooding Saturday night canceled the vendors and many of the events, so instead (since we needed to do our heavy grocery shopping anyway) we drove into Reno to see the National Automobile Museum, also known as "The Harrah Collection" inasmuch as it is built from the core of the late Bill Harrah's (of Harrah's casino entertainment group) huge collection of vehicles. Harrah's collection (apparently as many as 1,400 cars) was at one time housed in a building in Sparks, and Lisa and I went and visited it there years ago. Harrah had made no provision for the care of his collection after his death, and when he died most of the vehicles were sold, although 147 were saved for the 501(c)(3) museum formed after his death. The museum is just south of the Truckee River in downtown Reno. (If you'd been at Renovation and wanted to see it, it would have been a short bus ride on the express buses that run along Virginia Street.)

( A Drive Through the Past )

There are more photos than what I show here; click through to see the rest of them.

We spent a fair bit of the day at the museum. I'd allow at least one hour per gallery if you like reading the displays. Also note that aside from a single vending machine, there is no food and drink available at the museum. By the time we were done, I was pretty tired and my legs hurt. It might have worked a bit better to be there at opening, look at a couple of galleries, walk across the river to downtown Reno for lunch, then come back for the rest of the afternoon.

In our case, after our day at the museum, we drove down to the Atlantis and had a late lunch/early dinner at Cafe Alfresco, where luck was really with me on the keno, and even after using some winnings to buy five more games of keno and tipping the keno runner, I still had $3.50 more than I started. Lisa also had good luck initially with the slots, but it did catch up with us later.

We did not forget to do the actual errand for which we came to Reno, and made our trip to Winco to stock up on groceries before heading home. Our timing was good; we avoided the thunderstorms that have been moving through the area, and they didn't hit us until after we got the groceries in.

Back 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.

( But First, Let's Go To Moscow )

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.

( On to Spokane )

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.