Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

Today was the final day of the Loscon 49 / Westercon 75 road trip. We returned home by a different route than we took outward last Wednesday.



We decided to go home via Mammoth Lakes and Carson City, rather than on the US-6/Montgomery Pass/US-95 route by which we went south.



Before leaving Bishop, we stopped at Erick Schat's Bakkery again for one more loaf of their Sheepherder bread and their delicious cookies.



Heading north on US-395 (instead of turning at the western terminus of US-6), we set course for Mammoth Lakes. That's Mammoth Mountain in the distance. We weren't going skiing, but did go shopping at a couple of ski-wear shops in the town of Mammoth Lake, as Lisa is in the market for a new winter coat. She didn't find anything that suited her.

In the same parking lot at the ski-wear shops is another Schat's Bakkery, but it is apparently a rival established by another member of the family. We saw dueling billboards for the two stores while driving up US-395 last night. I had a look inside, and I was not all that impressed by the Mammoth location's bakery, although the restaurant/deli location smelled delicious.

We took the back road (Mammoth Scenic Loop) out of town and continued north. North of Lee Vining, there was a place where we were held up for one-way controlled traffic, and as we were given the release, we spotted a bald eagle perched in a tree beside the lake. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to activate my camera and zoom in to get a picture before we were out of range.

As usual, we made lots of rest stops, including one just over the Nevada border at the Topaz Lake casino. Once again, we "paid" for the restroom break by Lisa gambling $1 in a slot machine, and just like Hawthorne on the way south, luck was with us, as on the first pull, she won about $3 and cashed out.

Traffic got heavier in Minden/Gardnerville as we were now traveling in local commute hours, and from there up to Carson City and then east on US-50 it was (by local standards) quite busy. Things thinned out east of Dayton. We got home after sunset, but before full dark, so we had just enough time to get the most important things unpacked from the minivan while there was still light by which to work.

The house was cold — +10°C — but the space heaters had kept anything from freezing. As soon as I could do so, I got the fire going again. It takes a while for things to warm up, of course, but it will get there eventually.

Our travel time for the approximately 220 miles was almost seven hours exactly including stops, which is pretty typical for us these days. Lisa drove nearly all of it except for the last bit from north of Minden to home. Indeed, Lisa drove nearly every bit of this entire trip except the first and last portions of it and the local errands I ran near the hotel during the convention.

Now I get one full day at home with enough time to do laundry before heading to SMOFCon on Thurday.

Today was the last day of the trip. We took our time getting out of Bishop, partially because Lisa's digestion was acting up from all the food we've eaten on this trip, and partially because we wanted to buy more things from Schat's Bakkery before we left town. About 11:30, we set out on the last leg of our trip home.

( Route Map )

Our first stop was the Laws Railroad Museum.

( To the Trains! )

We could have easily spent all day at the museum, which we've visited before, but today we did not have enough time. Perhaps someday we'll be able to come down to Bishop again and spend a full day investigating the large number of things here.

( You Can Sort of Go Home Again )

So after a short moment of nostalgia, it was time to get serious about heading north. The portion of this trip between Bridgeport and Minden is a piece of highway that I had not been over since I left Bishop in 1981.

( North to Reno through the Eastern High Sierra )

Lisa, who was feeling better by the time we got to the railroad museum, did most of the driving today, as she had gotten more sleep that I did. (I've had to be up at 4 AM the past two days to do Day Jobbe for a few hours.) Nevertheless, both of us were feeling pretty tired, and while we enjoyed the view from 395, I stopped taking photos. As darkness fell, we continued north into Reno, made a brief stop at the Sparks Nugget to use the restrooms, and set a course for home, where we arrived around 7 PM. After seven days and 1062 miles, our Loscon/Westercon trip was done and we were home.

There will be little time to rest, however, as the first leg of our trip to Worldcon starts on Monday afternoon. We have less than a week to repack, reload, and prepare for our three-week around-the country train trip.

Two years ago, when we drove from Fernley to Bishop on our trip to Loscon (part of a multi-leg tour that took us on to SMOFCon in Albuquerque), things did not go that great. We were running late, crossed the mountains after dark and as snow started falling. The Vagabond Inn where we stayed was fine, though. This year, everything was reversed. We got away from Fernley at Noon. Weather was perfect. Traffic was not a problem (aside from idiot drivers on US-95). But the Vagabond Inn disappointed us and has lost our business for the return trip.

( Today's Journey )

Halfway to halfway, at Hawthorne, Lisa asked us to stop briefly at the Hawthorne Ordnance Museum, as she'd seen information in a local newspaper about a new and large item in their museum.

( Not a Tank: Sergeant York AA Gun )

So after the brief photo stop in Hawthorne, we scooted on south on US-95 at the 70 MPH speed limit, which was not fast enough for some people, which was frustrating. What was frightening was people coming north on the two-lane highway trying to pass with not enough room. In one case, I had to slow way down to give the idiot enough room to get back over onto his side of the road, and I was only about a second away from trying to take to the soft shoulder, which would have been not fun. Once we reached the cutoff (NV-360) to Bishop, things got very quiet. We made really good time, arriving at the Vagabond Inn in Bishop when it was still daylight at about 4:30 PM.

Check-in to the hotel was so annoying that we very nearly balked completely and found another hotel, but I would have forfeited the room payment. When I produced my passport to prove my identity, the newly-trained front-desk clerk insisted that the only acceptable form of ID was a US driver's license, which they scan into their system. I pointed out that a passport is a better form of ID that a driver's license, but she wasn't having any of it, and I could take it or leave it. I gritted my teeth and handed over my driver's license. On the positive side, she was able to meet my original room request of a ground-floor room. The hotel is only two floors, but there's no elevator, and I did not want to have to lump the camera case up the stairs.

Despite the prominent signs insisting that masks must be worn, neither of the hotel staff we saw including the clerk were wearing masks.

The section of the hotel in which our room is located was under a complete rebuild (forced by a fire) in 2019. It's okay. We've had worse. Lisa was able to use the bathtub (we don't have a full-size bathtub at home) after we did our shopping. But the working space isn't very good, and that's a consideration to me because on Tuesday morning (we'll be here in Bishop again on Monday night), I need to work for several hours in order to use my PTO more effectively. Day Jobbe requires that I use two separate computers for reasons I need not discuss here, and there isn't enough room to work two machines here comfortably.

After confirming that the room was acceptable, we headed to Schat's Bakkery, a Bishop institution and "Home of the Original Sheepherder Bread." We bought some nice bread and cookies here, but there are too many people not wearing masks and crowding too close together for our comfort. I keep reminding myself: "We're triple-vaccinated and wearing N95 face masks."

After Schat's, we went to the Von's grocery store, refueled the Astro at the gas station there (paying about 75 cents/gallon more than when we topped off the van in Fernley yesterday), and bought a small amount of groceries including some sliced ham to eat with the good bread. (You have to eat it pretty quickly, as with no preservatives it simply goes stale and that's a waste.) Then it was back to the hotel room, where I got logged in, dealt with email, and made a hotel change.

After our experience with the Vagabond Inn here, I cancelled my reservation for our return stay on Monday night and instead cashed some of my IHG points to stay at the Holiday Inn Express down the street. I hope they will be easier to deal with and will have a better room configuration. Also, as I'm still a Spire member of IHG's program for now, I might get a room upgrade to a room large enough that Lisa isn't obliged to squeeze around me when I'm working in order to get around the room.

The Vagabond Inn had been our go-to hotel when coming through here in the past, but by establishing a nonsensical policy (I wonder what they do if someone shows up who has government-issued ID that isn't a driver's license and they have no driver's license), they've lost my future business. But for now, I'm trying to take it relatively easy. We are not in a huge hurry tomorrow, and hope that traveling on Thanksgiving Day proper might not be so bad as Thanksgiving Eve in the LA area.

On Tuesday, we managed to get away from Fernley just before 4 PM. It was so hot that I burned my hand on the door handles as we finished packing. We made a brief stop in Fallon to grab some very late lunch and decided to keep driving while we ate (Lisa drove for a while, then we traded off) primarily so we could keep the minivan relatively cool, as the blistering sunshine quickly heats it up.

As we headed south, it started to cloud up, which helped with the worst of the sun, although it didn't cool down that much even when it rained intermittently. I'm not complaining about the rain! But I guess I must have called it down on us when I said I did not expect rain on our trip after we loaded the new cart Lisa built earlier this week. We got quite a bit of rain, actually. The lightning show on the drive down was spectacular, particularly a quintuple burst over Hawthorne.

( On to Bishop and the End of a Long Road )

I'm glad the clouds parted long enough last night to see the Venus-Jupiter conjunction.

Around Noon today we drove out to Laws, California to the Laws Railroad Museum and Historical Site. Laws was the northern terminus of the last common-carrier narrow-gauge railroad in the west, the Keeler-to-Laws segment of the former Carson & Colorado Railway. The C&C ran from Mound House (not too far from where we live in Fernley) to Keeler. The SP bought it, standard-gauged the section from Mound House to Tonopah Junction to connect with the Tonopah & Goldfield Railroad (and hence to Las Vegas by diverse lines), abandoned in 1943 the section from Mina to Laws, and finally ended operation Keeler-Laws on April 30, 1960. The railroad pulled up the track south of Laws but donated the Laws Depot site, locomotive #9 (the "Slim Princess"), and the associated buildings to the City of Bishop. Today the site is run by the Bishop Museum & Historical Society and is open daily year around. Besides the railroad buildings, many other old buildings from the area have been moved here and restored, and the museum includes a fascinating look back at the early days of the Owens Valley.

As with other entries, click through the photos to see more related photos.

( Our Day at the Museum )

The full set of photos I took today at the museum is on my Laws Railroad Museum Flickr Album.

We spent most of the afternoon at the museum, and we effectively had the run of the place, as we were one of only three parties who visited today. It is, however, a weekday at a very slow time of the year. It was a good day to be there, though, as it wasn't too cold (except inside some of the buildings) and the weather was clear.

We told the folks at the museum that we'd made special plans (and taken an extra day off from work) just to come here, and that we've also made a point of telling the hotel and restaurant staff with whom we've been dealing that the museum was what brought us here. Having been rail museum volunteers ourselves, we think it's important for the businesses to know that supporting the museum is good for their business, too.