Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

I had a very easy flight to Canada, flying from RNO to PDX to YVR. The only excitement was a close connection at Portland. When we arrived, the flight crew asked if the other passengers could stay seated because they had a passenger in the back of the plane with a tight connection. They then said, "Hey, Kevin, come on up!" It was me. And they were right: I had theoretically eleven minutes from our arrival on the far end of the C concourse until the boarding time of my flight to Vancouver at gate B4. The passengers cheered me on as I charged down the aisle and hot-footed it over to the B concourse. And of course, both my shoes came untied and I had to stop shortly after I left the plane to fix them. But I can walk pretty fast and I made it with five minutes to spare. Besides, I was in Group D and therefore did not board immediately anyway.

As it happens, both flights were very similar: Alaska Airline flights operated by Horizon; E175 aircraft; same seat; same inflight service. I was impressed that they managed to get my bag transferred, as it would have challenging to do anything this weekend without that luggage.

Arrival at YVR was surprisingly easy. Immigration was fast and the queues generally kept moving. My luggage arrived shortly after I got to the carousel. The shuttle to the hotel arrived when it was supposed to. And the Holiday Inn Express upgraded me to a large suite. I must use that Jacuzzi-style bathtub.

Per a previous arrangement, I went out to dinner with friends, which involved riding the Canada Line (heavy rail metro) and a bus, both of which worked as scheduled. Dinner was fine, as was the conversation.

Tomorrow, I'm in no hurry because there is no point in arriving in Victoria before the 3 PM check-in, so I will be able to sleep in, have the included breakfast, pack out of the room, and walk over to the Bridgeport transit centre (about 500 m; I walked it this evening), then catch the 620 bus to the Vancouver Island ferry, take the ferry crossing, then take another bus to Victoria.

Such a civilized place. Stuff works as it should. I wish I could move here.

If you'd like to know a bit more about the trip from Winnipeg to Churchill that Lisa and I and four others with whom we traveled was like, YouTuber Kuga's Travel made the same trip (albeit only one way, Winnipeg-Churchill) as we did. In fact, based on the date he traveled, he rode the same train north as we did south, as we arrived the evening before his departure. His northbound departure was one week after ours.

Lisa and I had a two-person sleeper, which is much roomier than the single-person compartments. The train still hadn't gotten its sleeper, but the derailment that closed the Thompson branch to us both directions had been cleared. Also, he only spent a few hours actually in Churchill, as he flew back to Winnipeg the same day he arrived in Churchill. Without a local vehicle (like we had) or booking into one of the many tours, you'll miss the things there are to see and do in the area.

For all that we spent more time traveling to and front Churchill than we got to spend in the town (this is a function of the train running only twice a week; you can stay two nights or five, but nothing in-between, if you're taking the train both ways), I'm glad we did it the way that we did.

We got out of the Rocker Inn (I hope never to return) about 9:15 AM and turned south on I-15.

Here was the course for today:



I wanted to do another full photo essay on this, and those people who follow me on Mastodon got some of the photos in sort-of real time, but we were on the road for ten-plus hours, and I am exhausted. I don't have enough stamina to label nearly 100 photos, let alone write the full story about them.

We drove south on I-15, making numerous stops. At one of them, Lisa had another look at the vibration noise coming from the engine. She thinks that it's coming from the line running between the front and rear air conditioning. That line was cut off a while ago, but it appears to be just hanging loose, and at certain engine speeds, it vibrates against the body of the motor, making a terrible racket.

We got off the freeway and went west to Arco, Idaho, which reputedly is the first town to be fully powered by atomic power. Lisa once again hit a museum jackpot, as we stumbled across a small museum in Arco about the submarine service that is normally open only on weekends and with limited hours. We got there just as they were closing, and one of the volunteers reopened the buildings and showed everything to Lisa.

From Arco, we went to the Craters of the Moon National Monument, which are ancient lava beds that trace their ancestry to the same hot spot that currently is Yellowstone National Park. We only went into the visitor's center as we did not have time to tour the rest of the monument, but I know I learned something today.

We then continued southwest and south on US-93 (remember that I said we'd find that road again), through Shoshone, and after refueling at the Pilot on I-84 in Idaho Falls, we fetched up at the Holiday Inn Express.

This is a nice HIX. They gave us a room on the ground floor (quite a relief after the past two days of humping luggage up and down stairs, even though this hotel has an elevator) close to the end of one wing, which made moving into the room very easy. They have a laundry room, which is bigger than any of the other hotels in which we've stayed on this trip (two sets of washers and dryers), so we were able to do laundry. That's good because we were essentially out of clean clothes.

We once again ordered pizza after getting drinks from a nearby mini-market, watched more old TV episodes, and relaxed.

Tomorrow's trip to Elko is much shorter than the almost 400 miles we logged today, so we think we can sleep in a little bit tomorrow morning.

I hope I can somehow go back and tag/caption all of the photos from today, but if past experience is any guide, I suspect I'll fail to do so.

Today's trip was a relatively short distance but took a relatively long time. There are a lot of photos today (more than 100 of them), so click through to see more if you're interested.



We pushed hard yesterday because we knew we would be stopping a lot today, and because there was no telling how long it would take to cross the border back into the USA.

( Run to the Border )

We ended up stopping at the very first little store south of the border crossing, located at a small campground, because there don't seem to be any restrooms on the US side of the international crossing and after the wait to clear the place, I needed to go. The folks at the small store were initially riled up at me for using their restroom and looking as if I was about to leave without buying anything, but I told them, honestly, "All of my US cash is in my van. I've been in Canada for three weeks!" I did get my money and did buy a soda from them.

( Sightseeing in Montana )

After coming down off of MT-49, we entered East Glacier Park, where our railroad tourism began.

( East Glacier Park and Marias Pass )

At last we made it to our main goal for today. We wanted to stay at the Izzac Walton Inn in Essex, but its new owners have temporarily closed the inn for major renovations, and I heard they have also sold off all of the railroadania that decorated the inn.

( Essex and the Izzac Walton Inn )

For the Glacier Park trifecta, it was on to West Glacier.

( West Glacier Park )

We continued on to Kalispell, arriving around 6:30 PM.

( Moving Downscale in Kalispell )

We walked down to the Walgreens a couple of blocks south from the Travelodge, got some milk and orange juice (and picked up most of the things we were unable to find at Shopper's Drug Mart in Lethbridge), then went back to the hotel and ordered another pizza. Annoyingly, Pizza Hut doesn't seem to be able to get our orders straight. We wanted a pan pizza that included extra mushrooms. They sent an original crust and left off the mushrooms. Sigh.

Tomorrow is another relatively short day, but once again we have some railroad tourism and RLMS field work to do, so I expect the travel time will be similar. I hope to be surprised, though, as I'd love to get a few hours of extra sleep.

Oh, and the van is running the same as it was, neither better nor worse.

I worked a half-day today, but spoke with my director and explained that because we can't go as fast as we originally planned, I'm going to have to skip the other half-days planned this week and next Monday. We got away from Brandon about 11 AM.



Here was today's route. Google Maps said it should take four hours. It took us more than six hours, including restroom breaks and a refueling stop.

( Crossing the Prairie to Regina )

One of the pleasant surprises of the room is that the wired internet connection worked. While the wireless connection was a respectable 23 mbps down and 13 up, the wired connection was 437 down and 459 up! It made me wish we had video to upload. Lisa took the opportunity to download old television shows in which she was interested, as her computer has only a wired connection.

The air conditioning on the van mostly works, but the blower fan keeps failing. It fades out and then comes back on if we turn the AC back to vent for a while. And the engine continues to rattle in annoying ways. To keep the rattling down, we cannot exceed 100 kph.

Although we got to the hotel relatively early, we had a lot of things that ate up time. I ran out to get some small groceries before ordering a pizza, while Lisa got a bath. I also did a couple of loads of laundry, as we were running out of clean clothes. We did get fed and I got the laundry done, although some of it is still hanging up around the room as I write this because there were other people impatiently waiting to do their laundry as well.

One thing I had wanted to do was to soak in the hotel hot tub. I have had a pinched nerve causing pain down my left leg since the end of Pemmi-Con, and my muscles ache in a bunch of places. However, when I went to the pool area, it was badly crowded. Maybe if I'd gone to the hot tub instead of getting dinner, I would have had a chance to soak. And as the pool doesn't open until 9 AM tomorrow, I won't have a chance to do so tomorrow morning. Maybe in Lethbridge.

Yes, the goal tomorrow is Lethbridge, Alberta, which means tomorrow's trip is over 600 km, one of the longest legs of the entire trip. We must get away early tomorrow to have any hope of making it, and that means we must get sleep tonight.

Ironically, to prepare for the final day of the SMOFCon trip meant turning on the alarm on my phone for ordinary working days, because I needed to be up at 4:30 to be ready to catch the 5:30 AM shuttle from the Holiday Inn to Montreal Airport. It was raining this morning, but both loading and unloading areas were under cover, so that wasn't a problem. What was a small problem was me forgetting that Air Canada has two separate check in areas, which are not "international" and "domestic" but "USA" and "not USA." The shuttle dropped all of us at the "not USA" end. I only realized I was at the wrong end after doing self check in and trying to put my luggage on the the belt, only to have it rejected. Fortunately, I'd gotten to the airport sufficiently early that walking from one end of the terminal to the other, where the USA pre-clearance luggage check in is located, didn't cause any problems. I had no problems after that point at the airport, and this time I did not leave my tote bag behind at Security the way I did at Reno coming the other way.

The Montreal-Denver flight was lightly loaded, and I had the seat next to me empty, which was pretty luxurious and comfortable. I'd expected to watch the in-flight entertainment I'd seen going the other way but not watched, but they changed the programming, probably on December 1, so I didn't get to watch the episode of Poirot that I'd never seen before. I tried watching a different Agatha Christie mystery, which I enjoyed, but to my annoyance, they only had the first two parts of the story, leaving me with a cliffhanger.

( Disappointment at Denver )

The United 737 to Reno was a little tired and worn, especially in contrast to the Air Canada A220 from Montreal. The in-flight entertainment system on the United flight didn't work at all. But it's only a roughly two hour flight to Reno, and it's still better than coach.

( Escape from Reno )

I picked up some take-out food in Reno, headed home to Fernley, stopped by the post office (which is good because there were several parcels, one of which required me to go to the counter, so it was helpful that I was on such an early flight that they were still open), and went home. I restarted the fire (Lisa is isolating from me in her travel trailer for a few days) to try and heat the living room up from the 10°C where I found it when I got home, then ate dinner. I'll unpack sufficiently to get to bed tonight. The rest of the unpacking will have to wait, as sleep is more important right now.