Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

Today is Lisa's final full day in Chicago. She's still very tired and very much wanting to be home. Today she double-checked the route from the hotel to Union Station (there's apparently a lot of road construction in the area). The people with the crying baby and the screaming kids appear to have left, so she was able to get some sleep.

The train from Chicago to Reno leaves Chicago at 2 PM. Lisa thus can check out at her leisure tomorrow morning and head to Union Station, where she can hang out in the comfortable and spacious Metropolitan Lounge until it's time to board. After that, she should be able to relax as it will be only a couple more days before she is home.

Just before 06:00 my time, Chris Carson called me from his room in the hotel in Chicago (a few doors down from Lisa's room). He filled me in on his side of yesterday's madness. He'd not been able to get into the hotel internet either, and he told me that the hotel hoped to have that fixed today.

I got up and dressed, and as I was considering going to the Wigwam to have breakfast just as they opened, Lisa called. Despite the grueling schedule from yesterday and her exhaustion, she got very little sleep, as the hotel's heating system (radiators) was clicking and pinging all night long, and it kept waking her up. She told me she couldn't tolerate this because she'd never be able to sleep. So it was time for Travel Agent Kevin to go to work.

First I called Amtrak. As I feared, there were no roomettes available on any trains until Tuesday, which is the day she's leaving anyway. The agent did tell me that even if rooms became available, Amtrak's website is useless for making that sort of change, so you have to call and talk to a human being to make such a change.

Next I took stock of hotel changes. I have a lot more IHG points than I had at the start of this trip, in part because we ended up not having to use some of them at a very expensive property we originally considered using in Munich for the end of Lisa's stay there. (The H.ome Serviced Apartments managed to suffice until the day she left.) I discovered that I had almost exactly enough points to buy three nights at the Holiday Inn south of Union Station. Lisa and I stayed there once, many years ago, and had the odd experience (due to it being the last room available and my having a confirmed reservation) of staying in their "conference room" hotel room: a room that is mostly a small board room, but that also has a sleeping room attached to it. It turned out to be significantly less expensive for me to purchase the small amount of additional points that I needed to book a three-night stay than it would be to book the room on money, even on their "points and cash" offers. So for about $70 worth of purchased points, I booked a room at that Holiday Inn.

The Holiday Inn & Suites Downtown Chicago turns out to be not that far from the hotel in which Lisa was staying: about 1300 m, and it's on the same street. It's also decently convenient for when she leaves on Tuesday. I called the hotel to make sure they would let her check in even though it's my name that booked the room. They confirmed that they had her name on the reservation. They also arranged to use my IHG credit card for any incidental charges. It was still pretty early, so I asked if they had any rooms available into which Lisa could move today. They said they were still cleaning rooms, but if she came there now and did not mind waiting in the lobby, they could give her the next available room.

I then called the first hotel and ended up speaking to the manager, to whom I explained that the pinging radiators were driving my wife mad and she was going to have to leave. The manager agreed to refund the remaining three nights of the reservation. I called Lisa and explained what was going on. She was packing to check out anyway, even if it "stranded" the remainder of the reservation. This revised arrangement was a big improvement. I also called Chris to tell him what was going home and to let him know where Lisa would be.

It's a pity that I hadn't spotted that Holiday Inn when doing the initial booking, because due to a a feature of my IHG credit card, I could have got Lisa a four night stay for the price of three nights' worth of points — what I'm spending anyway now — and saved over $200 in hotel costs from last night's stay. Oh, well, more spilled milk over which crying does no good. Also, I didn't have the points at the start of this trip that I have now, much of which I earned from Glasgow and from some of Lisa's other stays, so I probably wouldn't have considered doing this.

So after more than 90 minutes of being on the phone talking to Amtrak, hotels, Lisa, and Chris, I finally have everything re-sorted, I think. I went to the Wigwam and had a slow, leisurely breakfast. When I got back, I checked with the first hotel, and Lisa had indeed checked out. I'm composing this, I see that the "Welcome Amenity" points from IHG have posted to my account, which means Lisa has made it to the Holiday Inn and checked in. (It's a peculiarity of the IHG system that I get 500 points even when staying there on points.)

I can see why travel agent isn't an easy job.

After getting back to the hotel after a couple of hours of walking around downtown, we considered our options. Lisa suggested that we could finally have the meal that everyone kept saying we should get while in Chicago: Giordano's Pizza.

( When in Chicago, Eat Pizza )

Lunch left us very full, and we told ourselves that we needed to get out and walk off as much of it was we could, so we decided to walk over to Navy Pier, which is about 2 km away from the hotel.

( To the Pier and Back )

We could have taken a water taxi back to near the hotel, as we were low on energy, but we decided to try and walk back, this time via the Lakeshore trail to the south side of the river, then swinging around to the south shore riverwalk. Unfortunately, while making the transition between the two paths, Lisa stepped in a chuckhole and went tumbling. She strained a muscle, and needed a few minutes to recover. Nothing seemed to be sprained or broken, but she was in poor shape. We continued at slow speed back toward the hotel.

( Kuma Bear, Trout, and More Chicago Skyline )

We slowly worked our way back to the hotel. Climbing the stairs from the Riverwalk up to Upper Wacker was a bit of a challenge. I carried Kuma Bear and his pack to make it a little easier for Lisa. When we got back to the hotel, Lisa (sensibly) declared that she was not going out again and sent me to Bockwinkle's to get some orange juice and a few other small things. We made dinner from the supplies we have (and now need to finish consuming).

( Night View )

According to my pedometer, I put in more than 17,000 steps today, and it certainly feels like it.

This is our penultimate night in Chicago. If Lisa's leg is up to it, we'll try to do something more adventurous than just walking around the streets tomorrow.

I had a pretty late night last night, and I'd hoped to get more sleep on Tuesday morning, but it was not to be.

( Chicon 8 Closing Ceremony )

I needed to be in two places at once in the evening, so the CanSMOF / Winnipeg NASFiC meeting had to wait while I went to the Past Worldcon Chairs ("Old Pharts") Party, where an important ceremony was taking place.

( Old Pharts' Party )

I left the party after the ribbon ceremony in order to deal with the CanSMOF/Winnipeg meeting, and I did not go back. Too many maskless people, and not just those actively drinking, of which there were many. Besides, we had a lot to talk about in the Winnipeg suite. Also, with so few people in the suite, I felt safer unmasking (and moving farther away from the others in the room) to consume some of the food and drink we had there. Among the things we had to plan for was the move-out from the suite. My room was around the corner from Winnipeg's suite, and I needed to help them move out on Tuesday morning, which meant sleeping until Noon wasn't in the cards. I went back to the room and set the alarm. I didn't need to be up as early as for the Business Meeting, but it was still earlier than I liked. It was after midnight before I got to sleep.

( The Next Morning )

Around Noon, we finally managed to close out the Winnipeg Suite and help Jannie get the last of the stuff into her car. Lisa and I finally got something resembling breakfast.

Late in the afternoon, we finally ventured out with a simple plan of just walking around downtown Chicago looking at things.

( Chicago Casual Sight-Seeing )

Lisa made dinner from some of the things we have in the room. I redeemed an offer from Chipotle, went over and picked it up, and came back via Bockwinkle's grocery. We're still here through Thursday night, so we still have two days to think of things to do, but we've made no firm plans. I would have got to bed early tonight, but I had to do a couple of hours of Day Jobbe work. Maybe tomorrow morning I can sleep.

With our train to Chicago not scheduled to depart Detroit until 3 PM, we had a late check-out, and didn't have to rush. In fact, we even had a chance to collect the only station on the People Mover that we'd missed in our use of it throughout the week.

( Twice Around )

After packing out of the room, we took a taxi to the Amtrak station. The cabbie must have been angling for a bigger fare and wanted to take us to Dearborn, but we didn't see any need to do that. Detroit's station is a single track, and the delayed train to Pontiac came through when our train to Chicago should have come in, causing the Chicago train (Wolverine #359, running on a special schedule due to track work) to run ten minutes late.

( Despite high-speed running, it never got any better )

We have this routine down now in Chicago and walked down to the Holiday Inn. They upgraded us again, but not to that crazy conference room; we have a nice two-room suite, which Lisa suggested would have been ideal for exploring Chicago if we had several days instead of less than eighteen hours. They also gave us a 1 PM checkout, which is convenient for our 2 PM departure on Tuesday.

After dumping our bags, we walked over to Chicago's Greektown (there appears to be a pattern developing in our food tastes) and had a quick dinner there before returning to the hotel. There's no included breakfast here, so we'll need to get up early enough to go get breakfast; however, with the train station only two blocks from the hotel, we're pretty confident that we can make things work.

For us, the Wednesday before Chicon 7 started was a day to "sleep in" (i.e. get up at 8:30 instead of 6:30 AM) and get acclimated to Chicago. Since my 24 hours of internet access would expire this afternoon, I spent more time than usual online trying to get things done, but consequently we were relatively late getting moving, and we hadn’t even had breakfast.

( Rant About Registration )

Despite my exasperation with the person who mistook process as being a substitute for policy (which is like mistaking precision for accuracy), we did collect our membership materials, which we took back to our room because we planned on spending most of the day off-site.

After a stop at the front desk to deal with some bookkeeping matters like getting my Hyatt number added to the hotel information and asking them to clean the filthy air intake on the air conditioning in our room, we set out for breakfast. We ended up eating at the Corner Bakery down the street from the hotel, which is okay (there are no Corner Bakery stores on the west coast, and I do like their pecan-raisin bread). After that, we picked up a CTA Day Pass from the CVS/pharmacy and headed for the Loop to catch a train south toward the Field Museum.

( Hello, Sue )

Although we’d stopped for a snack mid-afternoon at the Corner Bakery inside the Field, we hadn’t actually had lunch (having had breakfast so late in the morning), and by the time we rolled out of the Field just before 5 PM, I was really starting to drag. We walked back over to the El and rode it back to the Loop, getting out on the far side away from the hotel and looking for something relatively fast and inexpensive. We ended up at Curries, a fast-food Indian restaurant. Lisa has been concentrating on protein (and eliminating dairy) in an attempt to deal with some digestion problems that appear to be dairy-oriented, so we got her a small dish of fairly mild tandoori chicken bites, while I had a real cultural mash-up of tandoori chicken mac, which is basically macaroni and cheese with chopped tandoori chicken. Person of low taste that I often am, I really liked it.

( More Rail Geekery )

Returning to our origin point at State/Lake, we trudged back to the hotel, stopping at the CVS to pick up some sugar-free cough syrup for me. I can feel the cough that started with Lisa building in my chest. I hope I don’t get it as bad as she had it, and I hope I don’t pass it to others while I’m here. We’re avoiding touching any of the party food and we’re using hand sanitizer liberally.

Back at the hotel, Lisa decompressed in the room for a few hours while I went in search of free internet and also checked out the room in which the Business Meeting will be held to confirm that there was a place where we can set up the camera. I also scoped out where the WSFS MPC Meeting will be on Thursday, which is the Wright Room on the Silver Floor of the West Tower, which is quite out of the way. I was happy to find a way to access that level by stairs (the stairs are to the left of the first entrance to DaddyO’s Irish Pub in the West Tower). Then it was back to the lobby to see if the promised free internet would work.

( Free and Slow, but not due to the Connection Speed )

While in the lobby, I learned from Linda Deneroff that there were parties on Night 0 on the 29th and 30th floors, so I went back to my room on the 33rd floor, put my computer away, and Lisa and I walked down (the stairwells open from the inside, thank goodness) to the Boston in (Christmas) 2020 Worldcon Bid Party (don’t try to think too hard about it) and the Kansas City in 2016 party. In keeping with our desire to avoid infecting more people, we limited ourselves to collecting bottles of water or soda.

We turned in before midnight and tried to wind down, and Lisa suggested I get my LJ entry composed while I was thinking about it. It takes longer than you might think to try and get this much stuff organized, which unfortunately cuts into my sleep for tomorrow. Although it’s only the first day of the convention, I’m going to be very busy, what with trying to find some time to sit at the Westercon 66 table, attend the opening ceremonies (where Lisa, Kuma, and I will be rolling out some brand new matching costumes), a panel I have at 4:30 PM, the MPC meeting at 6 PM, and the opening night event at the Adler Planetarium on Thursday evening. I’m getting tired just typing it.

Getting to bed around midnight (accounting for having to add one hour going into Central Time), I slept pretty well, I think, although I did wake up for the station stops at McCook and Holdrege NE, and also Omaha, where there's a longer servicing stop. (And yes, I thought briefly of garyomaha before falling back asleep.)

( On to Iowa )

11:05: Ottumwa IA. This was a "smoke stop" because it's a crew change point.
( Station and engine photos ahead )

We would have been close to on time into Chicago Union Station, but there's a bunch of weekend track work on the BNSF line from Aurora, and the resulting congestion delayed us for roughly an hour. We fought our way out of Union Station. I'm glad Lisa was wearing her compass because I was completely turned around coming out of the station, even though I've been here before. I managed to get us on the wrong side of Canal Street for the three-block walk to the hotel, resulting in us having to wrestle our heavy bags up and down stairs, but we managed to get there. We then got into the room and crashed for a little while.

After recovering slightly, we went for a bit of a walk back up to Union Station, around which I showed Lisa under more relaxed circumstances. I originally thought we might go to a nice restaurant, but we were both pretty zonked out, and we both concluded that we just wanted some milk and a quiet dinner in our room. It helps that there is a pizza restaurant in the lobby of our hotel. We found a Walgreens in Greektown where we could buy a half-gallon of milk -- all of the stores near Union Station appear to be closed on Sunday -- went back to the hotel, ordered pizza, and relaxed. I posted all of the queued-up LJ entries.

I'd write more, but I'm really tired. Although we do want to get to the Museum of Science and Industry tomorrow, and we do have to re-pack for the next train stage and check out in the morning, we're not going to rush.