Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

The minutes of the first ever WSFS Business Meeting held at a NASFiC are now online at the WSFS Rules page under the heading "MINUTES of the 2023 WSFS Business Meeting of the 15th NASFiC."

These minutes, like the meeting itself, are short because the meeting was short. That is because the only business it could consider was receiving the results of site selection and dealing with any related business.

While there have been previous years in which a NASFiC selected a NASFiC site (most recently 2019 in Utah), this is the first time that WSFS rules have required a limited-scope NASFiC Business Meeting to formally receive the results.

My thanks to NASFiC Business Meeting Secretary for producing the minutes.

Flickr is being balky and won't let me show the photos and video that I took today, so I will post the details when I get a chance. Those of you following me on Mastodon saw many of them as I took them, including the Snake.

Here was today's travel:



Thanks to getting to bed relatively early last night, we got away from Elko at 9 AM. Lisa predicted that she could get us home by 3 PM, despite us having to make restroom stops for me every 45 minutes or so. Both of us wanted to get home.

An earlier version of our plan included an option to "bail out" at Winnemucca for the night, and if we both had decided that we could go no farther when we got there about Noon today, we would have done it, like we did at Hawthorne NV on one of our previous road trips. However, Lisa said she was up to it, and I did everything I could to stay awake and help her stay awake. The stops at ever rest area and likely looking truck stop probably helped.

We got home at 2:45 PM. I was impressed. Amazingly, that means the entire trip from when we left Fernley House for the second time after a false start on July 13 to when we arrived home today on August 8 was five minutes short of 26 days. (My original Mastodon Toot shortly after we got home says 27 because I made a fence-post error calculating the duration.)

I've been keeping a mileage/stops diary for the entire trip. Here are the totals:

Outbound (July 13-July 18): 1861 mi/2995 km

Local distance around Winnipeg (July 18-July 31): 35 mi/56 km. Most of this time, the van was in for repairs and I was at Pemmi-Con or on the Churchill trip.

Return (Aug 1-Aug 8): 2109 mi/3394 km

Total: 4005 mi/6445 km

I think this is the longest road trip that Lisa and I have done in the Astro. She has done longer trips on her own, driving her Big Orange Van to Toronto, the small orange pickup to Boston, and both of us together in the Big Orange Van to Lexington KY to New Orleans to Las Vegas and then home on a SMOFCon trip when I was unemployed. But those trips were all more than twenty years ago, and less intense than this one was.

Again, I have no photos of today's trip yet, but maybe I'll get a chance to post them eventually. For now, I have to finish unpacking, getting my work computers powered up, and ready to go back to work tomorrow morning. And there is a lot of other stuff that has to be sorted out, including figuring out how to fix the Astro.

Today was the final day of Pemmi-Con. I had no early commitments and therefore slept in. After breakfast in the room (again, we have a whole lot of accumulated food), I wanted to go to Starbucks to get a coffee to complete a slightly complicated bonus point challenge. It was raining rather heavily. I asked at the front desk and they did indeed have loaner umbrellas, which was very nice and saved me from getting soaked.

After running over to Rexall just after Noon — they open later on Sunday — I changed into my WSFS Chicon 7 blue jumpsuit and went over to the Exhibit Hall, where I bought pre-supporting memberships to the LA in 2026 Worldcon bid for me and Lisa, plus a smaller membership for Kuma Bear.

At 1 PM, I had a panel back over in the Delta about bidded convention. I found it an interesting conversation, but I protested the person who essentially said that Fandom is obviously dying. I pointed out that this "Greying of Fandom" assumption was old before I was born in 1965, and the wording in the arguments doesn't even seem to change. Oh, well.

After the panel, it was back to the Exhibit Hall, where Lisa and I reclaimed my 1 1/2 Hugo Award trophies (1994 base, 2002 trophy) and carried them back to our hotel room. That took extra time as people are drawn to Hugo Awards, and I'm happy to let people hold them.

I did make one final round-trip to the Exhibit Hall to make sure I hadn't forgotten anything and to deal with some loose ends. I got there just after it nominally closed at 3 PM, but my Division Head ribbon got me in.

I'd forgotten to put my mobile phone in the jumpsuit, which meant that I'd been out of communication with people for three hours. This got Programming nervous, as they needed me to get the gavel to the Closing Ceremonies. After retrieving my phone and my messages, I called Jannie Shae and reassured her that I would be there with the gavel. She also proposed making me part of the procession into the ceremony, and when I got to the right place just before 4 PM, it was agreed that I would follow a piper who had been engaged to "pipe in" the participant while carrying the gavel and its sounder in front of me. The co-chairs and guests of honor followed me. Cheryl Morgan was nearby (I had some things to give her), and she helpfully saved me a seat and held on to my tote bag for me during the piping-in portion of the ceremony.

( Photos from Closing Ceremonies )

I hung around with Cheryl for a while, then went an played pinball for a little bit, then sent back up to the hotel room and changed out of my jumpsuit. Lisa, who had been in her Imperial Airship Corps uniform along with Kuma Bear, was also changing clothes. There was a Staff Dinner in the hotel restaurant's Private Dining Room. While we had to pay for our own meals, this was an opportunity to gather as a committee and wind down a bit. We went down there; unfortunately, there was nothing on the menu the Lisa wanted to eat, so she excused herself and got some take-out from Elephant & Castle. I enjoyed the penne pasta with prawns, plus a nice corn chowder.

( Dazed Moose Party )

So that's the end of Pemmi-Con, the 15th NASFiC, but not the end of our stay here in Winnipeg. We do not check out until Tuesday morning. Tomorrow morning, I have to call the mechanic and find out whether I get the minivan back tomorrow or have to leave it with him until the end of July. The answer to that question will determine just how we pack up the hotel room and move it to where we're storing things that we do not need in Churchill.

This morning, after breakfast, Lisa and I walked from the Delta Hotel to the shop where the Astro is being worked upon. It's not a long walk, and goes past Winnipeg Central Park.

( A Walk By the Park )

When we got to the mechanic's shop, we explained that we needed to get things out of the minivan. Lisa got the tripod and also the small WSFS banner that we hang from the front of the table where the Business Meeting happens. The owner explained the situation. The good news, and this really is good, is that the compressor and electrical system all are fine. The bad news is that there was no coolant in the system, and when he tried to recharge it, it wouldn't hold. He said he'd search for the leak and get back to me.

Skipping ahead a bit, later that day he called me and said that he'd found the leak: one of the coolant lines had failed, with a hole worn in it. However, he so far as been unable to locate a replacement line that matches the unit. He told me he was working with a vendor to try and fabricate a replacement line. He'll call me tomorrow, he said, to tell me how things stand. I told him that he could keep the van all the way until July 31 if necessary. However, if he can't get it back to me until sometime on Monday, we'll have to go to Plan B to deal with all of our stuff currently filling our hotel room, except for what's going to Churchill. I'll talk more about Plan B if we have to activate it.

Lisa and I walked back to the hotel. The day was warm and humid, at least by our standards. Lisa started having difficulty walking. We did make it back to the hotel, but it was hard on Lisa. She needed to go lie down again. She worked very hard during the trip to Winnipeg, doing most of the driving and having to deal with the vehicle issues, particularly at Idaho Falls. It took a lot out of her.

I spent much of the rest of the day going back and forth between the RBC Convention Center exhibit hall and the Delta Winnipeg, running errands for the WSFS division and otherwise keeping things ticking over.

( Farewell to Starbucks )

Part of what I've been doing for Site Selection is to print those ballots submitted by email. I could print them on the printer in the lobby of the Delta, then take them over to Site Selection. We don't have a printer over there, nor would have it made sense to get one for the relatively small number of ballots submitted during the convention.

( Exhibit Hall Photos )

I made another circuit from RBC to Starbucks to the Delta, picking up a smoked sausage along the way, printed the next few ballots, and then persuaded Lisa to come back to the exhibit hall to help with the close-out of Site Selection at 6 PM. That's because Linda Deneroff and I wanted to go to the John Mansfield spotlight panel at 5:30, and Sharon Sbarsky would need help moving material when Site Selection closed from the exhibit hall over to where we were going to count ballots.

( John Mansfield Spotlight )

After the John Mansfield Spotlight, Linda and I joined Sharon, Martin Pyne (who is part of the Business Meeting this year), and the folks from the Buffalo bid (the only bid on the ballot) in the now-closed Green Room, which Cheryl Morgan pointed out to me was ideally suited for us for the ballot counting when I was wondering where we were going to do the ballot count earlier today.

There were a decent number of ballots cast, considering the relatively small size of this NASFiC, but actually counting the ballots took less time than it did to do the bookkeeping to confirm that we had money that matched against the number of ballots cast. Including the transit time from the RBC to the Delta, it took just short of two hours to deal with site selection business. The official results will be announced at the Business Meeting on Saturday morning at 10 AM in Charleswood B in the Delta Hotel.

With Site Selection concluded, the entire WSFS division — all five of us, including Lisa — went to dinner at the Elephant & Castle, which is adjacent to the hotel. We were able to get a table on the outside patio, which was pleasant, and even when a thunderstorm came in just as we were finishing dinner, the patio was sufficiently sheltered that we we stayed dry.

After dinner, we all went our separate ways. I went and played pinball for a little while, then went over to the evening social function, where I socialized with people, including TAFF delegate Sandra Bond, who as part of her TAFF trip is attending NASFiC. I have not tried to go the parties, as there has been some challenges with the hotel and parties, and I'm not overly fond of crowded parties since the pandemic hit anyway.

The Business Meeting starts the day on Saturday for me, but it really shouldn't be very long, and other than that, I have no other responsibilities to the convention on Saturday. That will give me some time to work on a different WSFS function, but I'll write about that later.

At Lisa's advice, I did not set an alarm today, and consequently got a solid nine hours of sleep. I needed it. Lisa and made breakfast in the room (having a hot water pot, not just a coffee maker), helped a lot. I then drove the Astro over to the auto repair shop that said they could do work on the air conditioning. I showed it to the owner, gave him my phone number, and he said that he would call me when he had a diagnosis. I also told him that I'm not in a rush because of the convention I'm attending. If I don't hear from him by EOD tomorrow, I will call him on Friday to make sure how we stand, but even Monday would not be a problem. If really necessary, he could have it until we get back from Churchill, but that would complicate our moving out of the hotel on Tuesday for certain. In any event, every day he has the van at his shop is a day that I'm not spending CA$20 on parking.

The walk back to the hotel was just over 2 km and was no big deal.

Because there was no guest laundry at the Holiday Inn Express in Jamestown, Lisa and I needed to deal with doing laundry today. Fortunately, the Delta has a guest laundry, and while there is but one washer and one dryer, they are free to use. Unfortunately, while Lisa had backed laundry detergent, she'd left it in the minivan, and I did not really feel like walking another 4 km to retrieve it. But there's a Rexall in the shopping center diagonally across the street, so Lisa and I went there and bought a small package of Tide pods. We did a couple of loads of laundry, which we needed after the past six days on the road.

Around this time, the three of us (including Kuma, who has a Stuffie badge) registered for the convention.

Lisa is working for Exhibits here, and she went and helped with setup there. After dealing with the laundry, I went back to the hotel room and caught up on bookkeeping and bill payments. (Life goes on while traveling.) That took longer than I expected, but after it was done, I went back over to the RBC Convention Center exhibit hall. Lisa was tired and hungry after the work she was doing, so we returned to the hotel room.

Just before 6 PM, I dashed over to Rexall to buy some more milk, and made it with only two minutes to spare. When I got back to the room, I ordered pizza for Lisa and me. There was a big pre-convention food event happening, but Lisa and I did not feel up to going to it. When the pizza came, I had to pop down to the lobby to collect it, because the delivery people can't come upstairs. You have to have a room key for the floor to which you are going in order to activate the elevator buttons above floor 2.

After dinner, I turned my attention toward getting ready for our first WSFS function: validating advance NASFiC site selection ballots. In this case, I'm merely working as staff for Site Selection administrator Sharon Sbarsky. I had previously received the mailed-in ballots from Jannie Shae. Sharon had printed the emailed ballots received before she left home, and I printed the two of them received this afternoon. Jannie was eventually able to get the hotel to unlock the Fort Garry Room to give us a place to validate ballots in peace. We were joined by representatives of the Buffalo bid and Sharon's assistant.

Around this time, I realized that I'd lost my membership badge! I distinctly remember wearing it when I went to Rexall at 6 PM, but I can't remember anything after that. It might have blown off on my way back from the store, or when I went down to get the pizza. We looked all over the room: nothing. This is annoying and embarrassing, and I hope I'm able to get the badge replaced in the morning.

We did not receive a lot of advance ballots; however, it took a lot longer to validate them than expected due to some annoying technical issues with the convention registration database. We did manage to sort most of them out, and everyone seemed satisfied.

I have most of the site selection equipment. Sharon asked me to meet her tomorrow morning and we'll take it all over to the convention center and get things set up for a Noon opening.

I'm up later than I wanted to be tonight, but I don't have to be up at dawn tomorrow. And we have lots of food in the room, so it should be easy enough to get moving on Thursday.

Today I worked a half-day for Day Jobbe, as I have to do on Tuesday. This went a little longer than I had planned. I also was working on some other plans, like trying to find an auto air conditioning repair shop in Winnipeg not too far from the Convention Center area. (I called a couple; the first one was a Volvo specialist, but the second told me to bring it in and they would have a look at it. More about this later this week.) Consequently, we did not get away from Glendive MT until nearly Noon. Our goal was the North Dakota State Railroad Museum in Mandan (Bismark's western suburb). That's about 200 miles.

( Cutting Things Fine )

We were very grateful for the guided tour, and we dropped money into the contribution box and also bought a book about the Northern Pacific. It's difficult for us to visit a railroad museum without buying books.

After leaving the museum, we headed across the Missouri River to Bismarck for another railroad-related photo stop.

( To the Merci Train )

Having managed to tick off the two significant things on our to-do list today, we left Bismarck for tonight's hotel and our final night on the road before we get to Winnipeg.

( Turbines in Tow )

We reached the Holiday Inn Express in Jamestown ND shortly after 8 PM. After getting moved in, I discovered that my initial expectation of another Pizza Hut delivery was out of whack: there used to be a Pizza Hut in this city, but it had closed years ago. By the time we realized this, many other local places we might have tried had already closed at 9 PM. Weighing our options, Lisa and I decided to rush off to a local grocery store. We got there about 9:30, with the store closing at 10 PM. Fortunately, we had a good idea what we wanted. We got milk, juice, frozen meals to cook in the room's microwave oven, cold cuts, and, rather to our surprise, a loaf of Dave's Killer Bread; we did not expect to see Dave's bread this far east.

Returning to the hotel, we prepared our dinner and relaxed over another episode of Emergency!.

We had planned to do some laundry tonight, but we got an unwelcome surprise: unlike nearly every other Holiday Inn Express in the USA in which we've stayed, this one does not have a guest laundry. Had we known that, we would probably have tried to do laundry last night and this morning, which would have been pretty easy, because the laundry room at Glendive was diagonally opposite our hotel room and had three or four machines. Fortunately, the Delta Hotel Winnipeg appears to have a guest self-service laundry facility, so maybe we'll get a chance to do laundry sometime in the next few days during NASFiC and before we leave for Churchill two days after the convention.

Tomorrow we push on to Winnipeg, and move-in begins for Pemmi-Con.

Today was a relatively short day by distance traveled, but took a long time nonetheless. It seemed to be a crime to have a travel route going near Yellowstone National Park without visiting it, so here was our actual route for today.

( On the Road to Yellowstone )

I'd purchased a $35 park admission pass in advance, and thus breezed through the park entrance.

You can't go fast in Yellowstone Park, not that you'd want to do so, what with so much to see. The maximum speed on park roads is 45 mph, and often lower. We headed east to Madison, then south to Old Faithful.

( Park Pictures )

Exiting the park on the north end, we continued on US-89 (US highway numbers are suspended within the park) for a little over 50 miles to tonight's stop at Livingston MT. There are no IHG hotels in Livingston, and all of the hotel prices were eye-watering. We had to move distinctly downscale and are spending tonight in a Super 8, which is better than a Motel 6, but not a huge amount better.

( IHG Has Been Spoiling Us )

Were we satisfied with our less than five hours at Yellowstone Park? No, not entirely; however, we got at least a few nice views, and we'd love to come back some day. And I'm sure that if we'd skipped this chance, we'd be wondering what we'd missed. Lisa says she's seen enough to have an appreciation for what the park is like. Approaching the park overland is the typically semi-arid lands like much of the Western USA with which we are familiar. The park itself is an oasis or garden or wonderland of lushness, with spectacular geothermal activity thrown in for good measure.

Although we have a longer drive planned for tomorrow, it's mostly on I-90 and should be relatively fast, and with luck, we will not have any more vehicle malfunctions with which to contend. So we've set the alarm for several hours later than yesterday and we'll get as much sleep as we can.

Today was definitely not the best of days. While we were traveling, I took photos that I intended to work into this story, but for reasons that should become clear, I don't have time to add them.



This was the planned route for today: Elko, Nevada to Idaho Falls, Idaho. We did eventually make it, but it took more than twice as long as the projected time, and as I compose this, the minivan is stuck in place and will not start.

I worked from the hotel room from 5:30 AM to 9:30 AM. We checked out about 10 AM, and it looked like we would be able to get a good start to the day, even though we planned to run back one exit west to Raley's supermarket to get something we needed. However, when we got started, we got an unwelcome surprise: the air conditioning had stopped working.

We dealt with Raley's and then went to O'Reilly Auto Parts, where we got an A/C recharge kit and a couple of cans of refrigerant. The system tested empty, but it took a suspiciously small amount of coolant to return a normal charge. But there was still no cold air. Then we realized that the compressor wasn't running. After a stop at CVS to deal with another couple of items we needed, we tried the auto repair shop that worked on the Astro when it broke down here almost exactly four years ago. Unfortunately, they said they wouldn't be able to work on it today. We decided to give up on air conditioning and get moving, two hours later than planned.

It was a hot day, but not as hot as it might have been, and we could survive it. We set out for Wells, where we stopped to refuel and then head north on US-93. I'd never been over this road before. Lisa drove. I came up with a tentative plan to try and find a mechanic in Winnipeg that might be able to work on the minivan during NASFiC to get the A/C compressor working. Heck, we could conceivably leave it with them all the way through the Churchill trip, and surely that would be long enough to fix it.

Just south of Jackpot, Nevada, traffic came to a standstill. There had been a nasty accident between a motorcycle and an automobile, and the road was completely blocked. We were stuck there for more than an hour. Eventually, the State Police and the county sheriff's department were able to get one-way traffic going, and we eased on by the blockage, but now our cumulative delay was more than three hours. It escaped neither of us that had we been able to get out of Elko on time, we would have missed the accident delay as well.

We turned east on US-30, then I-84 to I-86 and north onto I-15. We did keep making regular stops for restroom breaks and cold drinks. Lisa and I were working out plans to go to WinCo Foods to buy food for breakfast tomorrow (the Candlewood Suites in which we're staying has a full kitchen; both Lisa and I would love to have a room like this during a Worldcon/NASFiC), when we decided to stop and refuel at the Flying J at the south end of Idaho Falls. Aside from the extra ten minutes of delay, this seemed routine. Lisa pulled up to the pump and stopped the car. The buzzer sounded to warn her that she'd left the headlights on, but she turned the lights off and all seemed routine. I refueled the minivan, we loaded up, and Lisa turned the key: Nothing.

When I say Nothing, I mean nothing at all. No attempted start. No sound of relays. And none of the lights or accessories in the minivan worked. Not the lightest minor light would turn on. It was if the battery was dead.

After considering the situation, we decided to try and get a tow to the hotel (which was only about six miles away) and work on things tomorrow morning. I called AAA and they dispatched a tow truck, but things were backed up so much that the truck would be coming from Pocatello and we could expect a two hour wait.

While we waited, Lisa tried to think of ways to diagnose the problem. It did not seem like this should be an alternator problem. Had it been, we would have had a red dash light long before the car died completely. Lisa, who deserves the title Mistress of Bodge, came up with a way to test the car battery. Using a piece of wire from a broken earplug and a spare bulb for the Astro's dashboard lights, she fashioned a battery tester. She confirmed that if we touched the wires one of her radio batteries, the light would come on. She took it to the car battery and touched the wires to the positive terminal and the frame of the car. The light came on, quite strongly! This means the battery has a full charge.

With that much power, the accessories should have worked even if the starter wouldn't. So it's got to be something else. More about this later.

The tow truck arrived early, which was fine by us. They towed us to the hotel and parked the Astro in the back of the hotel's parking lot. We checked in, and I ordered pizza just barely in time; in fact it was actually fifteen minutes too late (11:15 PM), but the Pizza Hut accommodated us, sending the order by DoorDash instead of their own delivery drivers, but at the same delivery charge, so it did not cost us any extra. Lisa and I unpacked our overnight luggage and we bought some various bits of groceries from the Candlewood "pantry." Pizza arrived and we felt a little bit better after eating.

Lisa got a bath and headed to bed. She has an idea about what's wrong, and if somehow the local Chevrolet dealership might be able to work on it right away and we're right, it might be easy to fix. Otherwise, we're in a very tough spot. Time is going to be tight on Saturday morning. I've set the alarm for early, and Lisa will go back to work on troubleshooting early in the morning. The dealership opens at 8 AM, and you can bet that we'll be on the phone with them then to see if there's any chance they could work on it.

I'm not sure that I'll have time tomorrow morning to write about the solution. If we have to move to one of the various plans B, C, or D, we may need to push on quickly to our next city. Some of the solutions are rather expensive, but I'm not prepared to declare defeat yet. Watch this space and cross your fingers for us.

Today is Departure Day. It's my last full day of Day Jobbe for me for nearly a month. I'll be working some half days remotely while traveling, which saves PTO and also means I'm less likely to come back to work next month and feel like I've forgotten how to do my job.

We packed a lot of stuff into boxes and then put the boxes into the minivan last night. We'll do our personal luggage and valuables before departure, of course.

Today's destination is Elko, Nevada, which is over 250 miles, but Interstate 80 is a pretty fast road in Nevada, and we're usually up to longer trip legs at the start of a trip than at the end. We very nearly left yesterday and went to Winnemucca, because if we had discovered that we'd left something critical behind, it's a shorter trip home. But we've been obsessing over packing lists for weeks now, so we'll just have to trust to luck

As it happens, I managed to get enough done yesterday that I was able to go to bed around 6:30 PM and get a whopping ten hours of sleep. I don't expect to get that much again until sometime in August.

Lisa was able to fix the driver's side sun visor, which has been broken for years, yesterday. This will make driving a bit more comfortable.

Today's tasks include trying to get the Astro cleaned out inside and to start packing boxes of things we're taking with us, and possibly also our costume luggage. The idea is to be able to take a lot less stuff with us up to Churchill, leaving all of the stuff we won't need on that "side trip" in the minivan. We have arranged to leave the minivan with a friend in Winnipeg as well, so we won't have to pay for parking after the convention.