Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

I was able to get our check-out time extended to Noon. After breakfast, we both got cleaned up and we repacked out luggage for the benefit of the TSA and taking into account that we didn't get the Saga upgrade, so we can only have two checked bags.

About 11:45 AM, I got the luggage cart, we moved out of the room and checked out. The hotel called a taxi to Union Station, which took its sweet time getting there and charged twice as much as the taxi from the train station two nights earlier. I'd never bought a Denver RTD train ticket here, and learned that tickets are sold from kiosks on the platform. An "Airport Day Pass" is $10/person. We took up our positions on the platform waiting for the next train to the airport.

From announcements, I saw that trains were running behind schedule. An RTD driver (who was waiting for the arrival of inbound equipment that he would take out to Denver Airport) explained that the every-15-minute schedule had been disrupted by a crew member not showing up, meaning that the train before the one we were expecting to catch had been cancelled. This also meant that the train had extra passengers, as as we headed for DIA even more people were trying to cram their way onto the train. Worse, DIA had generated extra traffic to the airport by holding a concert at the airport, which seems like a crazy idea to me. Fortunately, as we'd boarded as soon as the terminating train emptied at Union Station, Lisa and I had seats all the way out to the airport.

We checked in for our IcelandAir flight (my checked bag came in a mere 400 g short of the 23 kg limit) and headed for Terrorization. We were traveling very heavy, including me carrying three laptop computers. We stepped out of line to unload everything into TSA bins, but it still took quite a while to clear. However, despite all of the delays, we still had plenty of time.

We boarded and took out seats near the rear of the plane and hoped nobody showed up to fill the row. Just before departure, I asked a flight attendant and she said we'd lucked out. I moved over to seat C and Kuma Bear got a seat of his own. This was perhaps not as good as a Saga upgrade, but still much more pleasant than rubbing elbows with another passenger.

We enjoyed our pre-ordered hot meal on board. I could tell that it was unlikely that I'd get any sleep on this flight. The 6 1/2-hour flight was scheduled to arrive around 6 AM Iceland time, which would be Midnight Mountain Time. I took advantage of the flight to watch Dune Part 1. I also reset my watch to Iceland Time and looked forward to being somewhere cool, which Denver certainly was not.

Once again, pictures of today's travel can be seen on my Mastodon account.

This Labor Day holiday weekend has reportedly been very busy; however, traveling today by air out of San Jose turned out to be pretty good, as I had hoped.

( Heading for Home )

It was not raining at the airport, but it did rain as we drove home, and we've had showers off and on today, although not when I made a quick run to Grocery Outlet to get some milk and other groceries. I'm happy for the cooler weather, but goodness only knows how they are going to get people out of Black Rock City with the place apparently a morass of mud due to the unseasonable wet weather.

Me, I'm glad that I traveled today during the eye of the travel storm, and that tomorrow is a holiday for me.

Today we drove from Wendover to the Hill Aerospace Museum in Roy, Utah, just north of where next year's Westercon will be. After discovering this place existed, we reckoned that we wouldn't have time to go see it next year, what with being the Fan Guests of Honor and all, so we decided to go look at it today.

( Better in Springtime Anyway )

Of course Kuma Bear was with us. He has his own perspective on our day at the museum.

We did not get any pictures because we could only see it from I-15 and there was no easy way to get a picture (and besides, my phone was dying), but we got some rail-spotting as well: US Army locomotives and a locomotive servicing facility one side of the freeway, and Utah FrontRunner commuters trains on the other.

Lisa really enjoyed this visit, and I liked it as well. If your trip to Westercon next year (possibly to be combined with the 2019 NASFiC should they win their bid) gives you some spare time and you like planes, consider devoting one day to get up to Roy and visit this fine collection.

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We had some other plans for the area today, but they sort of went to pieces on us, and we instead headed back to Wendover. We do, however, now know how to drive to the site of next year's Westercon. The drive through the Bonneville Salt Flats area was enlivened (if you might call it that) by driving through a salt storm. The storms that have been rolling through northern California and Nevada for the past several weeks in this case were blowing clouds of salty dust across the freeway. We need to remember to go wash the Astro after we get home so that the salt doesn't further deteriorate the minivan's paint.

There was a room available at the Red Garter. Unfortunately, unlike yesterday, the room was on the elevator-less wing, but we managed. It's just as well we were carrying our luggage; with the high winds, we needed the extra ballast.