Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

The last day of 2013 brought with it the official news that Portland, Oregon, has filed a bid to host Westercon 69 at the Doubletree Hotel in Portland.

This bid is sponsored by OSFCI, the non-profit corporation behind OryCon and the last several Portland Westercons. While technically the same sponsoring organization as the bid that led to the marathon site selection business meeting in San Jose in 2011, the leadership and staff of this bid are completely different, starting with chair Lea Rush, who chaired last year's OryCon and has received rave reviews from conrunners I know and trust.

Because Portland filed their bid with Westercon 67 in Salt Lake City before the end of 2013, the Westercon Central Zone (broadly Northern California, Nevada except Las Vegas, and states eastward to 104° W) is "locked out" from bidding for Westercon 69. Bids from the rest of Western North America and Hawaii have until April 15, 2014 to file if they want to be on the site-selection ballot this year in Salt Lake City.

I acted as a technical consultant to this bid, helping with the format of the bid filing. I'll do this for any bid who asks, so I don't consider it a conflict of interest with being Chairman of the Westercon 67 Business Meeting. I'm not expecting there to be a repeat of the epic site selection of 2011 or a three-hour Westercon Business Meeting.

[The icon on this post is a picture of Portland Union Train Station.]

When I got home from work (hooray for the train!), I had a message from scott_sanford advising me that Lisa had arrived safely at the hotel in Portland. I was quite relieved about that, because when I called that hotel this morning to confirm that she'd be able to check in even though it's my hotel points buying the room, I had so much difficulty understanding the thickly-accented person at the hotel that I was concerned that my message had not gotten through. However, it appears all is well, and I'm glad to be able to get some value out of the Choice Hotels points I earned for all of that time I had to spend at the Travelodge in Yuba City after my grandfather died.

I could have bought the rooms in Klamath Falls on Priority Club points, too, but they're running a double-points offer right now, and also it's usually in my best interest to redeem the points on the hotels in the higher-prices locations. Often, the cash cost of a particular IC Hotel only has a vague relationship to its points cost.

When setting up the trip, I couldn't figure out why the Holiday Inn Resort just north of K-Falls was $5/night less than the theoretically lower-end Holiday Inn Express downtown. Lisa pointed out that the "Resort" doesn't include breakfast. That makes it slightly more logical, I think.