Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

Typically, conventions given their Guests of Honor some sort of gift. We had intended to do so at Westercon 74 as well, but those of you attending the Closing Ceremony (a recording of which should be online realsoonnow after I do some editing on it) at Westercon 74 know that all that Myrna Donato and Kevin Andrew Murphy got were "Lovely Parting Gift" ribbons from Match Game SF. I did that so they wouldn't go away empty-handed, but now you get to hear... the rest of the story.

Tonopah Main Street, a civic-improvement organization in Tonopah, sells a series of wooden models of Tonopah buildings, which started with the Mizpah Hotel (we showed that off at our table at Loscon last year) and the most-recent release of which was the Belvada Hotel. My plan was that we would give Myrna one of the Mizpah models and Kevin one of the Belvada models, as those where the hotels where they had been staying, as a souvenir of their hotel stay and their appearance as Guests of Honor. It was a good idea, but during the rush of move-in and the first day of the convention on Friday, I forgot to buy the models (the Convention Center sells them). By the time I remembered, it was Sunday. The TCC office (and Tonopah Main Street) are closed on weekends and holidays. It was too late to buy the presents. So I improvised at the Closing Ceremonies, passing it off as yet another cost-saving measure. However, on Tuesday (after both our guests had departed), I did go ahead and get the models.



Here are the two models, posted in front of Kevin and Myrna's GOH profiles in the Westercon 74 program book.

Last Thursday, I packaged Kevin and Myrna's gifts (being careful to get the right hotel model going to the right person, and mailed them priority mail from Fernley. Per the USPS, Kevin should have received his model on Friday and Myrna should have received hers today. I got an email from Myrna acknowledging her receipt, and assumed that Kevin had received is, so I went ahead and posted about it on Facebook and Twitter. To my embarrassment, Kevin Andrew Murphy hadn't received his yet, so the first he knew about it was reading the public Facebook post! I apologized and explained, and he said the mail to Reno is weird, and that maybe the package will get to him on Monday.

We deliberately scheduled one extra day in Tonopah after the move-out day for two reasons: (1) Leaving time in case there was some sort of post-con hitch that needed our attention, such as a complication in move-out, and (2) If the first did not apply, giving us a day when we could sleep without worrying about hotel check-out. Item 1 did not apply as yesterday's move-out was smooth, so fortunately I could turn off all alarms and sleep as much as I could, which in this case was until 11 am.

As I have mentioned, we have a kitchenette room (stove/oven/mini-fridge), and I brought my french press and some ground coffee because the coffee machine in the room is very noisy and produces tiny little cups of coffee. So after a shower (which I had to run a while to try and iron out the aches in my shoulders and back from the past six days), I made coffee and Lisa and I had breakfast on some of the leftover packages of oatmeal salvaged from the Westercon move-out.

After that, it was time to dive into the email and work on Westercon stuff. Unfortunately, at least one member of Westercon has reportedly tested positive for COVID-19. We had a plan for this, created by our Code of Conduct lead Fred Moulton and our convention's COVID committee. I activated a new top-level page on the Westercon committee for our COVID reporting and sent out an email blast to all members. (I also posted to Twitter/FB and other likely news sources.) On it we included the reported case and repeated what we had published in the Tonopah Telegraph newsletter repeatedly: If you test positive for COVID for a week after the convention, contact us so we can report the case (including personal information only by permission). The person who tested positive spent a great deal of time in the Blue Room, where our online/hybrid program happened, so if you went to any of the panels in that room, you need to be extra cautious.

Lisa and I took our first post-con COVID test yesterday, and it was negative. We will test regularly and watch our condition. With this on our minds, it did rankle when we went to the convenience store this evening and were heckled by someone (who apparently had just been denied an alcohol purchase because he wouldn't show ID as required) for wearing masks.

Lisa made us lunch this afternoon and then dinner this evening from the groceries we'd brought with us. Aside from take-out from A&W and the food truck, we never did go out for any meals. I'm sorry to have missed the Strawberry Hill Diner, which had excellent reviews, but at the moment, we're as concerned as we ever have been about COVID, the new BA.5 variant of which is reported worse than ever. Yes, we're quadruple-vaccinated, but that's not as much of a protection as hoped, so raising our N95 masks as protection against idiots is the best we can do.

I spent much of the day dealing with Westercon 74 social media and email. This included this lovely message from HISTORY:Nevada, whose posts about the area we have retweeted over the past couple of years as part of attractions of the area for our members.

I know you guys waited a long time for your conference in Tonopah with COVID delays @Westercon74.
I hope it was well attended and an overall success.
The "Tonopah Telegraph" newsletter was great. https://t.co/dhFEKa4efw
Safe travels.
"One Does Not Simply Walk
Into Tonopah..." pic.twitter.com/HPTrsyH7Me

— HISTORY:nevada (@HistoryNevada) July 6, 2022

HISTORY:Nevada has over 14,000 followers, so it might be the largest exposure we have ever gotten. We're flattered by the attention.

This afternoon, I got word that the Rolling Stone is ready to be collected. That times out pretty well for us, as we drive home tomorrow morning, unload the U-Haul, and return it to Reno on Friday, after which we can collect the RV, get some groceries, and go home to start putting together the rest of our life.

As the Keeper of the Keys (of the Tonopah Convention Center), on account of being the person who locked the doors late last night after we finished set-up, I also had to be there shortly after 7 AM to let the people who needed to run the online/hybrid programming in the Gold Room. Consequently, I got maybe three hours' sleep last night.

The first online panels (with the Gold Room being the place people could watch the panels at the convention) were at 8 AM. The Main Hall, however, was not scheduled to open until 10 AM. I unlocked the doors so Program Operations could get started in the Gold Room, posted signs about the 10 AM doors-open, and returned to the Belvada. Back in my room, I prepared breakfast for Lisa and me and watched the first online panel of the convention on my computer. I commented that it might be the only program item I see except those on which I'm a participant.

After the program was over, I once again moved the printer and paper and program books down to Registration in the lobby of the Belvada Hotel. Lisa headed for the TCC to work on Hospitality preparations. I joined her and others working on their parts of the convention later. I also directed people who had not yet registered (and had neither read the website or the signs on the doors of the TCC) down to the Belvada for Registration today.

Shortly after 10 AM, I personally opened the doors of the Main Hall, and the biggest single portion of Westercon 74 was under way.

( Welcome )

Between 10 AM and 2 PM, I did make numerous trips between the Belvada and TCC, moving things from one place to another and occasionally being called in to make some Chair-level decisions, some of which I didn't want to do, but That's Why I Get Paid the Big Bucks, isn't it? *eyeroll* But things had settled down from the frenzy of setup, and I remembered to sit down as often as I could.

( Opening Ceremony )

I don't have pictures of the Opening Ceremony, but Lisa did record it. However, it's part of a much longer recording, and I do not have time to edit out the OC itself. It started with a video based on the opening of the television show The Wild, Wild West with a montage of pictures of Tonopah ending with a picture of me standing in front of the SMOF-mobile (my minivan). The screen then raised, I walked out, and welcomed people to The Wild, Wild Westercon.

After a few introductory remarks, I introduced our guests of honor, Kevin Andrew Murphy and Myrna Donato, each who talked briefly about their experience of being named a Westercon Guest of Honor.

It was then time for the formal opening of the convention: the use of the Gavel of Westercon to ceremonially call the convention to order. This would ordinarily be my job, but because I'm only the driver of the convention and the real reason we're here is because Lisa Hayes fell in love with Tonopah and worked tirelessly on bringing the convention here, I asked her to join me.

( Bang the Gavel )

I felt much better after Opening Ceremonies were over, but there was still an afternoon ahead and some serious programming. Continuing immediately onward after the Opening, we invited the head of the very late-submitted bid for Utah in 2024 Westercon, James Galway, to give a presentation and take questions. That led to people who hadn't read the announcements about how Anaheim was awarded Westercon 75 in 2023 to ask questions as well. I carefully explained the process whereby Anaheim was selected, and made it clear that, based on multiple precedents, no further action by the Westercon Business Meeting was required. In addition, I explained that if no eligible bid (including Utah's write-in bid) does not win the site selection election, the Business Meeting on Sunday could select a site by a 3/4 vote, or alternatively could decide not to decide, in which case the decision on the future site would be up to the board of Director of LASFS.

Lisa, who is at least as worn out from short sleep during setup as I am, went back to the hotel and got a few hours of sleep because she's on the night shift. (Westercon is open All Night Long.) Just before she retired for the afternoon, Lisa and I (and Kuma Bear) cast our 2024 Westercon site selection ballots. By rule, Site Selection administrator Sharon Sbarsky marked Kuma's ballot "No Preference," so everything was on the up-and-up.

After Lisa retired, I stayed up and dealt with some things like getting a new version of the convention program grid online. For a short time, I thought it possible that there were going to be so many changes that we'd need to print a new grid, but it was not as bad as I thought. The convention newsletter, the Tonopah Telegraph could handle communicating changes to the members, and the signs on each programming room are apparently up to date.

Speaking of the newsletter, as Registration shut down at 7 PM, Sharon came over to the Belvada where Registration had been to use the big printer to print that late edition of the Tonopah Telegraph. We printed more issues than yesterday because the first issue ran out and we had to print more.

Registration will move from the Belvada to the lobby of the TCC on Saturday, so we did some equipment shuffling. Rick Kovalcik and Fred Moulton helped me move the big printer, boxes of program books, and spare paper to the TCC, where most of it went to Operations where it will reside for the duration of the convention.

With the equipment moved, our hotel room has a lot more space.

Lisa returned to the TCC after her extended nap. I was fading. She and I took a dinner break: she took a short bath while I went to the Sweet Dixie food truck for another dinner. Alas, they are sold out of the excellent catfish, but they still have lots of good stuff, and I could call ahead and they had it ready for me when I arrived.

After dinner, Lisa headed back to the TCC and got ready for bed. I'd love to spend more time hanging around with people in Hospitality, but I'm on the point of collapse now and need a bunch of sleep to recharge. Tomorrow should be better.

About half of our pre-registered attending members have collected their badges as of the close of registration this evening. (We do have a process for dealing with people arriving after Registration closed, issuing them temporary badges for the night after checking their vaccination credentials; they will turn in the temporary badges for actual ones the next day.) I still do not know how many people will attend the convention, but I'm pleased that we have six past Worldcon chairs in attendance (including me). While there are many familiar faces, there are others I don't recognize, and that's great!

Today's pedometer count: a mere 13,315 steps. I'm slacking off. I shudder to think what it would have been if I had not arranged to have a room in the Belvada on the lowest possible floor to minimize the trip times between facilities that I knew would be coming.

Now, it's time for some sleep.

Expect less information from me, not more, for the next few days. I'm already feeling overwhelmed and we don't get the keys to the Tonopah Convention Center until tomorrow morning.

Lisa put on the wrong shoes when we left home yesterday: they were an older pair she'd never worn before that were just slightly the wrong size. She initially thought the discomfort was due to them needing to stretch out. But then she realized her mistake; however, she had not bought other shoes. After a morning of trying to soldier through, she conclude that she really couldn't handle this, and hit upon an idea: Several of our friends were coming through Reno today on their way to Tonopah. We called SAS Shoes in Reno, purchased over the phone a pair of the style Lisa wears (in the correct size), and authorized all of those people to collect them. (We did speak with or leave messages with all of them first.) In the meantime, Lisa needed shoes that didn't cause her to limp.

Less that a block south of the Belvada Hotel is A-Bar-L Western Wear. They sell shoes. Lisa picked out a pair that fit, albeit they were not a style she liked that much, but these were Emergency Shoes. They fit, and we bought them. I was also able to pick up a replacement charger cable for my iPhone, the cable for which I'd left at home.

Earlier, Lisa had bought a swimsuit that caught her eye at the Vanwood Variety Store. Even earlier, we went to Central Nevada Hardware (the first of two trips today) where we got several things we had discovered that we needed. I guess we're doing our part to inject money into Tonopah's economy.

This morning, we ran into the sales manager for the combined Mizpah/Belvada properties. She had no objection to us starting to put up signs (with blue tape) directing people to the various program rooms in the hotels and the adjacent casino (the ballroom over the Mizpah Club is one of our program spaces). Lisa and I put up signs in the afternoon. By this we determined some things we still needed to print (just some small things), so we got the printer out of its box and took care of those things.

This evening, we found that Lisa's friend Scott had gotten the messages we left him (although I didn't get a call back from him) and collected her shoes. When I learned that, I called Kevin Roche to tell him that he didn't need to go looking for those shoes when they leave Reno tomorrow afternoon.

Tomorrow we get the keys to the Tonopah Convention Center, unload everything that is still in the U-Haul trailer, move a bunch of stuff that is in our hotel room to either the TCC or the lobby of the Belvada Hotel (where Registration opens tomorrow afternoon), go get the pre-ordered groceries from Raley's for the convention and bring them back to the TCC, and move everything into the place it should be. It will be much busier than today. I am unsure I'll have any time to write about it.

While I have been working on printing Westercon 74 program books and Lisa has been packing Hospitality supplies, it was the day that Kuma Bear had been dreading: his annual bath.

( Poor Wet Bear )

Meanwhile, the program book printing has reached the 90% point. I think we'll have enough ink to get to 100%. After that, we still have to collate and staple it.

I got word from U-Haul that I should be able to get the rental trailer from a designated location in Fernley after noon on Monday. But we realized that we're going to need a bunch of moving blankets to protect some of the exhibit material we're transporting to Tonopah, and we can't get those in Fernley. Also, there appears to be at least one thing we've forgotten that we can't buy in Reno until Monday. So the current plan is to get the trailer on Monday at noon, park it at the house, then drive to Reno and deal with the purchase of the missing item and then go to the U-Haul store in Reno to rent moving blankets. And maybe buy more ink cartridges so that we have ink for the printing we will be doing in Tonopah.

It took us a fair bit longer to get packed out of the hotel room in Tonopah today, and indeed, we just barely made the 11 AM check-out time. Leaving Tonopah took even longer because the ROL card-lock gas pumps (off the main road) weren't working. That's a shame because they were 20 cents/gallon cheaper than the ones on Main Street.

We took a long time getting home: nearly eight hours. That's because we spent the day looking for remnants of the Tonopah & Goldfield Railroad, which connected Goldfield and Tonopah to Mina, Nevada, where it connected to the Southern Pacific (Carson & Colorado) Railroad.

( A Big Concrete Hole in the Ground )

I'm not going to share any more of the photos tonight because we got home after sunset and I'm really worn out. Indeed, I'm going to try and take most of Monday off if I can. I should have scheduled that in advance. It's a lot harder for me to recover from these trips than it was twenty years ago.

As I've mentioned, the Tonopah Westercon 74 committee is holding an in-person meeting in Tonopah this weekend. Lisa and I got away from Fernley about Noon today, and arrived in Tonopah about 4:30, with four stops (gas, food, restroom) along the way. We're staying in the Belvada Hotel, which is the closest of Tonopah's hotels to the Convention Center, and is where we plan to stay while we are at Westercon 74.

( Belvada Lobby )

After a short wait to clean up a confusion with our hotel reservation (we accidentally ended up with two reservations), we checked in and started moving luggage. As those of you who read about our road trips know, we travel heavy, and it took a while to move in to our room, which is one of the four queen kitchenettes in the Belvada Hotel.

( Queen Kitchenette with an Oven )

After moving in to the hotel, we took a short walk to scout out something we hope to do at Westercon 74.

( Outdoor Dining Area? )

After a walk around the convention center area, we walked over to the Jim Butler Inn & Suites. They wrote to us via our Facebook page to ask for a poster for their window. We don't have large posters, but we do have small flyers, and I delivered three of them for them as they want to promote our convention. While talking to the woman at the front desk, I learned that she had worked at the Atlantis Hotel in Reno during Renovation, the 2011 Worldcon, so she sort of knows the kind of event to expect, albeit much smaller.

Having delivered the posters, it was time to go buy some groceries. We'll be here three nights, and not all of them will be spent eating in restaurants. Also, anything we get that we don't use we can probably take home with us, as we have the electric ice chest in the minivan.

( Considering Grocery Shopping for Westercon )

As we pulled out of Raley's, we spotted a bus from Salt Lake Express, the company that runs a once-a-day trip each way between Las Vegas and Reno via Tonopah. As we had been unable to find an answer to some practical questions we've had, we decided to follow the bus to its stop.

( To the Bus Stop )

With a very productive day behind us, we returned to the hotel, where Lisa cooked us a nice dinner and we relaxed for a while watching YouTube history videos over the hotel's decent wi-fi connection. I need to get some sleep now, though, because part of the deal with my management to make this trip with only one day off is that I owe them a couple of hours of work very early tomorrow morning.

Incidentally, while hardly anyone around here is wearing a face covering (one other customer at the grocery store was doing so), nobody has given us any static about us wearing masks, and we even spoke to people interested in attending Westercon (like the clerk at the grocery store) who didn't flinch at us warning them that vaccination and masks are required. They seemed to understand that with our members traveling from far and wide, we don't want to be a super-spreader event for us — and for the local residents of Tonopah!

Westercon 74 sent the following announcement to all of its members today (except for the ten members who don't have email but do have paper mail addresses: we sent a paper letter to each of them yesterday):

( COVID-19 Policy: Vaccination and Masks Required )

The Westercon 74 committee has been discussing this for the past few weeks, and our conclusion was that we do still need to take these actions to protect our members. Our policies are patterned after those of DisCon III. Although members of Worldcon did come down with COVID-19, the percentage of members who reported getting sick was lower than that of the surrounding population, and from the reports I read, thanks to everyone being vaccinated, those who did get sick had relatively mild cases.

I'm sorry if this means there are people who had planned to come to Tonopah who now cannot or will not go, but to put it bluntly, I don't want any deaths on my hands.

One of the ways in which the Tonopah Westercon bid was different was that we said from the start that we did not intend to have guests of honor. For the relatively low-budget convention we intended to hold, we would not be able to afford them, and we wanted to keep costs down so we could sell relatively inexpensive memberships. Even though we said this while we were bidding, people who hadn't paid attention were surprised when we confirmed this after we won.

We would have continued without guests of honor, but we were presented with something of a windfall when the Utah Fandom Organization, parent non-profit corporation of Spikecon/Westercon 72, gave us a grant that, relative to our rather small budget, was very substantial. After looking at ways we could improve the convention, we decided that the grant could be used to fund two guests of honor. We discussed this with our committee and evaluated a number of possibilities. In the end, we choose two people, one from Reno and one from Las Vegas, one an author and one a bookseller, and yesterday we announced that Kevin Andrew Murphy and Myrna Donato would be Westercon 74's guests of honor.

I had to apologize to both of them for a longer-than-I-expected time between confirming their invitations and making a public announcement, but finally this past weekend I got everything set up. If you had been looking at just the right time (and it was only for a few minutes), you might have been able to notice that the first place where the guests were posted was on the westercon.org website, followed by the westercon74.org site, followed by the news post on westercon74.org, then Twitter, then the convention's Facebook page, and then by e-mails sent to selected mailing lists and news sources. I always think that news announcements should first be placed on a convention's web site before being announced elsewhere, so that the announcements can always direct people to the website. But doing so can be a bit tricky, and I admit to being somewhat nervous when making big announcements, lest a technical failure gum up the works.

We would have made the announcement on Monday, but due to the Great Facebook Failure, I decided that we'd waited several months and could wait one more day.

At one point I'd planned for us to roll this and some other news into a single progress report, but given that most people (not all, I know) get their news about such things online, I decided that we'd do this announcement now. There will be more news between now at Westercon 73/Loscon 47. I'd rather have things right than have them quickly.

This morning we took advantage of the microwave oven, refrigerator, and coffee maker in our hotel room at the Jim Butler Inn & Suites by cooking breakfast (from material we purchased last night at Raley's and also from some other supplies we brought with us for this trip). We did not rush before packing out of the room.

( Good Location )

We went across the street so I could buy a coffee from the Belvada Coffee shop, but I balked due to poor mask usage there. When I came back outside, I found a $100 bill lying on the sidewalk. I wrestled with whether I should keep it. Had it been a $10 bill, I would have done so, but I though that there's a chance that money was more crucial to whoever dropped it than to me. I took it to the Belvada's front desk and turned it in. I hope whoever dropped it tries checking with the Belvada. I spent much of the drive home trying to decide if I should regret not keeping that $100.

We refueled the minivan at Rebel Oil north of downtown. Again, this is a no-frills cardlock station off the main street, with prices more than ten cents/gallon less than any of the other stations in town. Then we set our course for home. The only issue we on the drive was that even when I was driving at the 70 mph speed limit, there were a lot of people who wanted to pass me. Whenever possible, I used turnouts and opportunities to let them by me. Sometimes that wasn't enough, and one person nearly forced me off the road as they buzzed around me so they could go whizzing off at probably 90 just before the highway went into Luning (where we stopped briefly at the rest area), which has a 35 mph speed limit. It's one of those times I wish there were state police monitoring places like this and ticketing people driving so recklessly.

It's about 200 miles from Tonopah to Fernley. Google Maps (which is insane) says it should take just over 3 hours. We did it in 3 1/2 hours, which is pretty good time by our standards.

I'm glad we got away for the weekend, but we're tired now.