Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

The temperatures from Friday through today have been hot: anything at 37°C or higher (human body temperature) is actually dangerous, since it means your body can't shed heat. Thus I was very much not looking forward to having to make a trip to Reno on Saturday. Because Lisa is going to Europe later this year (that's why she won't be at either Westercon or Worldcon), she wanted me to get her some Euros so that she would have cash upon arrival.

(Why not just draw money out of an ATM when she gets there, you may ask. Well, some of you may recall that on my trip to Barcelona a few years ago, I had the misfortune of having an ATM eat my card. I even managed to get the attention of someone inside the bank, and they shrugged and did nothing about it. Now in that case, I was at a Eurocon surrounded my friends, staring with Cheryl Morgan, who could all help me out, loan me cash, let me play the "Banco de Credit Card" by everyone paying me cash at a meal where I put the bill my card, and so forth. Lisa has exactly one debit card, and if something happens to it, she's stuck. I understand the worry.)

So checking Chase (where her account and debit card are), I found that the only way to order foreign currency requires going in to a branch, ordering it, and then coming back a few days later when the ordered currency arrives. That meant going to Reno/Sparks on Saturday in that heat. Yes, the Astro has air conditioning, but it's been not working as well as it should, and I already know how much trouble that van is with no A/C, given that it failed during the Winnipeg trip. And because of the setup on that account, it would have to be me making the order; I couldn't send Kayla in on my behalf.

On Saturday morning, I had an idea and checked my Bank of America account. Aha! You can make an online foreign currency order to have the money delivered to any branch (the nearest one to me is in Sparks), and you don't have to come to the bank until the money arrives. So instead of slogging into Sparks in the heat, I made the order. The money should be here in a few days, and the temperatures are forecast to decline from dangerous to merely unpleasant.

Including delivery charges, the approximate conversion is USD 6 = EUR 5 through BofA as of Friday.

We had lots of time this morning, so I could have a nice leisurely included breakfast before catching the shuttle over to the airport.

( Hotels, Airports, and Snow in Reno )

I collected accumulated mail (I'll look at it tomorrow) and got the fireplace restarted, as the snow follwed me home and was starting to fall harder as I unloaded the minivan. It will take a while to warm things up. Lisa is holed up in the travel trailer, as I'm on quarantine for a few days until she's sure I haven't brought home any bugs from the conference. To be fair, I can't say as I blame her.

See Kayla's journal for more of the inside story of us traveling on the Transgender Day of Visibility.

This weekend is all about kayla_allen and I am mostly just a spectator, but what a view!

( Balcony View )

I turned my BlueSky account over to Kayla for the rest of the convention weekend because she does not yet have a BlueSky account. I expect she'll get one (and a Mastodon account) soon. I think she's looking very nice and I know that she is very happy, but I will let her tell her about that herself. You'll have to be subscribed to her DreamWidth to see it, though, because her posts are by permission only, lest she be beset by chasers and haters.

As previously wrote, we stayed at the Holiday Inn Express Richmond (Vancouver) last night. Today we took the bus to the ferry to another bus to the Doubletree Victoria, where we once again got a suite upgrade.

( Hotels and a Ship )

Due to the delays, we had to rush to get some errands and some dinner. We went to Rexall to replace the toiletries that I forgot to pack (I am old enough to remember the original Rexall Drugstores, and have listed to Old Time Radio shows that included "Your Neighborhood Rexall Druggist"), to Lush, to a local book store where I got an interesting couple of books including one on Canadian railroad history, then to Chipotle to get a burrito, which I wolfed down once we got back to the hotel room.


The rest of the day, and indeed, the rest of this weekend, is Kayla's story to tell, but we were out late and have to be up early on Friday, so that will have to be the end of the story for now.

This is list of those places where I slept for at least one night in 2024, in the order of first appearance. Multiple stops in the same place are not recorded. (There is only one of those this year, as it happens.) Results are based on my Dreamwidth journal, helped by my habit of trying to post at least daily.

Fernley, Nevada
Elko, Nevada
Salt Lake City, Utah
Amtrak Train 6 California Zephyr between Reno and Denver
Denver, Colorado
IcelandAir Flight 670 DEN-KEF
Reykjavik, Iceland
London, England
Caledonian Sleeper between London and Glasgow
Glasgow, Scotland
Chester, England
Ammanford, Wales
Aberystwyth, Wales
Cardiff, Wales
West Drayton, England
Reno, Nevada
San Jose, California
SeaTac, Washington

I was on various trains most of today. I took lots of photos, and posted them to my Mastodon account throughout the day, so I am not going to include them here because I need to get some sleep tonight because tomorrow is a regular (i.e. starts at 0530) work day, albeit only a half-day before I go for my annual physical.

( Train Tales )

That's the condensed version of the trip. For all that it took about twelve hours from my departure from Reno to my arrival at the hotel, I think I'm happier having taken the train than any of the other alternatives. I would not wanted to drive (there were chain controls over Donner Summit on I-80) and flying is annoying. The one direct flight is only an hour, but the trip has been known to take as much as eight, including all of the time spent in airports. Besides, Southwest only has that one direct flight each way every day, with the other trips requiring going to Las Vegas, Burbank, or even Phoenix. I'm sure I'll end up flying in the future, but in this case, I let the train take the strain.

I couldn't include this video yesterday because my phone was stubborn about uploading the video that I shot at the Reno station, but here is Amtrak #5 arriving Reno with Lisa on board. What I didn't realize was that Lisa was in the third car behind the baggage car, so my back was turned to her when she got off the train.



She came up behind me and I was so startled that I stopped recording rather than turning around to record her arrival. My original plan had been to record up until she got off the train. Oh, well.

As of when I'm composing this message, Amtrak 5, the westbound California Zephyr that Lisa boarded on Tuesday afternoon, departed about 30 minutes late out of Grand Junction, Colorado, but Amtrak's system projects that they will make up some of that time by Salt Lake City. If the train is on time, it should pass Fernley tomorrow morning around 8 AM, about the time that my daily staff meeting conference call ends. I will be keeping track of the train and hope to be outside waving as it goes by, after which I'll hop in the van and drive to Reno to collect Lisa.

(That is of course unless the train gets stopped in Fernley unexpectedly for a while and they decide to let Lisa off the train across the street from our house. Such stoppages are very rare, though.)

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.