Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

Although I'm nominally the person coordinating Westercon 77's two official functions, I won't be around the convention that much. I'm doing the driving to Santa Clara on Thursday morning, but Kayla is in charge of Site Selection and at the moment, the plan is for her to drive us home on Monday. Martin Pyne is chairing the Westercon Business Meeting. Anyway, today I did my part by doing the printing of the site selection ballots and Westercon Business Meeting papers. It's appropriate that I was using the large printer that we bought for Westercon 74 because we had to be totally self-sufficient for our on-site printing, and that we also used to print the Program Book.

Lisa and I printed all of the program books, including collating and stapling them. It's hard to say whether that was cheaper than having it printed, but it did mean that we didn't have any wasted copies. Had we run out of program books on site, we could have printed more of them, and then post-con we printed what we needed to send publications to our non-attending members. We ran a huge part of that printer's service life off of it in a very short time, and, after consulting with the Westercon 77 treasurer, I personally bought the printer off of the convention at half what the convention paid for it, which seemed pretty reasonable to me.

Our printing needs for Westercon 77 in Santa Clara next weekend are much less than Tonopah's were, and the papers are now packed up with the stuff like the ballot box, cash box, and the Gavel of Westercon to take to BayCon/Westercon.

It's just as well that I have to start work Monday morning at just after 3 AM PT due to some technical issues that I need to supervise for the Day Jobbe, because it's apt to be tolerably cool then and I should then be able to bail out by Noon or so.

Kayla went out to breakfast this morning at 6:30 AM and did some errands, getting back home by about 9 AM before the full heat of the day hit. Then we spent the next few hours working on Westercon site selection issues. I am in overall charge of the two Westercon Business functions for BayCon 2025/Westercon 77, while Martin Pyne is chair of the Business Meeting and Kayla Allen is head of Site Selection. I expect that Kayla will have something more to write about this on Monday.

I think it peaked at 36°C, which, being just below body temperature, is where things are getting dangerous. The swamp cooler can help, but it's still not much fun.

Now to see if I can get to sleep in this afternoon heat, as my bedroom is on the west side of the house so gets the afternoon sun. I keep a piece of insulation in the window to try and keep it dark and to reduce the amount of heat. I also fill the tank on the swamp cooler and point it into the bedroom when I go to bed under these conditions. Then, after sundown (I hate daylight savings time) and when things have cooled somewhat, if I wake up (likely), I can open the windows and get some cross-ventilation going.

I updated the Santa Clara in 2027 Westercon Bid announcement post to include links to the filing documents from SPSF's bid.

This is the first time since 2019 (when there were two bids on the ballot at the Layton Westercon/NASFiC) that there have been any bids listed on the ballot. There was a double postponement, followed by a cancellation, Tonopah, another cancellation (both of which meant that year's Westercon happened at Loscon), then a couple of years with Direct Awards by the Business Meeting, then at Salt Lake City we had a filed write-in bid. This year finally breaks that string, even though it did take Kayla realizing that she and the SPSF folks were talking past each other and got things straightened out.

The alarm went off at 2:00 AM, much too early for my liking. I dragged myself out of bed, went and set a cup of coffee to brew, and got dressed with minimal prep. While I was answering messages, Lisa came in at 2:30 as we'd discussed last night. I finished the food bar (which she had brought home with her all the way from her train from Munich to Hamburg), took the coffee, and we headed for Reno.

As usual when you shop at WinCo at this hour, there are more shelf-stockers than shoppers, and we spent our shopping dodging forklifts and piles of goods being put on the shelves. However, we had no wait to check out, and we did a very large refill of our pantry.

We got home around 5:30 AM, unloaded everything, and Lisa said goodnight. I had drank enough coffee that I would not be able to go back to sleep, so shortly after 6 PM I walked to the Wigwam and had breakfast. I also retrieved my players club card from the casino, where kayla_allen had left it after she used it yesterday.

Much of my day today was taken up by a Montreal in 2027 Worldcon Bid Committee meeting. As part of my contribution, I sent a message to BayCon/Westercon asking for a bid table for Montreal. I won't necessarily be around for much of BayCon, but Kayla is probably going to be doing stuff there, and the Montreal committee didn't seem to have a problem with her doing the bid table work.

Thanks to us "chasing" the Big Boy steam locomotive from Elko to Winnemucca, we took a whole lot longer to get home today than if we'd just driven straight through. We left Elko around 9:30 AM and got home to Fernley about 6:30 PM.

Lisa and I are both exhausted and despite sunscreen, I am sunburned. We have lots of travel stories and photos from the last two days, but I'm too tired to write about them or post the photos. I will try to get it done in the next couple of days.

After the Westercon 76 closing ceremony, we said our goodbyes and set off homeward bound.

( Across the Desert )

After checking in to the Holiday Inn Express, Lisa took a bath and I checked the train schedule for the Big Boy for Monday. It was so late that we did not try getting a look at Elko yard, where we expect they had tied up for a couple of days for a Union Pacific employee event not open to the public. I was pleased to see that the first stop was later in the morning than I thought, so I wasn't going to have to be up at 4 AM in order to be on the road in time. But it was still much later than we'd planned, and I knew I wasn't going to get enough sleep.

This morning started the same as yesterday, with breakfast at Perkins, although this time we walked the approximately 1 km. Because we did not have Site Selection to run and with the Business Meeting not until 11 AM, we relaxed over breakfast, and I was happy for the time and conversation with friends. Lisa decided that extra sleep was more valuable than food, and that was understandable.

Returning to the hotel, I changed into my business suit and helped Lisa carry camera gear to the Business Meeting room. It was not a large room, and I was worried that we would not have enough space, but we managed, barely. There was no difficulty obtaining the 12-member quorum. Here is the video of the entire meeting, which lasted nearly 90 minutes.



Site Selection wasn't a problem this year. There were only 18 votes cast (surprisingly, one less than last year when there were no candidates at all), and 13 of them voted for BayCon 2026's write-in bid. Even the ratification of the five pending Westercon Bylaw amendments wasn't too difficult. What got us into the weeds was trying to compose a replacement to the repealed Section 1.1.

( Parliamentary Weeds )

There was no rancor in this meeting, only a lot of neepery and some humor. I did not object to that, although at one point I did have to reign people in who seemed to forget that this was a deliberative assembly, not a bull session in the con suite.

Chairing a long meeting like that is quite tiring, particularly running on less than six hours of sleep. I went back to our room, changed out of my suit, and then Linda D., Lisa, and I went to the hotel's "International" lunch buffet. I enjoyed the roast beef, tilapia, rice, and other offerings.

After lunch it was back to the Info Table for Montreal and for BayCon 2025-26/Westercon 77-78. I sold several BC 25/WC 77 conversions and new memberships. I can't sell BC 26-WC 78 memberships other than $20 supporting memberships until they set attending membership rates, but it did not appear to be something that troubled people.

I spent most of the afternoon sitting along Fan Table row talking with people, which is just fine by me. I did get the video from Lisa's camera and assembled the four files the camera produced into a single file, and Adobe Premiere reduced the roughly 13.3 GB of raw video down to around 5.5 GB. I set the video to uploading, and to my surprise, the hotel wi-fi could handle it.

At 7 PM, seven of us (the five who went out last night plus two additions) went back to the Asian restaurant where we ate last night. Lisa and I repeated our orders, and found the food as good as yesterday. By the time we got back to the hotel, the video upload was done, so I updated the Westercon website and sent out some announcements of the site selection and business meeting results.

Besides the BayCon/Westercon memberships, we ended up selling one Oopik (super friend of the bid) for Montréal here at Westercon 76, and I sent that back tonight with someone leaving tomorrow morning who will pass it on to one of the bid committee members who can get the money deposited and the member recorded.

I have one last responsibility tomorrow, which is to act as the agent for receiving the handover of the Gavel of Westercon at the Closing Ceremony at 4 PM. After the ceremony, Lisa and I will need to make tracks back to Elko. We will check out in the morning and leave as soon as we can.

Thank you to everyone who helped us with the Business Meeting and with our fan table.

Much to my surprise this morning, I woke up at 5 AM, just like any work day. Moreover, that was 5 AM Mountain Time, and thus 4 AM Pacific and an hour earlier than my normal work days. In any event, Lisa and I slowly got moving, and, earlier than we originally expected, joined Linda Deneroff and Scott Sanford for breakfast in the hotel restaurant.

Linda was looking for a few groceries and asked the hotel where the nearest grocery store was. There turns out to be a WinCo foods only around 15 minutes from the hotel by road. After breakfast, I took Linda to WinCo and we both got stuff. There was enough room for both milk and orange juice in our fridge, and I got some cans of root beer, which didn't have to be refrigerated all at once.

Convention registration opened later that morning, and we got our badges. Lisa and I replaced the lanyards (which we both dislike) with clips, as we carry extra clips with us for this exact reason. I staked out our spaces in the fan tables area, where Westercon 78 site selection is located, flanked by the LA in 2026 Worldcon bid on one side and the Montreal in 2027 Worldcon bid and the Westercon 77/BayCon 2025 information table on the other. (I am responsible for those last two.) Site Selection ran from 2 PM to 6 PM today.

( Cold Open )

Probably because of our too-early start, both Lisa and ran out of energy early. She turned in for a nap late in the afternoon, and I did not stick around that long at the Social. We took dinner in the room, with Lisa making us kippered herring sandwiches on sourdough bread with some packets of mustard saved from a stop earlier in our trip at a Maverik convenience store.

Tomorrow is a longer day. Site Selection will have split hours of 10 AM-Noon and 2 PM-6 PM because the Future of Westercon panel is at Noon and Linda and I want to get some lunch before reopening for the final hours of voting.

There's nowhere to eat around the hotel other than the hotel restaurant unless you drive, as there are no sidewalks on the local roads. One could walk on the roads themselves, but there's at least some traffic to dodge. The hotel's restaurant is not normally open for lunch, but they are opening specially for Westercon, with lunch buffets today, tomorrow, and Saturday. Today's theme was Italian; tomorrow's Mexican, and Saturday's International. At $17 (beverages extra other than water and lemonade), it seemed reasonably priced to me, and it was thanks to both the breakfast and lunch buffets that tonight we ate lightly with just a sandwich.

I did not see any notices of parties, but there is a Hospitality Suite on the second floor, although it was only just opening when we stopped by to have a look and confirm where it was. I'm turning in early and hoping to get more sleep for a longer day tomorrow.

We did pretty good getting packed and on the road than I expected, buttoning up the house and leaving around 2 PM. We had one local stop in Fernley, then Lisa took the wheel and we set out east on I-80. Here was the general route without our slight diversions here and there.



We zipped across the Forty Mile Desert in air-conditioned comfort. The money we spent to repair the Astro is paying off. The minivan runs well and the AC is working even in the very hot northern Nevada summer weather.

Winnemucca was the halfway point of today's trip, and we had several things to do here.

( Winning in Winnemucca )

We are staying tonight in the Holiday Inn Express Elko, where we have stayed a bunch of times, including last year's Winnipeg trip. I had enough IHG points to use on tonight's trip. A member of the hotel's staff called me earlier today to ask about our overlapping room type request. I told her that a room with a bathtub is more important than the number of beds or the floor number. We don't have a bathtub at home, and Lisa always appreciates being able to get a bath when we are traveling.

( Elko Hotel )

I have to work a half-day tomorrow morning, so I brought my work computers with me. To my relief, all three computers (including my personal one) connected to the hotel wi-fi and seem to be working properly. Now I need to try and get a few hours of sleep before having to be up for the last bit of Day Jobbe before my long holiday weekend.

If you are going to be at Westercon 76 in Salt Lake City and you are one of those people who think that Westercon should be retired, I have once again drafted a proposed wording for an orderly shutdown of the convention. I'm presiding over the meeting, so I am not making any proposals, but because I actually care about following our rules, I am giving those people who want to shut down Westercon a way to do so in an orderly way within the context of our own rules.

Mind you, I think it's incumbent upon those people who want Westercon to continue to organize bids and encourage bids to form. Otherwise, you really will end up with a dead end where nobody is willing to do anything.