Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

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.

Union Pacific is doing a trip (called "Westward Bound") next month with their massive "Big Boy" steam locomotive from its home base in Cheyenne WY out to the West Cost (Roseville CA) and back, following a figure-eight route that will include some "whistle stops" (short stops at publicly-accessible locations and also some display stops.

The schedule is posted at https://www.up.com/heritage/steam/schedule/index.htm. Note that I would expect that schedule will vanish after the tour and be replaced with their next tour.

Broadly speaking, the outward trip will run from Cheyenne to Salt Lake City via the original Union Pacific route, then follow the former Western Pacific across Utah and Nevada, taking the Feather River Canyon route to Roseville. The return trip will take the former Southern Pacific route over Donner Pass, through Reno/Sparks, going right past our house, then on to Salt Lake City, then taking a side trip up into Idaho before swinging back to the Union Pacific main and back to Cheyenne.

When I first heard about this trip, part of the excitement was that it looked like the Big Boy would be in Salt Lake City during Westercon. However, looking at the detailed schedule, it appears that the outbound layover in Salt Lake City (arriving July 4, departing July 6) will not be open to the public. The train will probably be laid up in Union Pacific's SLC-area yard, and they've clearly stated that people are not to trespass on their property.

Westercon is at the Doubletree Hotel near SLC Airport. Union Pacific's former Western Pacific route runs nearby the hotel. Their westward journey from SLC to Elko NV is Saturday, July 6, but aside from their whistle stop at Wells NV, they have not said when they are leaving SLC, and furthermore, Saturday of Westercon is apt to be very busy for us, so I reckon we won't be able to have a look at the train that day.

The train looks like it will lay up at Elko NV, heading west again on Monday, July 8, and as it happens, Lisa and I will be staying in Elko on Sunday night, heading for home on that Monday morning. (We had scheduled this already, before the steam tour was announced.) When we get to Elko, we will go over near the railroad yard and see if we can see the train from public property. Monday, there are whistle stops scheduled for Carlin and Battle Mountain, and as long as we get moving early, there's a good chance we can see both of these. Furthermore, the route broadly parallels I-80 most of the way to Winnemucca, which is the next layover point, so Monday looks like a good day for "chasing" the train.

While it would be nice to follow the train down the Feather River Canyon, I have to get back to work; however, there's a chance that we can make a day trip to Roseville for the public display on July 13. On Sunday, the tour travels from Roseville to Sparks, and there may be a place where we can get some action shots and video; we're considering places where we can safely do so. Again, Sparks is not a public display stop.

Tuesday, July 16 is our big day in Fernley, as the train travels from Sparks to Winnemucca. Again, they aren't saying when they will leave Sparks, which makes it more challenging for us to set up to "capture" it as it passes our house. We'll have any ear to the radio scanner and plan to be set up early. Their whistle stop at Lovelock, about 70 miles east of Fernley, is scheduled for 1 PM, which gives us some idea of when they are likely to be coming through.

UP usually has a way to roughly track the progress of their travels online, but I do not know how often it updates and how far behind real-time it is. Like Amtrak's Track-your-train map, at best I would expect it to run at least ten minutes behind.

So besides our Westercon trip and our preparation for an ambitious Worldcon trip, we have some railroad excitement coming our way this July.

It took longer to get this announced while BayCon's parent non-profit organization did some work behind the scenes, but the committee (Lisa and me) that was charged by the Westercon 75 Business Meeting at Loscon 2023 to either find a group interested in running a Westercon in 2025 to to do or to do it ourselves reached a conclusion and "transferred the license" to BayCon 2025.

Westercon 77 to be Hosted by BayCon 2025 is the announcement on the Westercon website.

I must say that I'm relieved no not be in the position of having to organize another Westercon. While I'm very proud of the convention we ran in 2022 in Tonopah, one of the reasons that we were able to do so was thanks to what I have called an "all star" team of conrunners, including multiple Worldcon, NASFiC, and Westercon chairs, who agreed to help put on that convention. In addition, Lisa and I were at that time in a position to "backstop" up to $5,000 in losses the convention might have incurred, although as it happens we never had to do so, as we were able to obtain financial support (grants) from various convention groups that allowed us to do things like have guests of honor, which we initially said we would not do. While the Tonopah Convention Center is very inexpensive to rent (About $600/day including the kitchen and bar) &emdash; so much so that when we won the election in 2019 (a contested election, I will remind people, against a "real city" that we won handily), we already had enough money to cover the largest fixed cost of the convention, which was the convention center rental.

( For Those Who Say 'Let It Die' )

In any event, if the members of Westercon conclude collectively that the convention's time has passed, there is an orderly way to wind it down: repeal the Westercon Bylaws. This was Scenario 1 that the 2023 Westercon Business Meeting considered last year. Repealing the Bylaws would take two years (passage this year and ratification next year), after which there would be two final Westercons without a Business Meeting or Site Selection, with the Last Westercon happening in 2027. At that point, the owner of the Westercon service mark, the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society, would have to decide what to do with it. They couldn't just hold it indefinitely without holding something to keep the mark alive, because trade/service marks are "use it or lose it," but perhaps if LASFS really does think there's no further interest, they might just formally abandon the mark and leave it to anyone else who might want to try holding an event by that name; it would be up to them.

This year's Business Meeting in Utah will consider ratifying proposals that would effectively "undock" Westercon from the US Independence Day weekend in a procedural sense. (It was not a requirement before, only a "traditional" recommendation.) This would increase the freedom that some groups, including other conventions, would have to try other dates. Possibly Westercon might have a future traveling around and combining with other conventions around Western North America at other times of the year, giving interested fans an incentive to try out other conventions that they've never attended.

Combining the 2025 Westercon with BayCon makes sense, and it might even make sense to consider doing so for 2026 as well. Or maybe we should just wind it down and "hand in the keys" to LASFS. But as long as Westercon has its own bylaws and is governed by its members, it should be the members who decide.

On Saturday, Westercon 76 (July 4-7, 2024, Salt Lake City Airport Doubletree Hotel) opened room booking for the convention. Rooms are $155 + 13.8% tax single through quad occupancy. Parking is free and is a parking lot (i.e. no height restrictions), and there is a shuttle from SLC airport.

Now as it happens, I was pestering Westercon about their hotel information because people were contacting me, assuming that I know everything there is to know about Westercons. Consequently, I had the room booking information a couple of days early, but was waiting for Utah to publish the information before I announced anything on Westercon.org. Unfortunately the room booking link currently on the Westercon 76 website is broken. But I put the correct code in the article on the Westercon website announcing room booking and I also gave the special rates/group code WET and instructions on how to get to the rate "manually" by just going through the ordinary Hilton booking.

I let Westercon 76 know about the error in the booking code on their site, so by the time you read this, they may have corrected it. [Update, April 24, 21:45: They have fixed the code.] This sort of thing does happen a lot. I know we didn't get everything right with Westercon 74 the first time.

So Westercon 76 does indeed seem to be happening; it just took a little longer than usual. I've made my room booking. Lisa and I arrive Wednesday night and will leave on Sunday afternoon. I'd prefer to stick around for the post-con gatherings, but I've had to cut our stay back by a day in order to save a day of time off for our Worldcon trip. We used a lot more PTO than I wanted during the NASFiC trip last year due to the minivan issues, and that leaves me short of days at the moment.

Meanwhile, Lisa and I were very busy today, but I'll write more about that tomorrow.