Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

The middle day of Loscon passed much the way the first day did. We got off to a nice start with the hotel buffet breakfast, joined again by Father John and his friend Bob before heading down to our table.

I spent most of today sitting behind the Tonopah table extolling the virtues of Westercon 74 in Tonopah, and apparently some people though it was a good idea, as they put up money to buy memberships. Even as we were packing up close to 7 PM, there were people asking to buy memberships, and I was happy to oblige them. For Loscon thus far, we have added 16 attending members (including a few conversions from voting to attending), which is a 15% increase in total attending members and is very heartening.

( Our Sister Convention and Neighbor )

Both Lisa and I did get away from the table a few times today.

( Lunar Railroad Development )

After closing the table, Lisa and I went to dinner, where David W. Clark, freed from his Cargo Cult Books dealer table, joined us. The only significant break I took from our table today was to go to Dave's table, pay for the books and videos that Lisa and I had bought from him, have my copy (purchased from Dave) of The Adventure of the Peculiar Protocols: Adapted from the Journals of John H. Watson, M.D. autographed by Nicholas Meyer, and buy two autographed copies of Craig Miller's new book Star Wars Memories: My Time In The (Death Star) Trenches. (One of the copies is for Linda Deneroff, who couldn't come to Loscon but will be at SMOFCon next week.) On top of that, Dave had Harry Turtledove autograph one of his books that I was going to buy from Cargo Cult. I was pleased to be able to thank Harry later for having done so when I saw him.

After dinner, Lisa and I took several loads of stuff that we will not need for the rest of Loscon down to the minivan to get it partially loaded for our departure tomorrow. We hope to leave no later than noon because something Lisa wants to do and to give us time to fight our way through traffic on what is scheduled as our shortest leg of the trip, but one that takes us on the way east out of the LA area.

Lisa started to wind down as I made a brief foray to the party floor.

( A Taste of Parties )

I used to enjoy the convention party scene much more than I do now, mainly because I need more sleep than I once did. I'm happy that lots of people were having a good time.

Lisa tells me that we're going to be back here next year. It may be slightly easier to do the trip next year as we'll just be driving home after next year's con rather than driving to Albuquerque and back afterwards.

We slept in for a couple of hours this morning, figuring that we should have had the worst of the snow behind us as we drove from Bishop to Los Angeles to attend Loscon. We were wrong.

( Snowy Start )

Our departure from Bishop was delayed a bit because Schat's Bakkery was open this Thanksgiving morning. This is a great place that I did not appreciate when I lived here in 1979-81. We bought a loaf of their sheepherder sourdough bread along with lunchmeat and cheese to make sandwiches later, as well as a loaf of raisin break and their chocolate chip cookies. We were lucky to escape with only that stuff, as their bread and other bakery goodies are excellent.

We'd assumed that the snow would abate as we headed south. Instead, it started getting worse.

( Snow to Go )

Out of the chain zone, we though we were in the clear. Wrong again.

( False hopes )

As we got closer to Lancaster marveling at the snow falling so heavily in an area that rarely gets such weather, the darn windshield wipers came loose again. Lisa carefully pulled off the freeway and re-secured them temporarily, but we clearly needed new wipers, and sooner, not later.

( Thank Goodness O'Reilly Was Open )

After Lancaster is Palmdale. I found myself putting three words in a sentence that I never expected to run together.

( Snow in Palmdale? )

Finally, and much farther south than I would ever have expected, the snow turned into rain.

( Rain at Last! )

We got to the LAX Marriott before sundown, which was a relief. We checked in, and a bellman worked with Lisa to take a cartload of our stuff up to our room while I parked. (I later moved into the parking garage to make it easier for us to move stuff back to the van when we leave on Sunday. I noticed that one day of self-parking at this hotel costs more than an entire four-day membership to Westercon 74.

After unpacking, Lisa and I registered for Loscon. There was no fan table reserved for Westercon 74 / CostumeCon 39, but Elayne Pelz at Registration told us than any unlabeled tables were available and directed me to go over to Operations and get a piece of paper and a marker and claim a table. Lisa and I set up the Westercon banner behind a convenient table and we then hung around for a few hours socializing with early arrivals.

Because of the adventure of the snowy drive, we ended up not having lunch today, so we went back to the hotel room and made sandwiches from the fixing we bought this morning. Big excitement, I know, but we had had enough. I worked on Westercon 74's responses to the SMOFCon convention questionnaire, and Lisa worked on getting her camera set up for some video we'll be shooting tomorrow. I'm glad we don't have to start early tomorrow.

Lisa and I are driving to this year's SMOFCon in Albuquerque, and due to certain other plans not happening the way we originally hoped, we've decided to — for the first time — come to Loscon this Thanksgiving Day weekend before turning east and heading for Albuquerque. We bought our memberships today and made our hotel reservations, including the reservations for the road trip via Bishop south from Fernley and then east when we leave on Sunday. Part of the plan includes me trying to work each morning at the Day Jobbe to reduce the number of days of vacation I have to take.

If it's possible to arrange it, we hope to work on a joint Westercon 74 - Costume Con 39 information table at Loscon. We are not holding a party. Despite having been invited (for which we're grateful), we have had to decline doing Match Game SF because we'd have to carry all of the gear clear to Albuquerque and back, and Lisa would rather us not do so.

Our current plan for the return trip will include probably a two night stop in Tonopah, so that we can go have another look at the Convention Center. We hope to take more detailed measurements and to do some testing of how computers connect to the building's AV setups and how fast the included internet connections are. This is important because our plans for programming include having one program room set up for remote access, so that we can have panelists who are not physically present but are part of the programming, and so that non-attending members of Westercon 74 can also participate in programming.

And we expect to be taking a train ride as well. Some of the Southwest's tourist railroads are more active in the winter because the summer is too hot. We've made our booking and hotel reservation, but we'll talk more about it as we get closer to the date.