Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

We did not rush away from the LAX Marriott this morning. I left Lisa to get some extra sleep while I joined some people for breakfast. As I headed for the lobby, I noticed that "Pole Position" (the ideal parking space for loading/unloading) had opened up again, so I moved the van before going to breakfast. By the time I got back to the room, Lisa had already packed up some of the stuff from the room. I shut down my computer, packed my stuff, and we moved out very easily. We left the hotel shortly after 10 AM.

As we had hoped, aside from slow traffic on I-405 from the LAX area to Interstate 10, we were moving against the commute direction, and we made decent time up to Palmdale, where we refueled and got lunch. (Yoshinoya again, as we like what they were serving and it's not available in Reno.) We then went to the Palmdale train station where we ate our lunch in the van and then took some pictures of the station.



It's a nice looking station.



As luck would have it, an outbound Metrolink commuter train from Los Angeles bound for Lancaster made its Palmdale stop while we were here. Lisa took many more photos than I did, but we have not had time to do anything with them.

From Palmdale, we drove to Mojave, then continued up CA-14 to US-395, through Lone Pine, Independence, and Big Pine. As has been our necessary practice, we made many rest breaks along the way, arriving at the Vagabond Inn just before 7 PM.

After moving in to the hotel, we popped over to Von's grocery store and bought frozen microwave meals to take back to the room where we heated them up for our dinner, allowing us to kick off our shoes and relax.

I know that there are plenty of people who consider 500-plus miles per day to be trivial. Indeed, when I was in my twenties, I took such drives in stride. But after three very busy days of convention, and thirty years after those drive-drive-drive days, even half that seems pretty tiring to both of us.

We'll head for home tomorrow. The weather has been turning colder, but it's clear and should still be a good day for driving. Here's hoping that both Lisa and I get enough rest tonight to safely get the rest of the way home.

On Sunday afternoon of Westercon 75 / Loscon 49, I moderated a panel on The Future of Westercon, with Charles Galway (chair of Westercon 76 Utah), Arlene Busby (the original chair of Westercon 75 Anaheim before they had to disband), and late addition Ben Yalow, whose opinion on the future of Westercon is very different than mine, but who presents his case well, and he and I can respect each other while still disagreeing. I asked Lisa to record this panel and plan to post it soon to the Westercon.org website.

Because Loscon 49 is only three days long, the election schedule for Westercon Site Selection is squeezed to only one day: Friday. Thus today was the only day when voting on where to hold the 2025 Westercon (Westercon 77) would be held. In practice, with no bids having filed, this was unlikely to have much of an effect. I spent much of today sitting at the Site Selection desk helping run the election and explaining what would happen if, as seemed likely, no eligible bid won.

There are worse places to be. Or, as I put it, "Behold, the SMOF in his natural environment!" Unfortunately, I forgot to get a picture of those of us sitting at the Site Selection desk.

OTOH, I did take a picture of one of the nicest costumed people who came by our table:



I wasn't the only person getting her picture. We talked costuming and related subjects.



At 5:30, I went to the Opening Ceremony. In this picture, from left to right we have guests of honor Elaybe Pelz, Peter Beagle, and Echo Chernik, and convention Chair Michelle Pincus.

After Michelle introduced the Guests of Honor I, as the current guardian of the Gavel of Westercon (and chair of the previous Westercon), appeared on stage to assist Michelle in formally calling the convention to order. That is, since there was no lectern or table on which to set the "sounder," I held the base while Michelle brought the gavel down, signifying the formal start of the convention. Again, I have no picture, because I was one of the participants. After the ceremony, I retained the gavel, which I need for tomorrow's Business Meeting.

Opening Ceremony being short, it was not yet 6 PM when I got back over to Site Selection. We had a last-minute voter, at at 6 PM, the administrator declared the election closed. No last-minute bid appeared at the deadline. The administrative consequence of this is that the only candidate that could actually win the election was None of the Above. We did, however count all eighteen ballots cast. (There were actually nineteen ballots paid for, but one person didn't put their ballot in the box, thereby informally voting No Preference.) The official results will show all of the various write-in bids. The top two write-ins were Seattle with 7 votes and Tonopah with 6. The remainder were either for None of the Above or various oddball write-ins.

It's no surprise that no eligible bid won; it's what we expected. As we did two years ago and also back in 2011, we have a Westercon Site Selection to be decided by the Westercon Business Meeting. Saturday morning at 11:30 AM in Los Angeles 1, we will convene to decide how to deal with the 2025 Westercon, and to also discuss the various proposals I drafted for the Meeting's consideration, whereby we decide in which direction Westercon will move: toward a final retirement or toward a possible new vision for the convention.

After we counted the ballots and stored things away, a group that included Lisa and me and several others who had been hanging around Site Selection (I'm being coy because of the group doesn't like being mentioned in my social media like this) went out to dinner. We walked to a Yoshinoya beef bowl restaurant. I'd not been to one since they withdrew from the Bay Area. It was a bit of hike: around 2 km each way, through a not all that salubrious part of town. However, there were five of us and nobody seemed interested in us. Yoshinoya has improved its offerings since I was last there, and I enjoyed the teriyaki salmon bowl. I know I've missed going out to meals with my fannish friends like this, and the restaurant was empty enough that I felt fairly safe dining in this company.

After returning to the hotel, I went back out into the convention for a little while, and explained the issues with the Westercon Site Selection to more people. But by 9 PM, I found that I was getting tired and that I had no stomach for going up to the parties. Besides, I had material to write up for tomorrow. Time to get some sleep!

I "slept in" a whole hour past my usual alarm time on Thursday morning: 5:30 AM. But that did mean we did not have to rush this morning. We refueled at the Von's gas station and went into the grocery store to buy a couple of things I'd forgotten. We then went to Schatt's Bakkery, the nice specialty bakery in Bishop, where we bought a loaf of their famous sheepherder bread as well as some raisin bread and cookies, and set off for Los Angeles.



Today's trip was longer than Wednesday's, but the weather was very agreeable. Clear and cool most of the way.

We made one detour into Palmdale to buy groceries and refuel the minivan at the Pilot truck stop. They were advertising a 15 cents/gallon discount to their affinity-club members, but no discount was applied at the pump, which is a shame.

The San Diego Freeway wasn't too terribly congested, and we made it to the LAX Marriott around 5 PM or so. We initially wanted to try and park near the function space on the lower level, but the garage was full, so instead we tried parking around back of the hotel. It was there that Lisa's parking-fu hit the jackpot.



See that door in the distance? That's one of the side doors to the hotel, and our key opens it. Our hotel room is only a few steps straight ahead through that door. That means, with Lisa having found this prime parking space, that we we were nearly as close to our hotel room as we were to the front door of the house when we loaded, and unlike when we loaded, there are no steps to negotiate. We therefore didn't need a bell cart; we just carried stuff from the van to the room.

After collecting our membership badges and putting up a sign pointing people from Registration to the Fan Tables area for Westercon Site Selection (thus satisfying a Westercon Bylaw requirement), we walked a few blocks to the nearest convenience stores, where I wanted to buy a gallon of milk. Unfortunately, all of the large milks they had were expired, and there doesn't appear to be anything else within walking distance. We'd drive to a Ralph's grocery store a couple of miles away, but we'd risk losing our prime parking space.

I misread the Westercon schedule. I thought that the Future of Westercon panel was on Friday afternoon (which would have ticked another Westercon bylaw requirement, but as no bids filed for the ballot, there's no actual harm done to a bid), when it's actually on Sunday. That means I have no programming commitments on Friday and thus I'm likely to be found around Site Selection on Friday. Because Loscon is only three days long instead of four, site selection voting will be on Friday only. We received one ballot by mail. There's still time for a bid so show up out of nowhere and file by 6 PM Friday. Lest you think this impossible, I note that I administered a NASFiC site selection where one of the bids (running as a write-in) filed their legal-but-strange bid with one second to go before the deadline. If there's anything I've learned from my involvement with WSFS and Westercon site selection and their Business Meetings is that almost anything is possible.

On the bright side, I don't have to be up that early on Friday, because site selection doesn't open until Noon.

So the plan was for Lisa to start cleaning out the minivan in preparation for packing the rather large amount of stuff (Match Game SF takes up a lot of space) to go to Loscon/Westercon. I had an appointment with my chiropractor (treatment 25 of 30 of the spinal decompression plan), but if the van wasn't available, I could drive the Rolling Stone. But then things changed, and Lisa came in around 11:30 and said, "I think you need to cancel that appointment."

( Extra Trip to Reno )

I cancelled the chiropractor appointment, as as soon as I got off work, we drove into Sparks, where Big O repaired the tire under their road hazard warranty.

As it happens, we needed to run to Staples to buy something that we'd promised to bring to Loscon/Westercon. Initially it seems like it was something that Westercon 74 bought and that was sitting in our kit, but unfortunately, I'd managed to break it. I'd planned on replacing eventually, but this raised the urgency. Our initial plan had been to leave for Bishop today via Reno and pick up the replacement, but inasmuch as we were already in Reno/Sparks, we went ahead and got it on Tuesday. This means we can follow our original driving route, which is shorter, and of course we won't spend an hour or more working through Reno.

We got home with just enough daylight left (especially when the setting sun reflected off the clouds, making things lighter just after sunset) to deal with the tires. We initially had a setback, in that the spare didn't want to come off the wheel hub after Lisa removed the nuts. In a bit of serendipity, she levered the wheel off the hub using the pry-bar that we bought at Tonopah Hardware during Westercon to pry the fender of the rental trailer away from the wheel after someone backed into it while we were parked overnight. (This was one of several purchases we made in Tonopah that put more money into their local economy for which I had not planned, like Lisa's emergency shoes and a charging cable for my iPhone, the latter of which we got from A-Bar-L Western Wear.)

So we're running a little behind, but Lisa doesn't currently see it being a problem. Once the sun comes up and it warms up a bit, she will get back to work on packing. Fingers crossed that we can get out of here around Noon today.

We are of course relieved that this problem happened yesterday rather than today. On, and while working on the tire, Lisa spotted what is possibly a major source of the noise we've been dealing with since during the Winnipeg trip. Like certain other problems, it's annoying but not actually affecting the van's performance, so we'll once again put things off until after we return. More about this later.

Yesterday, Westercon 75 announced that the convention in Anaheim will not happen and that, consistent with the Westercon Bylaws, the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society (LASFS), owner of the Westercon service mark, has directed Loscon 49 to take on the official functions of Westercon 75. The post to which I linked is what I wrote on Westercon.org (I'm the lead maintainer of the site), but it does quote and link to the official statement from Westercon 75's chair, Arlene Busby.

For those of you who follow Westercon closely, this is effectively the same thing that happened two years ago when Westercon 73 in Seattle had to throw in the sponge, and for what I take to be the same reason: not enough members to cover the cost of holding the convention. This is why the announcements from the 2021 and 2023 Westercons and the posts on Westercon.org look so much alike. We've been through this before, and unfortunately have some understanding of how to deal with it, so some of us could share the documents we used before, to help the current Westercon rather than having them have to thrash around creating announcements after they decided that they had to pull the plug.

This is similar to how the experience I had in 2011 when the Westercon site selection crashed means that the selection processes in 2021 and 2022 went considerably faster. Specifically, I know how to avoid driving the Business Meeting into a procedural corner while still letting the members have their say.

If some of you are wondering why we could hold a Westercon in Tonopah while "real places" like Seattle and Anaheim could not, I suggest the major reason is money. Tonopah was very inexpensive. If we hadn't gone a bit overboard on publications, it would have been even less expensive. And while we did not need to do so, Lisa Hayes was prepared to backstop up to $5000 of the convention's expenses in excess of revenue had it been necessary. Our convention center cost only $550/day to rent, and our Guests of Honor were paid by a grant from UFO, parent of Westercon 72. We had not planned to have GoHs and said so when we were bidding, but UFO gave us enough money that we could afford to invite and honor Myrna Donato and Kevin Andrew Murphy, and I was glad we were able to do that. Still, our fixed costs were quite low, so we could manage to hold the convention with as few members as we had (158 badges picked up, and around 350 total members including supporting).

All of us who were going to be working on the official functions of Westercon (Site Selection and Business Meeting) have agreed to work on the same functions as part of the relocated-to-Loscon Westercon 75. After discussing it with the individuals, I've done a reshuffle of position titles to better reflect what people will be actually doing. I'd like to thank Loscon 49 for being so ready to take on these additional functions, and I look forward to working with them on integrating the 75th Westercon into Loscon 49.

It seems likely to me that the long-term members of Westercon will want to consider the future of the convention, and that this will be a subject of discussion at Loscon 49/Westercon 75 this November in Los Angeles.

It's a pity that the 75th Westercon won't be a standalone event, but I'm glad that it will be in the Los Angeles area, given that it is where Westercon started.

I was up at 4 AM once again on Monday morning to put in four hours of Day Jobbe work before waking Lisa, getting breakfast, and packing out of the room. As we'd already moved nearly everything back to the van, we only had one cart-load left to move.

( Almost Ready to Roll )

We finally were on the road about 11 AM. Having seen from online traffic that I-405 was at a near-standstill, we elected to take the surface street route over CA-1 and CA-2. Along the way, we stopped and refueled the Astro and stopped to buy some cold drinks.

( Getting our Kicks and Spotting Some Trains )

In Mojave, which was about the halfway point of today's trip, we detoured over to the airport before stopping for a late lunch.

( Planespotting With a Side of Trains )

The sun was setting as we continued on from Mojave for the second half of today's drive. Lisa did all of the driving today. We got to Bishop about 7:30 PM. Alas, as the Holiday Inn Express was pretty full tonight, so we scored only a mini-suite (oversize room) upgrade. The clerk had no problem accepting my passport, and was astonished that anyone would say that "only a driver's license is acceptable."

Unfortunately, this hotel appears to have gone the way of many other hotels in having only showers, not tub/shower combos. Because we don't have a full-sized bathtub at home, one of the things Lisa wants in hotel rooms when we travel is a bathtub. So while I'm grateful for having this HIX room on points, if we make this trip again, we're going to have to do a bit more shopping around for a hotel room with a bathtub.

Tomorrow I need to work another half-day, after which we'll head for home for the short time between Westercon and Worldcon.

Day 2 (Saturday) of Loscon 47/Westercon 73 was just packed with activity for Lisa and me. We managed to make breakfast happen in the room this time with less hassles than yesterday. We were able to open up the Westercon 74 Fan Table by 10 AM, but had to leave it in the hands of other members of the convention committee: Lisa and I had to go sort out getting an output from the sound board in California 4 (where the Business Meeting would be held at 11:30) run to Lisa's Panasonic P2 camera, in order to get better sound.

This was the first time Lisa's camera was in the field using the new camera case. It seemed to work well, and it was easier to transport than in the box we've used for the past few years. If we'd had some more time to work on it (we never seem to get enough time), we could have had better audio; however, this was still better than it would have been if all we had was the in-camera microphone.

After the Business Meeting, we took that camera gear back to the hotel room and then returned to the Westercon 74 table. My time was split between talking to people about Westercon 74 and discussing possible Westercon 75 sites with multiple people. I told several people variations of the same thing: come to Lisa and me with a proposal for a viable site and committee and we'll consider it. We're making no decisions here today, nor this month, nor probably until February.

It appears to me that some people think that because I gave the same answer to everyone, that I somehow have already made a decision, which is silly. I have said what I personally would like to happen, but we have to think of Westercon overall. I can't make a decision until we hear from more interested entities. Who knows, maybe not having to go through the bid-campaigning process may shake loose some more viable bids.

Meanwhile, I managed to shoot a small number of photos of people in costume as they came by.

( Only a couple of those who passed the table )

In the mid-afternoon, Lisa and I went down to Carl's Jr. again for lunch. I was not going to face doing Match Game SF on an empty stomach.

Loscon programming, at my request, scheduled MGSF a little later than the regular program grid would have called for, and left the space open after us. Both of these things were important. It still put Lisa in a pickle, because the technical set-up can be tricky, and when there are bleeps and feedback (which is almost inevitable) while people are coming in to the room, people complain or laugh, and Lisa really dislikes the pressure this puts on her.

( Match Game at Loscon )

It was a great load off our minds that there was nothing after us. That gave us a relatively easy hour or so of disassembling the gear and storing it back away. We'd borrowed a cart from ConOps for a few hours, and thanks to having moved the minivan over to a good space in the parking garage, we were able to move three cartloads of gear out to the Astro tonight. We returned the cart to Ops, went and got burgers again and had dinner.

There are parties here at Loscon, but we are too worn out to attend them. Besides, it took a few hours to edit the material from the Business Meeting out of the camera and into the form for the two videos I uploaded to YouTube, then to post them on Twitter, Facebook, File 770, and DreamWidth/LiveJournal.

Sunday should be somewhat easier. We still have the Westercon 74 table, but not much else until Closing Ceremonies, where it will be my honor to receive the Gavel of Westercon in my capacity of next year's convention chair (in contrast to my temporary custody of the Gavel to chair the Business Meeting). But meanwhile, it's time to try and get a few hours of sleep. Other folks at Loscon will party overnight, and I wish them well.

It may be a holiday, but I woke up before 4 AM as I usually do on a Thursday. We took our time over breakfast, but we were on the road by 8:30 AM.

( Today's Journey )

Because we got away so early, we had lots of slack in our schedule and could make extra stops if we felt like it.

( Railroad Park in Independence )

Continuing onward, we stopped at a place I'd wanted to visit before but never had the opportunity: the Manzanar National Historic Site, where the US government interned tens of thousands of Japanese-Americans and Japanese immigrants during World War II.

( Visiting Manzanar )

We continued south on US-395, then onto CA-14, stopping in Mojave to buy some lunch supplies in a grocery store there, then pushed on into the LA basin on CA-14, then to I-5 to I-405. Aside from a few minor slowdowns, we were clearly driving the correct direction, as traffic going the other way was often backed up for miles. Getting to the LAX Airport exit (Century Blvd), we arrived at the Marriott at about 3 PM.

Getting checked in was the easy part. I'd hoped to park in the parking garage, with easy access to the basement level where the convention programming is. Unfortunately, we were told we could only park in the self-parking lot, which is not at all convenient. Worse, our hotel room is about as far away from the self-parking lot as it is possible to be and still be in the same hotel.

( Could Have Been Worse, Though )

It took us a total of five trips between our hotel and the minivan to get unloaded. The first three were our personal luggage and other items that could be moved on their own wheels relatively easily. Then we borrowed a bell cart (and tipped $5 for it), making two more trips to carry the other large and heavy stuff. I wish we could have parked in the employee parking lot: it's much more convenient than the public self-parking lot.

Checking Google Maps, I determined that you could fit the Tonopah Convention Center, Belvada, Mizpah, and Jim Butler Inns within the LAX Marriott's property.

After Linda arrived and Lisa and I moved the fifth load of gear and returned the bell cart, we went down to the convention level, produced our vaccination cards and ID and collected our membership badges. I also witnessed Elayne Pelz reject someone who did not have his vaccination papers and tell him that they could not register him without them, by convention policy. We straightened out our fan tables: it's convenient to have the Westercon 74, Winnipeg in 2023 Worldcon bid, and Westercon 75 Site Selection tables adjacent to each other.

Linda, Lisa, and I had booked a pre-convention Thanksgiving dinner with other Loscon staff, so we went upstairs for dinner. The convention was working to keep things safe. We couldn't serve ourselves, but had to have volunteers with food-service training serve us. It was a serviceable turkey dinner.

After dinner, the three of us walked the 850 m down to the nearest convenience store I could find on Google maps, where we purchased a few more supplies now that we knew there was a refrigerator for perishables. Oddly, the store only had gallons of milk, not half-gallons, which is annoying because the 'fridge isn't big enough to hold a gallon. Fortunately, we had the last of a half gallon from last night, so we bought a gallon, took it back to the room, drank half of it, and poured the rest into the smaller container. Drinking that much milk meant we needed some cookies; fortunately, we bought very good ones at Schat's Bakkery yesterday.

One thing I forgot to pack was sunscreen, and I should have had some. Weather today was bright and sunny, although windy and cold at times, in contrast to the snow and rain of two years ago. I've gotten sunburned.

Things don't start until about Noon on Thursday, so I'm not setting an alarm tonight. My pedometer says I logged more than 15K steps today, and I'm tired. Time to get some rest.

Because most of our "regulars" aren't attending Loscon 47 (Westercon 73) this Thanksgiving, we are a couple of seats short on our regular panelists. If you are coming to the convention and want to be a panelist, let me know. It would probably be better if you've seen the show (either our live version or the classic television show). If you think it's a quiz show where you need a knowledge of trivia, you've got the wrong game!