Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

I had $2.50 left on my Clipper Card, so I used it for an excursion to go get dinner via the light rail bus bridge. I'm a little bit annoyed with Clipper: I have over $70 stranded after the lost-but-found card, and despite Clipper customer service saying they could transfer it to another card (that I did buy and that I did provide a card number), the system still after over a week still shows the balance on the "new" card that they issued when I canceled the "lost" card. I expect that when I get home I will find a new card with that balance on it. And they still charged me $3 for a balance transfer than never happened.

I have most of my stuff packed except what has to get done in the morning. Staying this long in a hotel meant I was able to get broadly settled, but it also means extensive lodgecombing to make sure I get everything put away and ready to travel again.

Anyway, my alarm is set for around the time I normally get up for work anyway so that I will be packed and out of the room to check out of the hotel and catch the 5:45 AM shuttle to SJC airport. I'll call Lisa when they start boarding the flight. That should be enough time for her to get up and ready to drive to Reno, as the flight time is only an hour.

Today was a nice quiet day, but I'll be glad to get home.

I moved my planned PTO day from Friday to today and headed up to San Francisco again. As it happens, from where I'm staying across from Karina Station on the VTA light rail system, the scheduled trip time to San Francisco is only one minute longer if I go north from Karina to Mountain View than if I go south to San Jose Diridon. In both cases, I end up catching express train 703 to San Francisco.

I got started slightly earlier than I actually needed to go, and consequently arrived at Mountain View earlier than planned. I figured that I had enough time to go get a coffee. I very nearly botched up my trip, though, by misreading the distance to the nearest place that was open. It was about twice as far as I thought, and consequently I was really worried I was going to miss that train to San Francisco. I made it, but with literally zero minutes to spare. That is, by the time I got back to Mountain View Station, the train was just pulling up to the stop, and that's bad because it meant I had to go around the gate (which you're not supposed to do) as the northbound platform is on the opposite side of the station from which I was coming. I made it, but just barely.

Similarly, when I got to San Francisco, I just barely made it to the Muni platform as the T train was rolling in. When I exited the station (I went the correct direction this time) at Union Square, the 38R was already pulling away. There was a regular 38 bus right behind it, which stops about every two blocks it seems, but I got out to the consulate nearly an hour before they opened.

( Early Bird Gets the Visa )

I did not have to rush to catch the train from Belmont, and the light rail from Mountain View left just as I boarded it. As with my last trip this way, I stopped at Fair Oaks and got some groceries (for what should be the last time on this long trip). I had to run to catch the next light rail train, but otherwise it was routine to change trains at Baypointe and return to the hotel, where I was happy to relax in the air conditioning.

So that was the second of the two things I came to the Bay Area to do. I'd leave tomorrow, but that would cost another day of PTO (which is running a little low), an early-departure fee, and a more expensive flight. I might as well use these final couple of hotel nights to take it relatively easy and relax before I fly home on Sunday morning. And there are IHG bonus points galore accruing to my account. Not enough, unfortunately, to stay at the Crowne Plaza Glasgow during the 2024 Worldcon on points. I have almost 200,000 points in my IHG account, but the Crowne Plaza is showing a staggering 95,000 points/night cost for the dates of the Worldcon. (By comparison, the HIX in which I'm staying would cost only 21K points for tomorrow night, and the Holiday Inn down the street is an even more affordable 18K points.) Oh, well, that's not surprising given that the IHG site currently is quoting US$673/night for that hotel. I hope the convention rate isn't that expensive!

Today was the day for the trip to the Chinese consulate in San Francisco. I had eventually picked out a route that would get me there early enough. Today I'd be spending a lot of time on trains and buses. Spoiler: I did get my visa application submitted with no hitches. The rest of this behind the cut is a mostly a bunch of transit geekery that those of you who follow me on Mastodon will have already seen.

( Twelve Trips by Transit )

The consulate receipt says that I can collect my passport and visa on Thursday, so I'll change my planned schedule and take Thursday off instead of Friday, then work on Friday. In theory, I could also change my Southwest airlines ticket and fly home on Friday morning, but that would probably increase the fare basis, and I know it would incur an early-departure fee from the hotel, plus I'd have to take another day off from work, so I'll continue with Plan A and go home on Sunday morning.

For getting around on light rail, Caltrain, and buses in the Bay Area, I have a Clipper Card, which is a stored-value card that auto-reloads from one of my credit cards when necessary. While I had not used it for a while, it worked just fine when I got here. So yesterday, I used it to right light rail to get some groceries, as there is very little within walking distance of my hotel.

( Groceries by Rail )

When I got back to my hotel room, I reached for where I thought my Clipper card was. Nothing. I reckoned that I must have dropped the card while on the train. Trying to find it would be difficult. So I logged into the Clipper Card system online and reported the card lost. $3 fee to freeze the balance.

I unloaded my groceries. Guess what I found at the bottom of the bag? That's right, my Clipper card. I must have dropped it into the bag when I though I was putting it in the pocked of my shirt.

I logged back into Clipper, but could find no way to reactivate the card. I called Clipper customer service, and after wading through their menus, reached a human being who told me that once a card is deactivated, it can never be reactivated. (Too bad; I'd had that card for many years, and it's inadvertently traveled around the world with me.) However, they were able to stop the system from trying to mail me a new card back in Fernley, and said that if I got a new card, they could transfer the balance to it. Well, I could do that, as there are VTA fare vending machines that will sell you a Clipper card across the street in the light rail station.

Walking over to the station, I bought a new card ($3 fee), went back to the room, and called Clipper customer service again. They said that they could transfer the $70 balance for yet another $3 fee, and that it will take between 2 and 5 days for the balance to appear. I hope it's back on the card by Monday when I'm going to San Francisco! However, even if it is not, I can add money to the card at VTA fare machines.

So I'm more or less okay other than being out $9 in service charges, and it could have been worse, with an unusable card being sent back to Fernley. I wish I'd tried checking my bag before rushing to deactivate my card.

This afternoon, Lisa and I had to go to Big R and then to Lowe's to get some supplies for work we're doing around the house. As I was heading home, I got on the freeway because it's easier to get from Lowe's (near exit 50) to our end of town than driving through Fernley proper. As we passed the former Truck Inn (now a large truck parking lot), Lisa spotted something unusual and asked me to go back, which I did, reversing at exit 46. We went deep into the truck parking lot, and sure enough, there was something you don't see in Fernley every day, and soon won't ever see again.

( Railcars on Rubber Tires )

Bombardier is moving production of most of the rest of the "Fleet of the Future" to a plant in Pittsburg, California, so spotting these three BART cars moving through Fernley was a lucky break. Well done, Lisa, for noticing these pieces of equipment so we could see BART cars from a vantage point that few people ever have had or ever will.

After returning to the hotel with our purchases, Lisa and I stopped to have one of the sodas we bought and rest our feet. I checked messages and saw on Facebook that Kevin Roche and Andy Trembley were back in their hotel room as of only an hour earlier. I called Kevin and asked if they would like to meet for lunch, and they agreed, so we collected our things and headed back downtown.

A second reason for going back to the hotel was that I had a poster tube with the small vinyl WSFS banner (made by Sasquan) that hangs from the front of the Business Meeting table with me, and I wanted to mail it home rather than somehow try to fit it into my already overloaded luggage. The post office is downtown between the train station and the Sokos hotel where Kevin and Andy were staying, so this worked out well. The trains are running again, and there were no queues at the post office, so we managed to connect with K&A roughly on time to head off on a Viking Expedition.

( We're Gonna Starve! )

After lunch, we bade K&A goodbye because we were aiming for one more hobby shop for Lisa to look for trains. It was a longer walk than I thought it would be, partially because I rather unnecessarily went up and down hills getting there. We didn't find anything Lisa wanted to get, but we found yet another person who described herself as a "con-goer" who had known about Worldcon but had not gone. We told her that Worldcon would be in Dublin in two years and she sounded interested.

Given our location, we took the opportunity to ride the Helsinki Metro. Because Cheryl's friend Otto gave us a lift from the ferry terminal when we arrived and our other trips didn't take us along the axis of the Metro, we'd never had a chance to sample it. This was more of a joy-ride, but when you've bought a multi-day unlimited transit pass, you have the ability to hop on and off systems like this.

( On the Metro )

An afterthought from this morning: We had an interesting piece of equipment follow us down the tram tracks when we first set out for our first round of tourism and shopping.

( A Tidy System is a Safe System )

After a brief recovery time in the hotel (and a final short grocery stop for a snack for tonight and for tomorrow morning), Lisa remembered something she had seen in Stockmann's department store downtown, so we made one final round trip downtown. I think we got good value from our transit pass.

Returning from the last trip, we threaded our way through the latest batch of tourists trying to figure out the elevators, Lisa took a bath, I composed journal entries, and we continued our packing. The alarm for tomorrow is set for 4:15 because we need to take an early train to get out to the airport for the flight to Iceland tomorrow.

We have had a wonderful time here in Helsinki. I would love to get a chance to come back here someday. Everyone was so good to us, and we enjoyed ourselves immensely.

[Yes, I know the Santa Clara light rail isn't a "trolley."]

I intended to use a combination of light rail and a bus ride to get to BASFA last night. I was one of the first aboard the LRV waiting at Mountain View, but the car filled up completely with people heading to the 49ers football game at Levi's Stadium. This proved to be my undoing. The car was so full that the operator began to skip stops, including Reamwood, which was where I was supposed to get off, and I would have been hard-pressed to get out through the packed-in crowd of people in the car anyway. I managed to extricate myself at Lick Mill, after all of the football fans had left. I started to walk back to try and go back the other way, but it took so long (partially because of having work my way through the Security Theatre around Levi's Stadium) that I concluded that it wasn't worth it, so I took the next car heading downtown and went back to the motel instead.

Sorry that I missed folks who might have been expecting to see me at BASFA. Once again, I thank those people who offered to give me a ride back to the motel.

I guess I must have had enough sleep (although I don't feel like it) because I woke up early and ended up catching the earliest LRV back to Mountain View that I could. I had the shuttle bus to my office all to myself.

Today's big adventure was a trip to the Didcot Railway Centre, focusing on the history of the Great Western Railway. We checked out of our hotel in Southwark, made our way to Paddington, bought a couple of day returns to Didcot, and found that the next fast train was less than ten minutes from departure. Having been tipped off about Weekend First upgrades, we boarded one of the first class coaches and when the train manager came through to check tickets, paid him £5 each for the upgrade, which also included a newspaper and a cup of tea.

( Riding the trains at Didcot )

We had a fine time at the Didcot Centre, despite the rain that was heavy at times. In fact, it's only time I needed my jacket this whole trip. We did get a little bit damp. Our main regret was that we couldn't stay longer than we did, on account of needing to get back to London to get out to the airport.

Edit, September 15: Here's the still photos from our day at Didcot, including the trains from Paddington and back.

( Trains and Buses to and from London and Heathrow )

I took lots of photos at Didcot. I have not processed any of them and won't do so tonight because I must get some dinner and then to sleep, because by my reckoning, we need to be on a 6:30 bus from this hotel to be at the terminal three hours before our flight. It's just as well that our room rate doesn't include breakfast; we'd be tempted to stay long enough to eat it. As it is, if we get through the check-in/terrorization process sufficiently early, we should be able to get breakfast airside.

But now I need sleep. I expected to be in bed long before now before doing the Heathrow Shuffle.

I dropped my van with my regular mechanic in Fremont yesterday and took Amtrak back to San Jose. (The issues are relatively minor: I've asked him to check the air conditioning prior to my setting out for San Antonio next month, and also replace a broken emergency-flasher switch if he can find a replacement. Fortunately for me it broke in the off position.) So I'm tied to transit for getting between my hotel in North First Street in San Jose and my office in Mountain View. I can manage it (the 12 mile trip takes about 90 minutes by a combination of light rail and shuttle bus), and I can even get to BASFA tonight, but the buses stop running before the meeting ends, so I hope someone will be willing to take me at least as far as the nearest light rail station and preferably back to my hotel.

I spent this evening at the Mechanics Institute in San Francisco listening to Christian Wolmar give a lecture about his new book about American railroads, The Great Railroad Revolution (titled The Great Railway Revolution in the UK). I enjoyed the talk, although I was amused that at a place called the Mechanics Institute they would have been so disorganized as to use a laptop with no charge to drive his presentation and then have to spend ten minutes fiddling around to find a power supply when the computer went to sleep for lack of juice. I also was somewhat put off by some of my fellow attendees, who seem to embody the attitude that there's been no good trains since 1950 or thereabouts and everything today is terrible. I got rather annoyed at the nitpicker (similar to the SF fan version) who, when I talked of the Union Pacific main line in front of my house in Fernley, said, "You mean the Central Pacific line."

I told him, "I could speak in footnotes if you insist, and call it the Union Pacific, ex-Southern Pacific, ex-Central Pacific, terminus of the Fernley & Lassen Railroad line, but I'm not going to do that, and I'm talking to Christian here, so hold your horses," and turned my back on him when he started to go into how technically the line was still Central Pacific up until not too long ago. Honestly, people, if you want to pretend that it's still 1949, leave me out of it.

Anyway, Wolmar's talk was good, and I was glad to be able to talk to him for a couple of minutes. I only wish I could have spent more time discussing various things railway/railroad with him. I tried to get a picture of the two of us together, but nobody else there seemed to be able to handle my camera phone, and the only photo came out terribly. I'm not going to post that one since Wolmar is running for the Labour Party nomination for Mayor of London and I wouldn't want anyone using that photo to make him look bad. Instead, here's the photo I took of him after the lecture:

( Photo behind the cut )

The gathering broke up with me having just under an hour until the next train, so I walked down to AT&T Park and watched one inning of the Giants-Rockies game in the right field archway where you can walk in and watch the game for free through the fence. (If there is a crowd, there's a three-inning limit.) Then I made my way to Caltrain and rode down to Mountain View where I parked. I would have got home sooner, but a woman on the train asked me to walk her to her destination several blocks down Castro Street, and I was happy to oblige.

Now I need to get some sleep, because I still have to work tomorrow morning before heading off to Fernley sometime after Noon. I'm hoping that Thursday afternoon traffic is lighter than the usual getaway Friday stuff.