Category Archives: Adventures

Adventures

Bullwinkle watch

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Alaska is like the West, only more so.

In Anchorage it’s about 23 F and snowing.  No one in Alaska stops doing anything due to the weather, and neither will we.  Since I don’t know the town, I’m useless in my usual role as navigator.  Deb: “Here’s something you can do:  watch for moose.”

She wasn’t joking.  Moose wander into Anchorage (pop. 500,000 give or take) in winter.  They are just looking for food, but they can be extremely dangerous and unpredictable.  99% of the locals have the sense to give them a wide berth and refrain from feeding them; the number used to be higher until the Darwin effect winnowed them out.  No one from Fish & Wildlife shows up to dart and remove the moose unless they pose threats; if someone is idiot enough to trouble them, and gets trampled, that improves the local gene pool.

Of course, you don’t want to hit a moose on the road, especially at 45 mph, nor do you want to have to slam on your brakes (on an icy road) to avoid one.  Thus I was on Bullwinkle watch, and will be as long as we are here.  It is my duty to assure that we don’t hit a moose.

One of the best things about Anchorage is Title Wave Books, about the coolest used bookstore you could imagine.  It’s a used bookstore about the size of Barnes & Noble, but comparing Title Wave to B&N is like comparing Camembert to Kraft polymer cheese.  The selection is amazing from a browsing standpoint.  I could spend $2000 in there and equip myself with enough reading for at least two years–and not exhaust the interest level of browsing there.  I felt more intelligent just walking the aisles. For an editor, all of whom are necessarily voracious readers, it’s heaven.

Adventures

The day Jeff lost the wrestling match

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We have freezing fog here today.  Watching the hoarfrost build up on the trees in our yard this morning made me think of a funny story.

During my 5th year at UW, I was taking nothing but foreign languages, and leading the genteel, peaceful, burnout life of a gentleman drunkard in Hansee, one of UW’s quiet dorms.  The rule in Hansee was very simple:  do as you like, so long as you are quiet.  Make noise, and the math wonks will have you thrown out of there in days.

Seattle doesn’t get a lot of snow, but when it does, the city screeches to a panicked halt.  Three inches brings chaos, six brings paralysis.  We had 8″ of dry powder snow that November of 1985, with swirling winds blowing it off the trees (to our great enjoyment when some jackass pulled a false alarm and we had to turn out at 2 AM in the snow).  On the first evening, I was out with my crew messing around in it, attempting to have a snowball fight with the powdery snow.

My crew were serious game nerds.  We had Wade, a Japanese American from Spokane, plus his frat rat high school buddy Greg and the very large Chad, who looked a lot like the Abominable Snowman in Bugs Bunny.  We also had Ian, from Issaquah, the Hobbit (though he’s not really that short), and Jeff (also from Issaquah).  Jeff was interesting.  Bigger than me, but awkward, a good guy.  I was the only one who was even slightly athletic, so I was faring well in the snowball pitching and rassling.  We were out near a hedged area, and the idea was to try and rassle someone into the hedge.  Much snow would ensue, to great hilarity.

Then came the funny part.  I grappled with Jeff, hoping to chuck him bodily into the hedge, but unfortunately failed due to poor leverage.  However, he hove me into a very dense area of hedge, and I rebounded as if I’d hit a huge spring.  I got him in another grapple, and we strove with might and main for a few seconds, then he lost his balance.  I pushed off and sent him backward into the hedge, but I picked a better spot by happenstance.

Jeff backpedaled into the hedge attempting to regain his balance, but into a less dense part, actually a somewhat bare spot where a forked hedge bush was growing.  The fork was a flattened Y about six inches off the ground–the perfect place to catch both heels at once as you backpedal, if, say, some dude has just shoved you toward it backwards.  That’s exactly what happened to Jeff.  As he fell backward headlong, of course, in panic he grabbed for the hedge branches.  Not his ideal move.

I watched in delighted astonishment as the equivalent of a snow artillery shell detonated where Jeff had been.  For a couple of seconds I couldn’t even see him through the floating powdery snow, then it dissipated.  He’d fallen with his mouth wide open, saying something, so he got a mouthful of it.  Probably inhaled some.  His thick glasses kept some of it out of his eyes, but he was fully covered in the white dusty snow, spluttering it out of his mouth and flailing to begin digging out.

When I was sure he wasn’t actually hurt, that’s when I started laughing.  I doubled over.  It’s a good thing it took Jeff so long to get out of it, because he could have pushed me over with Newt Gingrich’s heart.

Adventures

Standing on a drum

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That’s the best description I can give of the experience of watching Korpiklaani.

I went with a good friend and fellow Nordic metal enthusiast, Debbie (not Deb my wife; she’s in DC setting Uncle Sugar straight).  Our first surprise: just because the gates opened at 6 PM didn’t mean Korp was on at that time.  Nope, had to wait out a couple of crappy local metal bands, though we had some good conversations with other people waiting around.  We weren’t the oldest people present, but we were in the 95% percentile.  First observation:  if you are not a youth, yet you like this sort of sound, you should not feel shy because you are a) old enough to be the kids’ parent; b) lack a bunch of metal embedded in your face; c) unwilling to go full freak.  We really enjoyed the people we chatted with, and no one hinted that we were interlopers.  It’s a case where you get what you expect, I think, as in so many life situations.

This venue did take security seriously.  Debbie didn’t get patted down, but I did.  That said, though, they were polite.  They did sniff her smokes for pot.  Some other people got searched rather more thoroughly than we did.

Evidently one of the warmup acts got booed off while Debbie was on a smoke break, so we had to hustle into the music area as Korp started early.  They all have serious hair, well down to the armpits.  Jonne, the main vocalist, was good at working the crowd as was the guitarist next to him.  I had brought earplugs in case, but while it was loud, it wasn’t painfully so.  I was there for partly anthropological reasons anyway (and partly just to have a good time with a friend from college).  Impressions:

  • Watching them live you trade some of the actual music nuances of CD for the visual spectacle.  I couldn’t recognize most of the songs they played.  The bagpiper was my favorite instrumentalist; the big dark-haired dude on guitar was really into the crowd.
  • The place vibrated, literally.  It felt exactly like standing on a drum while some giant is playing it.  I’d give it a 4.8 on the Richter scale.  I was surprised the whole place didn’t come crashing down.  Those floors must be made of 6″ thick maple timbers.
  • I’m not sure all metal bands with long hair do the hair swirl, but quite frequently the band would play guitar while leaning over and sort of swirling their heads to make the hair whirl in kind of a figure 8 pattern.  Kind of a neat trick, when you consider they were still playing their instruments while doing it.
  • Lots of people did a hook-em-horns Texas football gesture, evidently a symbol of metal fan solidarity and approval.  I didn’t do it, but you can get caught up in situations like this.  I confess I was tempted.
  • During the first number, what looked like rugby broke out in front of the stage.  I learned that this is called moshing.  It got pretty rowdy, and at a couple points I decided I’d better kind of stand in front of Debbie in case it got out of hand.  We stood back far enough that we didn’t end up playing rugby, though ironically enough, she used to play rugby for real.

It wasn’t a very long show, a little more than an hour.  From an entertainment standpoint, it didn’t come close to Weird Al Yankovic, but I’m glad I did it, even though it required a hell of a lot of driving.

Edit:  okay, this is how dumb I am.  Come to find out later that what we saw wasn’t actually Korpiklaani, but Arkona, a Russian band.  How pissed the real Korp would be to find out we mistook Russians for Finns!  Instant death.  I guess that explains why I didn’t recognize hardly any of the music.  I was mightily tempted to just delete this whole post, but when you mess up, you have to own up.  I was wondering about the discrepancies and timing issues, but I assumed that such haphazardness was just the way shows worked.  So a total of ten hours with me driving, and three with Debbie driving, and we didn’t actually see the band we came to see.  Ouch!

Adventures

Ice

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Now it’s in the air at night.  True of me:  I love ice.

It does help to be highly resistant to cold, with some sort of insane internal heater that fires up the minute I feel ice in the air, or on my skin.  Sure, I have a fast heart rate and more than my fair share of insulation.  But I don’t think it’s just that I seem to be so resistant.  I’m not immune.  Not many people alive can describe what it feels like to be dying of third-stage hypothermia, and I can.  It almost got me that time and it could again.  So it’s not just the resistance factor.

Rather, it feels spiritual.

Some people feel closest to the divine on a beach with their feet lapped by surf.  Others feel it in deep forests.  Many feel it near lakes, and some out on prairies.  For some, it’s the altitude and the sight of mountain crags.  Perhaps some find it everywhere.  I could easily see feeling spiritual in a nice hot tub.

For me, it is the pitiless slap in the face of a gusty wind when the mercury is in the teens.  It is the muffled calm of a world struck soundless by a foot of fresh powdery snow.  It is ice in my mustache and beard.

It is midnight walks at -5º F, with no one out (and for once, no stray dogs).  It is hauling firewood in periods of sustained cold, bulling the wheelbarrow through the snow and feeding the fire with snow-crusted hunks of pruned apple branches.  It is shoveling snow, feeling it on my flesh, or hacking a path up the cul-de-sac’s packed ice.

It is scraping my wife’s windshield, feeling ice shavings on my wrist.  It is gripping the steering wheel when it feels like a well-cooled beer bottle.  It is chaining up the truck, hypercautious driving, the controlled fishtail turn I must throw in order to climb a 17% cul-de-sac without those chains.

Most of all, it is interdependency, a nearness to others, rare and dear for us natural loners.  It’s making sure Mrs. Anderson’s walk is shoveled and icemelted.  It’s helping push stuck cars, palms on frigid metal.  It’s putting out a little food for the birds, and giving the dogs as much as they want.  It is being gladder to see others.  It has a religious quality, a sense of good cheer and all being in this together.

Perhaps it’s the time when I most feel the gods like me.

Adventures, Languages

“I have sex for money!”

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No, not me.  Someone else.  Patience.

Back when I was in high school, we had an exchange student from Finland.  Her name was Paulamaria, and she was a wonderful young lady, a year or so older than me, tall, broad-shouldered, blonde, and (at first) terrified.  She spoke okay English at the start.  Anyone could sympathize with her plight, sent to live for a year in a tiny lumber town very far from all she knew.  In hindsight I respect her courage and sense of adventure just to do it.  She lived with us for part of the year, and with a couple of other families later.  But she got our dysfunctional household first.

The budding language junkie in the family already spoke some Spanish and Russian, but no Finnish.  Paula taught me some, and how to pronounce it, which itself is fairly challenging.  In listening to her accent, I came to understand that Finns have terrible trouble with our consonant blends.  It takes them extensive practice to articulate the sounds at all.  Finnish is a very tough language, but it’s not that hard to pronounce.  Great:  a language where you can easily be understood, but knowing what you said is not so easy.  Paula would never call herself a Finn; she would say she was a ‘Feeneess person.’  She spoke ‘Svediss’ and ‘Zerman’ in addition to ‘Eengliss’.  I am not making fun of her at all, just illustrating her pronunciation issues.  She also had guts.  When my mother, on the way home from picking her up, made the absolutely horrifying blunder of asking her if Finns were related to Russians, I saw her eyes flash fire before she had even seen her new home.  “Ve are not Russan people!” she exclaimed.  I had winced.  Good one, Mom.  They take that one real bad in Finland.

Of course, hardly anyone in town even knew where Finland was, except me (who spoke no Finnish) and a lady up the street (who remembered enough from her youth to converse a bit).  Didn’t matter.  Paula picked up English quickly enough, while teaching me how to swear (perrrrrrrrkele!), be grossed out (oooooouuuck!) and be wheedled (ollahyvää???? (please)).

Paula had some resources, enough that she could pretty much go shopping whenever she wished.  She often wished.  We helped her set up a checking account, which made that easier.  So one day my mother, my biological sister, my Finnish sister and I were all riding to town together.  Paula and I were in the back seat.  Now, our household was very religiously conservative, with my father’s interpretation of the tenets of the Missouri Synod of the Lutheran Church and the Bible as the law.  We were self-righteous snobs about it all.  I had only somewhat begun to rebel.  Paula wanted to go shopping with some friends, and asked to do so.  My mother, always keeping an eye out for the details, asked from the driver’s seat:  “Now, Paula, do you have enough money?”

“Oh.  I have sex for money.”

My mother’s very Lutheran head snapped around.  “You do what?”  I attempted to suppress some laughter.

“I have sex!  Oo know, sex!”

Mom spluttered, not angrily but in vast consternation:  “Paula, I have no idea what the customs are like in Finland, but they are different here, and we must have a long talk before you go anywhere.”

For her part, Paula couldn’t understand what the issue was.  Why was everyone reacting this way? Her American mom was discombobulated; her American sister was doing I’m not sure what, and her American brother was snickering like Muttley.  There followed a discussion of much confusion and some concern, but the language junkie finally figured it out.

I pulled out a checkbook.  “Checks, right, Paula?”

“Yes!  Sex!”

You may imagine my mother’s relief.  Once Paula knew she was properly understood, she too was relieved.  Time to shatter that relief, like a proper brother.  I told her what exactly she had been saying.

It’s amazing how pink a very white, Nordic face framed by a bunch of light blonde 1970s hair can get when its owner gets a little uncomfortable.  Almost magenta.

Adventures, Married life

The gift of the Lakota

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This was some years back, when Deb and I drove to Kansas to visit the tribe. (Not the Indians; my family.) We travel together very well, and this trip was no exception. On our way back, we crossed South Dakota and went to Mt. Rushmore and the Crazy Horse Memorial (a work in generational progress).

Mt. Rushmore itself didn’t really do much for me. Whatever upwelling of nationalism I was supposed to feel, I didn’t feel it. Paha Sapa (the Black Hills) were sacred ground for the Lakota (Sioux), and unfortunately, they contained gold. That they would be appropriated and exploited, in the 1800s, was foregone. That this place was chosen to carve sculptures of Great White Fathers, well, to me that’s just washing the Indians’ faces in it. It’s not like there aren’t other mountain ranges in the West suitable for sculpting, after all. Why choose this one, if not to hammer the nail deeper?

It bothered me, and I had come prepared.  Now, I am not an enrolled member of the Hiotna (Honky Injuns Of The New Age) tribe. (Credit to my bro John L. for the hilarious phrase, fairly typical of his main-gauche wit.) Their cultures are theirs, and mine is mine; my sliver of Indian heritage is the social norm for American whites today and signifies nothing. I did, however, desire to do a small observance, as a visitor to Paha Sapa. I had brought tobacco and cornmeal, offerings one might give to a holy man in some Indian cultures. And if they weren’t exactly right, I supposed that whatever called Paha Sapa an ancestral home, it would get my drift.

One tradition my bride and I share is the collection of heart-shaped rocks. Wherever we go together, we seek them out, and somehow we always manage to find one. We have dozens. Usually I do the looking and finding; it is a marital joy.  This autumn afternoon, we really weren’t thinking of that. We headed off down a side road, parked, and walked off into the woods together. I love remote forests and feel completely at ease there, the mirror image of the big-city denizen who feels at home walking on concrete, and who would quiver in terror at the mere possibility of wildlife. In their comfort zone, I would be as they are with a timber rattler, so I get that.

While I did my observance, Deb wandered off into the forest a bit. (Alaskan and Western, she is as much at home there as I.) She was at that short distance where I can see her, but not clearly, when she cried out: “Oh my god! Jonathan, come here!”

When you’re out in the woods and your wife hollers for you, you get the hell over there. I ran toward her. She was standing before a boulder, but not just any boulder.

It was about the size of a washing machine, sloped on top, in our direction. Atop the boulder, a piece was broken off, like the edge of a top layer crumbling. It was fine-grained, probably metamorphic, charcoal-colored, covered with lichens. The broken piece was very recent, to judge by the lack of lichens where it had snapped off.

This piece was a near-perfect heart shape. Except for the upper left corner being a little pointy–imagine a home plate shape with a perfectly located notch in the upper middle–it called to mind nothing so much as a heart. Much larger than our usual heart-shaped pebbles: maybe ten inches across and six inches thick.

I suppose it’s possible that we just happened to pick that particular road, just happened to wander into the woods at that particular (unremarkable) stopping spot, just happened to blunder into the forest at just the right spot, and it just happened to break off very recently, and we just happened to notice it. That level of coincidence is less credible to me than the alternate explanation, which is that we were meant to find it. Of course, I didn’t come expecting to take anything away with me. If you had asked me beforehand whether I was planning on grabbing a souvenir rock from the Black Hills, I’d have said “Hell, no.” But what else does one conclude? What would you conclude?

Seemed to me that, for whatever reason, Paha Sapa had a gift for us of the kind only Deb and I would find, notice and care about. I took it up with care, examining it; probably weighed eight pounds. I think I was too awed to say anything more profound than “thank you.” Much moved, we took it to the car with us and went on our way. (We had a safe and easy trip home, except of course for the bone fragment through a front tire sidewall just outside Butte.)

The stone resides on our mantel, with all the lichens still covering it. (Early on, Deb suggested I clean those off.  No way, I said. We keep it as we got it. She did not demur.) And every time I look at the gift of the Lakota, I feel like they are my friends. Whatever we did or did not do, something noticed, and we felt a token of welcome and camaraderie.  And if there’s an issue, and there’s a Lakota side to it, I admit to a bias their direction.

I want to go back to Paha Sapa in the future, just to say hello. It now feels like a place I am not such an interloper. Not a native, of course, but at the very least, someone with a visa to visit, a safe conduct. I wonder how it will feel.

Adventures, Social comment

Grandmother’s Land

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For our anniversary, we went up to Canada.  It was a great pleasure:  marital togetherness, great hosts, all the scenic beauty Canada has to offer, the basic warm goodwill of rural Canadians, and Tim Horton’s.

Did you know that Indians of the northern Rockies referred to Canada as the Land of the Great Grandmother? We’ve all heard, of course, about the concept of the Great White Father in D.C., though I suspect a few of the Indians realized how utterly paternalistic the reference was (among its other detracting characteristics).  Anyway, since Victoria I was Queen of Canada during the white invasion of the West, and Canada was often thought a refuge (often it was anything but), some Indians called it after Her Majesty.

One of the best parts was our success at smuggling by full disclosure.  We were bringing two six-packs of Ice Harbor IPA to our friends, plus some homemade salsa.  Problem:  you cannot bring in alcohol as a gift duty-free.  If it’s for your own consumption, yes; as a gift, no.  You also can get in trouble bringing in homemade food.  Bozo, our navigator and planner, put the salsa in with the beer in bubble-wrap to keep it safe.

So we get to the border.  I won’t name the crossing lest it get the guard in trouble.  Customs Canada, which isn’t called that anymore, asked most of the usual questions.  They are more inquisitive nowadays, and make an effort to catch one in a fishy story.

“Do you have any alcohol?”

“Yes, two six-packs of beer.”

“For your own consumption?”

“No, it’s a gift for our friends.”  This was an answer so retardedly honest it was plausible.

“In the future, you may want to reconsider that.  The duties are fairly punitive on alcohol, unless it is for your own consumption.  Please pull around to the left and stop, remaining in your vehicle.”

I was pretty sure we were going to be in trouble, at least to the tune of C$50 for the duty.  When I saw a sign about a C$1000 fine directly before us, I assumed the salsa would be found when they inspected.  We would be asked why we had not disclosed it, and there would not really be a very good reason.  Ouch, ouch.  However, I have an inkling that when they have you pull around, in part they are watching to see if you hurriedly dive back into the back seat and start trying to rearrange things/cover up contraband.  That would have been very unwise, so we just sat cool. After a few minutes, the officer brought back our passports and wished us a safe drive.  No duty, and no trouble for the salsa!

When we reached Jenn and Marcel’s (our wonderful hosts), Jenn advised me from the description that we’d gotten the border guard she considered a ‘douchebag.’  Well, all I can say is that in our case he combined taking his duty seriously with a sense of fairness and goodwill, which is a great combo in a border guard.

Score one for giving a response so self-adversely candid and true that it is believed, since no one would make up something like that.   And thank you, Customs Canada, for not being rough on us.

Adventures

The dumbest sport there is

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My father and I didn’t have that many great father/son moments.  We did, however, try a lot of father/son activities. Fair is fair: he’d have spent all the time with me I wanted, had I only wanted to.

We used to hunt and fish a little, though I was never really gung-ho for either. One year my father decided we should go duck hunting.  (I never asked whether he knew how to cook a duck.) Dad borrowed a bunch of decoys and obtained permission from a farmer way over near Roosevelt. For those not familiar with Roosevelt, WA–and that includes most Washingtonians–it sits out in an emptiness. There’s not much there, nor is it near much. We got up well before dawn on an October morning, drove out to the guy’s wheat stubble field, and made ready to shoot ducks.

While my father distributed the decoys in some pattern which he assumed would be irresistible to ducks, I got busy ‘preparing a duck blind.’ It couldn’t be called digging; we had to hack a hole in the frozen ground, large enough for a husky 5’10” adult male and a husky 5’6″ teenage male. Think of coal mining without the coating of ebony dust. We didn’t finish until the sunlight approached in the east.  Dad loaded his .12-gauge, and I loaded my .410.  We got into the hole, knees drawn up, pulled a piece of plywood mostly over us, and watched the skies for the expected waterfowl.

None came.

An hour passed, a dull and chilly hour sitting in a frozen hole in the wheatfield.  No ducks even came within sight of our location.  (You’d think we were a Rose Bowl victory.)

Another hour, and the sun was up by now.  Didn’t do us much good.  Still no ducks.  (You’d think we were a national championship victory.)

Now, I was not the smartest hunter in the county, nor even in that hole, but neither was I a complete idiot. I was about ready to bag it, but I didn’t want my father to resent me for asking to quit early.  I didn’t have much finesse, but it was clear enough to me he was as uncomfortable as me. This called for diplomacy and a voice of good humor. “You know, Dad, of all the father-and-son activities you and I have tried together, this has got to be the dumbest sport there is.”

The thunderbolt did not come. So help me, the old man looked at me, smiled, and laughed: “You know, son, you’re right.  Let’s fill up this hole, pick up our stuff and go get some breakfast.”

From that day forward, such ducks as strayed into Washington were safe from my father and I.

Adventures

Limburger

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My guess would be that everyone is revolted by Limburger, just because of its malodorous reputation.  I bet most of you haven’t actually seen, smelt or tasted it.  Fess up: you just looked at it in the foil wrapper, thought “yecch, revolting,” and bought something else–but you never experienced it.  Well, I bought some the other day and tried it (wife is out of town), with the goal of giving you an honest and full description.

I see why it’s in a tightly sealed foil package, because it does have an unpleasant odor.  Sort of like feet with a spoiled poultry nuance.  It is pale yellow and fairly uniform in color, about the color of Munster but with some burnt orange rinding around the edges here and there.  Texture is creamy and not hard, less rigid than cheddar, soft to the point of spreadability.  Cuts easily with dull knife, doesn’t crumble.  No caves like Havarti or a blue cheese.

The next step was to melt some onto food.  If you heat this stuff up, the smell travels a lot farther, but it doesn’t do much for the taste.  I put it onto some pretty bland bean burritos and it was a culinary non-entity.  Here’s the burning question:  is there some great flavor here that would make you brave the bouquet to get the taste, or is this stuff just for practical jokes? I’d describe it as like a milder Gouda, nothing to get excited about.  You buy cheese for what its unique flavor contributes, and here it’s not really very unique, just accompanied by rotting chicken and unwashed feet.  I’ll eat the rest of it just so that it doesn’t go to waste, but without great enthusiasm.

Adventures, Editing/writing life

Live from Spocon

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It is fairly obvious that if you have a blog, and you are at a SF convention in which you were actually on a panel about blogging with the very person who urged you to begin a blog, and you do not actually post anything while there, you Missed The Point.  Okay.

Friday was arrival day and no obligations but to check in (hour and a half in line…better than Radcon).  Much oohing and ahing over costumes.  I was elated that the homespun Rasputin costume I ordered from Jane Campbell arrived just on my way out of town.  The drive up was the usual Spokane trip:  two hours of freeway gliding, half an hour of Spoconstruction getting into town.  Spokane is a pretty nice place, but the city pastime is road repair and delay.

My local con-pal Sharon was present, but would not be for the entire con (had to fly somewhere), so to a large degree this would be winging it not knowing many people.  At the same time, plenty of at least familiar faces.  One great thing about Spocon this year:  half an hour between panels, so no mad rushes akin to college when you had ten minutes to get to your next class and a long distance to hike.  Patricia Briggs is author guest of honor this year (famed for the Mercy Thompson books set in the Tri-Cities, where I live).  I hit CJ Cherryh’s reading from the new Foreigner hardback, always a pleasure.  Decided to bag out of opening ceremonies, which never really attract me, and dine on a sumptuous meal of Coke plus whatever muffins and scones the coffee stand had remaining at 7 PM.  Then off to the Mad Marmot Asylum (a Spocon staple) for about six Marmot Juices and good fellowship with con-friends.  Left before becoming plastered (good move).

Rarely do I sleep well in hotel rooms, and this was the same.  With a 10 AM Saturday panel on Research for Search Engines, I got up, put on the Boer costume in which people seem to find me dashing, pounded a large coffee with about seven shots of espresso, and showed up on time.  Two panelists and only two panel-goers!  I wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or to get more nervous.  An okay brunch afterward at the hotel breakfast restaurant, then a very interesting panel on voices and accents in writing and roleplaying.  Then came the panel on blogs/podcasts/ezines, and while I had the sense not to talk a lot–it was called ‘Maggie and CJ understand this far better than I’–it went all right with a small but interested attendance.  Directly afterward, the one that had me a bit rattled, Steampunk through history…and I think none of us were vastly well prepared, but we all chimed in:  the artist, the tinkerers two, and the history guy.  For not being quite sure how to approach the topic, I thought we acquitted ourselves admirably.

Decided on a quiet dinner alone at nearby Shenanigans, a steakhouse and brewpub; very nice.  This is Spocon’s first year away from Gonzaga (Jesuits and SF weirdos not being subject to RC tenets against divorce), so the area around the convention center is getting used to the influx of strangeness for the first time.  Shenanigans isn’t cheap, but neither is it outlandishly priced, and I’d go back.  Took in some music back at the con by the Seattle Knights, went up for a Marmot Juice, then decided that a sore knee and hip entitled me to come back to my hotel room for a bit of relaxation and blogtime.

I have to give Big Chris and Spocon credit for doing a good job here; they have grown the con since it began about four years back, and the many volunteers were pleasant.  One should always be kind to the volunteers, especially when things are going wrong, and this was not really put to a trial this year.  If there were significant catastrophes, they were remedied out of my sight, which means that they didn’t impact me.  That has to stand to the credit of ConCom and volunteers alike.  Sunday will be a short day, really a half-day, as I have to be out of here by noon and things begin to wind down.

What is amazing is that despite Spokane’s size (double the Tri-Cities), the con is half the size of Radcon (Pasco, Tri-Cities).  Surely it’s a longevity matter, as Radcon has been around much longer.  If I had to characterize Spocon in one word, I would say ‘enthusiasm.’  It is still building a name, but they work very hard and their dedication shows.  I suppose I have months to decide if I’ll come up next year, and if so, do I want to do this panel stuff again.  (Radcon doesn’t want my services, which used to affect me a bit; now that I have done it, I see benefits in being able to just attend without obligations and prior study.)  The dealer room was perhaps my main disappointment, being rather lightly presented, and this is likely a matter of the economy (and the lack of stuff I happened to wish to buy).

Your (reasonably) faithful correspondent, signing off from Spokanistan.