May 5 2013
Tentative Planning
I reckon I should crack on and nail down a few details.
First: I go West
Second: I congratulate myself on figuring out a direction.
Thirdly: I stop counting.
I aim to finish my trip at the Worldcon which will be on the 29th of August to the 2nd of September.
There are a few paces I will definitely visit and these are:
Toronto
Seattle
Las Vegas
and, of course, San Antonio for the Worldcon.
There are other places that it would be nice to visit. Curt has suggested Abingdon, VA which is tremendously tempting also and Nic reeled off a mighty list of cities with fannish infestations, all of which he felt I should visit. My head is spinning, reeling and making peculiar little Phlup noises as I try to piece it all together.
Any comments or suggestions please feel free to message me using that funky little contact tab in the right hand corner of the page.
May 05, 2013 @ 13:31:17
Hi Jim,
I assume that you’ll first be flying in directly to the west coast; how are you planning to travel within the continent after that? Train service is very limited and more expensive than domestic flights. You could lease a car, although that ties you to the roads for a lot of days. When you get a few more details lined up – particularly as regards going to and going from the Worldcon you might find volunteers to take you on those legs of the trip. You’ve probably realized by now that Abingdon is greatly isolated from any other fannish destination, so I’ll certainly understand if you can’t work it in on this trip. But once I know more about your plans I *might* be able to travel a bit and meet you elsewhere if that would work better. With more info, we shall see…
May 05, 2013 @ 15:11:26
OTOH, train service is excellent between Portland and Seattle– come on down and see Powell’s City of Books, possibly the largest bookstore in the world, which is not too far from the station! And if you want to fly out of here, there’s light rail to the airport…
May 05, 2013 @ 17:15:12
You could probably get a fannish ride from Toronto to the Detroit area, and then possibly another from there to either Cincinatti or Chicago, depending when you’re coming. The train from Michigan to Chicago is actually quite decent, and you can also take it up to Madison and on to Minneapolis.
If you go to Seattle do take a ferry and get someone to drive you around the peninsula, which has pretty beaches, gorgeous views of the strait of San Juan, plus a rain forest! All within a day’s drive. You can read more about spots there, down the coast and around the country in my account of my and my sister’s 1996 Road trip, http://netmouse.com/me/roadtrip_1996/summary.html
How long are you thinking you can take for the trip?
May 06, 2013 @ 22:10:41
Once you are in Texas, as well as San Antonio you should try to hit Houston (we can probably help with that) and Galveston. Houston has fandom and NASA, Galveston has, well Galveston, and the Gulf of Mexico. I second the suggestions of Toronto, Detroit and Chicago. Other Texas fans will no doubt promote Austin and DFW. 🙂
In making your plans of what to see, definitely think of it in terms of “and then I get to San Antonio”. There are lots of possibilities for getting to San Antonio, but not all of them are as available from all places as from some (as is true of many places).
May 08, 2013 @ 21:21:57
There’s one more place to add to the list above, at the moment and that’s California.Glenn Glazer has offered me somewhere to stay near Santa Cruz.
Looking forward to it
May 08, 2013 @ 21:30:19
Portland is definitely somewhere I would wish to see and it seems quite close to Seattle
May 08, 2013 @ 21:34:25
Kim – The last week or so of my trip before Worldcon has been tied down a little as Carrie is flying in to spend some time with me and our money to get her there is limited. She needs to do return air fares so we can afford them. Soooo, she is flying in and out of Las Vegas and doing a trip in and out of San Antonio from Vegas too. I would dearly dearly love to see Houston ( MY childhood is filled with glorious memories of Nasa rockets) but I reckon I may not be able to get there.
May 10, 2013 @ 17:45:23
Which airlines are you looking at? Some of the domestic options function as one-ways, not returns, regardless of whether the trip is in fact return. An open jaw Las Vegas-San Antonio-Houston-Las Vegas on Southwest might be workable (if the Houston leg was by car, it gets better). You may already have explored similar possibilities, but I just wanted to mention it.
May 11, 2013 @ 04:19:38
Thanks, I don’t think we’d looked at Southwest. They do seem extremely cheap. I’ll pass info on to Carrie to see if she thinks it’s feasible.