{"id":824,"date":"2014-02-25T21:46:27","date_gmt":"2014-02-26T02:46:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bojnberry.ca\/~berry\/blog\/?p=824"},"modified":"2014-02-25T21:46:27","modified_gmt":"2014-02-26T02:46:27","slug":"things-to-do-around-worldcons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bojnberry.ca\/~berry\/blog\/?p=824","title":{"rendered":"Things to do around WorldCons"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When I went to LoneStarCon, a couple of the people I was hanging out with took off one of the days to travel to Houston to visit Johnson Space Center. Wow, thought I, I wish I had thought of that! (NB: I didn&#8217;t ask to tag along, if you&#8217;re wondering, because I A: didn&#8217;t know them\u00a0<em>that<\/em> well and didn&#8217;t want to impose (go being Canadian!) and B: I actually had plans that day anyway.)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/bojnberry\/7870876920\/\" title=\"Untitled by bojnberry, on Flickr\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm9.staticflickr.com\/8428\/7870876920_8f69ec48ae.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" alt=\"A Kettle in action on the ELR, Sept 2012\"><\/a><br \/>\nA Kettle in action on the ELR, Sept 2012<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>This did get me thinking. I am going to LonCon and ShamroKon in the summer, and there are a few definite things that I like to do when I&#8217;m in England (can&#8217;t say for Ireland, as I&#8217;ve never been): Travel by kettle, take in a show, and drink a few pints amongst other things. In Dublin I think I&#8217;m going to go with the flow of the con, but during my stay in London, I have plans&#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>On the Saturday of the con, I&#8217;m going to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rmweb.co.uk\/midlandrailex\/\">RailEx<\/a>, which is in Ripley, believe it or not. That&#8217;s a six-hour round trip, but it should be a heck of a day out, and I&#8217;ll still be back in time for evening fun.<\/li>\n<li>The Tuesday I arrive, or perhaps the Tuesday after, if I&#8217;m too jet-lagged, I intend on seeing <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jeevesandwoosterplay.com\/\">Perfect Nonsense<\/a>, a play based on P.G. Wodehouse&#8217;s Jeeves and Wooster. Sadly, according to the website, Stephen Mangan and Patrick MacFayden will only be performing until April. I will go regardless.<\/li>\n<li>Thursday I&#8217;d like to catch a taping of either of the BBC Radio 4 comedies &#8220;The Now Show&#8221; or &#8220;The News Quiz&#8221;, which ever is on. Hopefully they aren&#8217;t both on summer hiatus. I understand it&#8217;s quite difficult to score tickets to this, so I&#8217;ll keep my fingers crossed. (NB: I tried last time I was in London with no success.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Now, that&#8217;s all fine and dandy, and I think I&#8217;ll have a well-rounded, jolly old time this summer. And it got me thinking: I intend to go to WorldCons from now on, and I spent a goodly amount of time last night thinking about what I would do during the other WorldCons. Here&#8217;s what I came up with:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Spokane 2015:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 60px;\">Um, actually, I don&#8217;t know. I originally figured I&#8217;d be able to see a Spokane Chiefs game, but their pre-season usually only starts the week before Labour Day, and that&#8217;s too late. My other plan was to bring the whole family, as we had been debating going to Lake Louise in 2015 already, and it&#8217;s not that far. My sweet vetoed eighty hours in the Berry Bus, though, so I&#8217;m going to have to rethink this one&#8230;<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Kansas City 2016:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Go to a Royals game, of course. This is a thing I do. Heck, I&#8217;ve even seen the A&#8217;s play in Oakland, and I was the only one there (or so it felt). I already worked out how to get to the stadium from the Convention Centre. It&#8217;s not pretty.<\/li>\n<li>Walk across the border into Kansas City, Kansas. Walk back, say, &#8220;I don&#8217;t think we&#8217;re in Kansas anymore.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>Considering going to Dodge City, but it&#8217;s a heck of a drive.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Beijing 2016:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 60px;\">Yes, they have a bid! Do touristy type stuff, I guess. This one is a tough sell for me, to be honest, mostly because it&#8217;s a Croatia year, and I wouldn&#8217;t want to go all the way to China and just stay there for a week. Great Wall! Forbidden City! Shanghai! Hong Kong! We love the Yangtze, Yangtze Kiang! Flowing from&#8230; Anyway, you get the point. I&#8217;d want to spend a month, and I don&#8217;t have a month to spend. I guess I&#8217;ll go to NaSFiC if they win. Sniff. Unless I&#8217;m miraculously up for a Hugo, then wild horses etc etc.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Montreal 2017:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 60px;\">Two words: Old Dublin. And visit my Mum, I guess&#8230;<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Helsinki 2017:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 60px;\">No idea, but it&#8217;ll be awesome! Wooo! This is definitely a trip where I&#8217;d like to bring the family, and hang out for a week or so post-con.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Japan 2017:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 60px;\">Hit all the places I didn&#8217;t manage to see last time I went. This would also be a multi-week, but at least it&#8217;s not a Croatia year. Two words: On-Sen. I guess that&#8217;s actually one. Maybe not. Eat as much curry rice and okonomiyaki as I can handle.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Washington DC 2017:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 60px;\">Visit the Smithsonian museums that I haven&#8217;t hit yet.<\/p>\n<p>Ya, that&#8217;s about as far as I got. If you have any ideas, for things I can do or see on those quieter moments (especially for Sasquan!), let me know ;).<\/p>\n<div class=\"facebook-like\"><fb:like layout=\"standard\" show_faces=\"true\" href=\"https:\/\/bojnberry.ca\/~berry\/blog\/?p=824\"><\/fb:like><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When I went to LoneStarCon, a couple of the people I was hanging out with took off one of the days to travel to Houston to visit Johnson Space Center. Wow, thought I, I wish I had thought of that! [&hellip;] <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/bojnberry.ca\/~berry\/blog\/?p=824\">&darr; Read the rest of this entry&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","uentry","postonpage-1","odd","post-author-berry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1HpGK-di","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bojnberry.ca\/~berry\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bojnberry.ca\/~berry\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bojnberry.ca\/~berry\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bojnberry.ca\/~berry\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bojnberry.ca\/~berry\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=824"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/bojnberry.ca\/~berry\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":834,"href":"https:\/\/bojnberry.ca\/~berry\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824\/revisions\/834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bojnberry.ca\/~berry\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bojnberry.ca\/~berry\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bojnberry.ca\/~berry\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}