Pemmi-Con Post-Con: Activate Plan B
We woke up a little earlier than expected this morning, which might suggest that we managed to catch up on sleep, although today's activities might have erased that.
Because we were up early, we took the opportunity to do another load of laundry. We also packed a few of the Tide pods to go with us to Churchill, in case either we or some of our friends traveling with us wanted to do laundry at the four-bedroom house we've rented for our stay there. (It sounds extravagant, but the cost per person, split six ways, was less expensive than hotel rooms in Churchill, and gives us a full kitchen as well as a living room area and four bedrooms. Besides which, most of the hotel rooms in Churchill seem to be dedicated to tour groups.)
After breakfast, we walked over to Union Station, in the hope of converting our reservations on the Winnipeg-Churchill Train (formerly known as the Hudson Bay - Via Rail has no proper sense of romance by dropping train names) to actual tickets.
It's a nice looking station.
There are posters about Churchill. What there wasn't at that time of day were any staff, as there were no trains at this time. We'll have to deal with it tomorrow morning.
On the way back to the Delta, we passed the Hotel Fort Garry. I still have a gaming token from their casino left over from the 1994 Worldcon.
This unmarked apartment building was, in 1994, the Place Louis Riel Hotel, one of ConAdian's main hotels, and the one in which I stayed, sharing a one-bedroom apartment with a living room and a full kitchen with David W. Clark. I also made breakfast for the WSFS Division. I'm not sure if a Worldcon division manager has ever done that for their staff before or since.
The walk to the train station is only about 1 km each way, but it was (by local standards) warm and (by our desert-accustomed standards) humid, and was a bit hard on Lisa. When we got back, I left Lisa to recover in the air-conditioned room and walked down to the auto repair shop to find out what the status of the minivan was.
The mechanic was in the process of re-installing the A/C pipes. Because he was unable to find a replacement, he had to have the hole that had worn in one of the pipes welded. He told me to expect to be able to get the minivan back by the close of business (6 PM) today.
For this particular expedition, Lisa had loaned me one of her amateur radios. By a reciprocal agreement between the USA and Canada, our licenses were good in Canada as long as we followed certain rules. We were able to stay in touch with each other until after Central Park (about 1000 m from the Delta Hotel), after which I was no longer able to contact her, and even on the way back, I wasn't able to raise her until we were within eyeshot. However, that might have been a mistake on my radio handling.
By now it was well past lunchtime, so Lisa and I went to lunch with Chris Marble, once he was able to free himself up from the Office. We returned to Elephant & Castle, in some part because there were still things on the menu that Lisa wanted to try. We did not rush. There was still plenty of time to pack.
After lunch, we spent the rest of the afternoon separating those things that needed to be stored in Winnipeg from those that were going to go with us to Churchill, plus a few things that we would leave behind or finish consuming. I went over to Rexall for a final container of milk. The price difference between a 1.5 and a 4 litre container of milk was such that it was more cost-effective to buy the larger container even if I only drank half of it.
At 5:20, having heard nothing from the mechanic, I called him, and received bad news. After he put the repaired pipes back into the unit and charged it up, the coolant all ran out again. There's another leak. He needs more time to find the additional leak or leaks. Well, we get back from Churchill on July 31, so I told him to keep working on it, leave me a message when he has more information (much of the train trip will be out of phone coverage), and we'll get it back from him next week.
It was time to activate Move-Out Plan B. Instead of packing all of our "stays in Winnipeg" stuff in the Astro and then parking the Astro at our friend's house, we needed to store the material itself at their house. They were willing to do so. I also had to change hotel reservations. Our original plan was to stay at the Holiday Inn Express Polo Park near the airport, using IHG points. Because we cannot be certain that our train will actually get back to Winnipeg on time at 16:45 (the shop closes at 18:00), we needed to stay downtown within walking distance of the shop. I canceled the Polo Park reservation and booked a room at the Holiday Inn Downtown, which coincidentally was the Pemmi-Con overflow hotel. (If it were not for all of our convention commitments, I probably would have stayed there for the IHG perks I get from being a Platinum member.) As it happens, I ended up with 2000 more points in my account than when I started, because of the difference in cost between the properties. The Downtown property is a mere 800 m from the auto shop.
Should we arrive on time, and assuming we've confirmed that the van is ready to be collected, we'll take a taxi straight to the shop, collect the van, drive to the hotel and check in, then go to our friend's house and rescue our considerable luggage. Otherwise, we'll just go to the hotel and deal with the van and the luggage the next morning. However in any event, my plan to do Day Jobbe work on that first morning is out the window, and I contacted my manager to tell him so.
Our friend (some of you reading this know who it is) phoned to tell me they were on their way to the hotel. I went downstairs and was able to get a cart. This was a near thing; the World Police & Fire Games are moving in to all of the downtown hotels and the lobby was very busy. There was a person checking in for a 14-night stay (as compared to the 7-night stay ending tonight for Lisa and me). He let me have his cart, and I hurried up to our room, where Lisa crammed all of the stay-in-Winnipeg stuff onto it. We then went back downstairs and managed to fit it in into our friend's vehicle. It was so much that Lisa had to stay behind, and we went to our friend's house.
They had us pile the material in their kitchen and living room, and then took me back to the Delta Hotel. I'm very grateful to them for putting up with the inconvenience for a week.
All six of us going to Churchill are now at either the Delta or Holiday Inn, and some of them went to dinner at the Elephant & Castle, but Lisa was tired and demurred. She and I ordered another pizza and watched a movie, and then she took a bath and went to sleep.
Train time is Noon on Tuesday. We'll aim to be early, even if it means waiting around the station for a while. We'd rather be early and have to wait than miss what is likely to be a once-in-a-lifetime train trip.
Because we were up early, we took the opportunity to do another load of laundry. We also packed a few of the Tide pods to go with us to Churchill, in case either we or some of our friends traveling with us wanted to do laundry at the four-bedroom house we've rented for our stay there. (It sounds extravagant, but the cost per person, split six ways, was less expensive than hotel rooms in Churchill, and gives us a full kitchen as well as a living room area and four bedrooms. Besides which, most of the hotel rooms in Churchill seem to be dedicated to tour groups.)
After breakfast, we walked over to Union Station, in the hope of converting our reservations on the Winnipeg-Churchill Train (formerly known as the Hudson Bay - Via Rail has no proper sense of romance by dropping train names) to actual tickets.
It's a nice looking station.
There are posters about Churchill. What there wasn't at that time of day were any staff, as there were no trains at this time. We'll have to deal with it tomorrow morning.
On the way back to the Delta, we passed the Hotel Fort Garry. I still have a gaming token from their casino left over from the 1994 Worldcon.
This unmarked apartment building was, in 1994, the Place Louis Riel Hotel, one of ConAdian's main hotels, and the one in which I stayed, sharing a one-bedroom apartment with a living room and a full kitchen with David W. Clark. I also made breakfast for the WSFS Division. I'm not sure if a Worldcon division manager has ever done that for their staff before or since.
The walk to the train station is only about 1 km each way, but it was (by local standards) warm and (by our desert-accustomed standards) humid, and was a bit hard on Lisa. When we got back, I left Lisa to recover in the air-conditioned room and walked down to the auto repair shop to find out what the status of the minivan was.
The mechanic was in the process of re-installing the A/C pipes. Because he was unable to find a replacement, he had to have the hole that had worn in one of the pipes welded. He told me to expect to be able to get the minivan back by the close of business (6 PM) today.
For this particular expedition, Lisa had loaned me one of her amateur radios. By a reciprocal agreement between the USA and Canada, our licenses were good in Canada as long as we followed certain rules. We were able to stay in touch with each other until after Central Park (about 1000 m from the Delta Hotel), after which I was no longer able to contact her, and even on the way back, I wasn't able to raise her until we were within eyeshot. However, that might have been a mistake on my radio handling.
By now it was well past lunchtime, so Lisa and I went to lunch with Chris Marble, once he was able to free himself up from the Office. We returned to Elephant & Castle, in some part because there were still things on the menu that Lisa wanted to try. We did not rush. There was still plenty of time to pack.
After lunch, we spent the rest of the afternoon separating those things that needed to be stored in Winnipeg from those that were going to go with us to Churchill, plus a few things that we would leave behind or finish consuming. I went over to Rexall for a final container of milk. The price difference between a 1.5 and a 4 litre container of milk was such that it was more cost-effective to buy the larger container even if I only drank half of it.
At 5:20, having heard nothing from the mechanic, I called him, and received bad news. After he put the repaired pipes back into the unit and charged it up, the coolant all ran out again. There's another leak. He needs more time to find the additional leak or leaks. Well, we get back from Churchill on July 31, so I told him to keep working on it, leave me a message when he has more information (much of the train trip will be out of phone coverage), and we'll get it back from him next week.
It was time to activate Move-Out Plan B. Instead of packing all of our "stays in Winnipeg" stuff in the Astro and then parking the Astro at our friend's house, we needed to store the material itself at their house. They were willing to do so. I also had to change hotel reservations. Our original plan was to stay at the Holiday Inn Express Polo Park near the airport, using IHG points. Because we cannot be certain that our train will actually get back to Winnipeg on time at 16:45 (the shop closes at 18:00), we needed to stay downtown within walking distance of the shop. I canceled the Polo Park reservation and booked a room at the Holiday Inn Downtown, which coincidentally was the Pemmi-Con overflow hotel. (If it were not for all of our convention commitments, I probably would have stayed there for the IHG perks I get from being a Platinum member.) As it happens, I ended up with 2000 more points in my account than when I started, because of the difference in cost between the properties. The Downtown property is a mere 800 m from the auto shop.
Should we arrive on time, and assuming we've confirmed that the van is ready to be collected, we'll take a taxi straight to the shop, collect the van, drive to the hotel and check in, then go to our friend's house and rescue our considerable luggage. Otherwise, we'll just go to the hotel and deal with the van and the luggage the next morning. However in any event, my plan to do Day Jobbe work on that first morning is out the window, and I contacted my manager to tell him so.
Our friend (some of you reading this know who it is) phoned to tell me they were on their way to the hotel. I went downstairs and was able to get a cart. This was a near thing; the World Police & Fire Games are moving in to all of the downtown hotels and the lobby was very busy. There was a person checking in for a 14-night stay (as compared to the 7-night stay ending tonight for Lisa and me). He let me have his cart, and I hurried up to our room, where Lisa crammed all of the stay-in-Winnipeg stuff onto it. We then went back downstairs and managed to fit it in into our friend's vehicle. It was so much that Lisa had to stay behind, and we went to our friend's house.
They had us pile the material in their kitchen and living room, and then took me back to the Delta Hotel. I'm very grateful to them for putting up with the inconvenience for a week.
All six of us going to Churchill are now at either the Delta or Holiday Inn, and some of them went to dinner at the Elephant & Castle, but Lisa was tired and demurred. She and I ordered another pizza and watched a movie, and then she took a bath and went to sleep.
Train time is Noon on Tuesday. We'll aim to be early, even if it means waiting around the station for a while. We'd rather be early and have to wait than miss what is likely to be a once-in-a-lifetime train trip.