purplecthulhu

Here, even more belated than other reports, is something about my worldcon. More soon!



Thursday: Traveling

Traveling to a Worldcon usually involves getting up to early in the morning, and Torcon 3 was no exception.

Alarm was set for 6am, with a planned departure of 6:30am so I could get to Heathrow by about 8am to check in for my 10:10am flight. Well, I almost made that departure time, and was out at the bus stop on Hackney Road by about 6:35. It was a toss-up whether the Oxford Circus bus or a taxi would be best for getting me to Padington for the Heathrow Express, and it looked as if I'd missed a bus, so I started waiting for a taxi. Its amazing how luminous taxi for-hire signs appear as the sun rises behind them. So luminous that unilluminated signs often have a veritable glow, much to my embarrassment. Still, I eventually found a taxi that was free, albeit with a driver who was smoking, and headed to the Heathrow Express, and thence to the airport.

There was quite a long queue for check-in. I had my eyes out for fans, but didn't manage to find anyone I recognised. I suspect that much of UK worldcon fandom had gone a day or two earlier, and I didn't spot my first fan until on the coach from Toronto airport. After check-in, I headed up towards departures via a card shop to send purpletigron a good-luck card for her OU interview on the Monday of the convention. The card shop was full of cutesy kitten cards, but eventually I managed to find a cougar photographed in the wild for her. Much more macho and less soppy than all those kittens! Once in the departure lounge, I sought out the whisky shop, only to be disappointed by the absence of my planned purchase - a bottle of Lagavulin. I left the specialist whisky shop for the general Duty Free shop, in the hope that they might have some. After some searching in their whisky area I interrupted the deep and meaningful gossiping going on between two of the staff to ask where their Lag. was. To my horror it was revealed that they hadn't had any in stock for 2 years or more. This was blamed on shortages, a not unreasonable excuse since it is a very nice whisky and not a very large distillery. I was forced to console myself with a bottle of cask strength 10 year old Laphroaig instead.

Then it was onto the plane. I can't remember a great deal of the trip, so must conclude that there was nothing wonderful or awful about the whole thing. They did seem to mess up the video programme since we missed the end of Batman, now a classic according to Air Canada at least. It was rather amusing having the final moments of Jack Nicolson's Joker coming over the PA system of the plane as we touched down.

The immigration hall was a surprise, with large 'Welcome Torcon' signs on the LED displays. Sadly the immigration officers were not as well informed as their hardware: 'What's your reason for coming to Toronto Sir?" "Torcon", I reply. "What's that?" he asked, and I then proceeded to tell him about what was on his own notices.

After that and the baggage it was time to see how successfully I'd managed to decode the navigation instructions in the conspicuously mapless final PR. I managed to find the ticket booth for the Airport Express, only it was shut ('Back in 5 mins'), and the timetable suggested I'd just missed the bus. I was resigning myself to waiting 30 minutes for the next bus when it turned up, no doubt running a little behind because of the roadworks at the other terminals. The bus was pretty full, but I managed to buy a ticket from the driver after I'd explained that his colleague seemed to have gone AWOL from the booth. I rode into Toronto assailed by the chatter of US fans behind me, who were extolling the virtues of Hay-on-Wye, and how it was somewhere between Crewe and Carlisle! The route to the airport was about all i got to see of larger Toronto. A few bits of it looked rather familiar from Cronenberg's movie 'Crash', but the overall impression was positive. Its a north american city, with all that implies, but there seemed to be quite a lot of rather nice high rise apartment blocks along the lake, rather reminiscent of the sea-front of Vancouver, but with the unmistakable addition of the CN Tower, rising like some grounded Clarke spaceship that had planted itself on the lakeshore. Near to that I also glimpsed the Skydome, the world's first convertible sportsground and where the king of Spain allegedly vacuums the turf. I made pretty good time from the airport to the hotel, and was there significantly before the 3pm arrival I'd expected.

Check in at the Royal York was a little complicated, since the clerk at first couldn't tell the difference between myself and 'Deviant Dave Clement' who was staying at the same hotel. I had to tell him at least twice that I was 'plural' and that I was sharing with handslive and purplejavatroll who were arriving later. Once this message had got through though, I was amazed to receive two plastic keys for the hotel room. I was assured that all guests got two keys. This seemed astonishing largesse compared to the usual UK hotel practice of giving out only one key no matter how many people are sharing the room!

Next step was to go and unpack a bit, and clean myself up. That accomplished, I headed off to find registration. Down in the lobby was a sign directing me upstairs to a hotel function room. Hoping that I could achieve my goal without braving the Toronto atmosphere, allegedly hot and humid but which later experience proved to be not too different from London in august, I headed up, only to find another notice saying that Registration was now in the convention centre 'turn right and go 2 blocks'. Needless to say, once I got to the front door I turned left. If the PR hadn't been mapless that could all have been avoided. Still, I got a good tour of parts of Toronto, finding the local concert hall and venues for the upcoming film festival, and spotting the (Ice) Hockey Hall of Fame, to which I was convinced purplejavatroll would drag me later in the weekend. I eventually decided I'd gone more than 2 blocks and had probably turned the wrong way, so I reversed course, walked past the Royal York, and found the convention centre. Queues were fairly light, at least for my letter of the alphabet. It seemed that some other letter combinations were much more popular. Why is it that fans must insist on going to registration in some kind of alphabetical order, so that the R-T queue is huge when the A-C queue is one person?

Registration achieved, I headed upstairs to look around the exhibitions and dealers' room, and to get a light snack. The concessions available at the Convention centre weren't that diverse or good, but I wasn't looking for much - something solid (a bagel with ham) something sweet and caffinated (a coke) and something to replace lost salts - a bag of crisps (or should I say chips?). I then realised that I was missing an interesting programme item, - Guy Consolmagno, the Jesuit astronomer, talking about the Cassini mission to Saturn and Titan. I got to the room just as it was ending, but was pleased to be able to meet Guy again, along with Bill H and a few other hard science geeks. I'd planned to meet up with Bill at Torcon and was amazed that he was almost the first person I saw at the convention. We made plans to meet for dinner later in the convention. At this point it was heading towards the time I was hoping handslive and purplejavatroll would arrive, so I headed back to the hotel.

It took quite a bit of reading and gazing at TV, including the latest Hutton news from the BBC, for them to arrive. Seems the rush hour caused quite a few delays for the Airport Express. Neil had to head off almost immediately for an aikido class, so purplejavatroll and I headed downstairs for food and registration. There were considerable queues at the latter, now that it had moved back to the Royal York, so we went to the hotel bar for eats and beer. I had a local microbrew beer and a chicken and guacamole burger thing, while purplejavatroll had some Strongbow cider, 'hard' cider being something of a rarity in North America, some soup and a dim sum-like beef dish which was rather interesting. We had a nice dozy chat, dozy on my part at least, as the jet lag was starting to kick in, and then headed back to the room. It was about time for me to reach my snooze-by date, so some sleepy book reading ensued until handslive arrived, and then I tucked myself in while they went off for more food and registration.