Nothing much worthy of note happens on the plane (so you can breath that sigh of relief now), except that our in-flight movie is Lost in Space. It's fun, and doubtless more effective on the big screen, even if the plot has holes you could drive a bulldozer through. Oh, and it demonstrates that Matt LeBlanc can play the Action Hero as well as the Lovable Idiot, though personally I suspect he may have had to act rather harder in Friends than LiS ever calls for. Comparisons with the original series are inevitable, but I think they tell us more about the times they were made in than much else. The original was full of 60's optimism and paranoia, happily sending a close family unit out to be colonial pioneers forging a brave new world out on the High Frontier. The 90's version, by contrast, is darker and more desperate, sending a squabbling family that is barely holding itself together out to a new world that just might give the Earth a chance to survive. The same basic story, but two very different visions.
Anyway, eventually we arrive in Baltimore. After puzzling over the ticket machines and maps for a bit we catch the MTA into town, worrying faintly about which of the two stops labelled "Lexington Market" we will actually arrive at. They turn out to be separate northbound and southbound platforms (not that you could tell this from the maps, of course) about two blocks apart, and naturally we have to get off at the one further from our hotel. For all that, the walk to the hotel is a short one, ut it's there that the real trouble begins.
I try to check in, and discover that Bucconeer's hotel liaison has screwed up yet again. I know, I know, I should have been more paranoid, I just have this naive faith that when someone promises me that something moderately important is so, then it is so. I should have known….
Bucconeer's room booking system did not get off to a good start, but then neither did that of any convention happening in Baltimore in 1998. The city's equivalent of a tourist board, the Baltimore Area Conference Venue Association (or something like that) subcontracted hotel handling out to a company called Biospherics, who were, to be blunt, totally incompetent. If you were an easy case, staying in town only during the period in which the convention had cheap rates negotiated with the hotels and not doing anything odd like requiring handicapped access or feather-free pillows, then they dealt with your booking straight away, and probably got it mostly right. If, like most of the convention, you were taking advantage of being in a different city (on a different continent) to have a holiday as well as a convention, or were in any way peculiar, then they added your booking to the pile of awkward ones to be dealt with tomorrow. And as we all know, tomorrow never comes….
A few months before the con, after much screaming on all sides, the Bucconeer committee finally decided that Biospherics were too incompetent to live and started handling the bookings themselves. As one of the people who had sent their original booking in by email, I was contacted by email and asked to resubmit my booking to the con address, only I didn't need to send my credit card details as they didn't need to know that. I duly did this, but didn't hear anything back from them about what hotel I was in. A few weeks before the con I sent them a query, only to be told that I was booked into the Omni Inner Harbour Hotel (the filk hotel, my first preference even!), and that my confirmation should be with me the following week. When it didn't arrive, I put that down to the usual transatlantic mess-ups in the post, and forgot about it. Mistake.
Back in Baltimore I find that a room had indeed been booked for me in the Omni. However, the hotel is fully booked, and because my reservation wasn't guaranteed by my credit card — remember, they explicitly told me not to tell them — the hotel had cancelled my booking in favour of others. After seething a lot but still managing to be polite to the desk clerk, I manage to negotiate a room for the night, albeit at a horrendous rate. Janet, it appears, has everything under control, having taken the sensible if expensive precaution of checking her reservation by phone. We turn to go to our separate rooms and immediately bump into John Harold, who is checking the place for radio dead spots. I explain to John, calmly and rationally, that I would like him to find me someone to do with hotel liaison, kill them, then find me someone else. John looks concerned, though I'm not sure whether it's for me or for the first hotel person to cross my path. He directs me to the bowels of the Hilton where the con is beginning to set itself up. I toil up mountains and across gaping chasms — oh, all right, I cross the road to the Hilton, and am put on the phone to Marty Gear, who has clearly been warned not to approach me in person. Marty promises faithfully to sort something out by tomorrow lunchtime, since I can't extend my stay in the Omni for another night (they are full, after all).
The Science Center proves to be OK, if somewhat idiosyncratic in layout. It has some interesting exhibits, some entertaining experiments to try out (and a few which need a bit of repair work to make them go properly), an IMAX theatre doing a presentation on Everest for more money than I'm prepared to spend just yet, and a small planetarium which does a creditable and informative presentation on Mars. It's not bad, even enjoyable if you are in the right mood. Unfortunately getting into the right mood is made more difficult by having to wade through children's play areas to get to any of the interesting stuff. It passes the morning, at least, and I only have to be rude to a few children to breach the barricades.
Lunchtime sees me back at the Hilton, to discover a note from Marty waiting for me. Even more remote control this time, I see. Apparently his idea of "sorting something out" is to leave me a list of the three hotels which are still offering rooms at the convention rates. This dampens my enthusiasm to execute the entire site liaison team only slightly. Armed with these names, a local phone book and the con office telephone, I ring round.
Eventually I settle on the Brookshire, which is very close to everything but a bit on the expensive side. It only has rooms left because the con neglected to negatiate anything at all with it until quite recently, so no one knows about it. It's not a bad hotel, somewhat in need of refurbishment (which it gets during my stay, which is fine except for the smell of paint getting everywhere). However I am singularly unimpressed by the door lock, which refuses to operate without the application either the subtlety of a cat-burglar or a great deal of violence. I look forward with no enthusiasm at all to the prospect of phoning reception to get them to let me out of my own room. Fortunately I don't have to do so this time, so I just tell them that the lock is dodgy. "Yes sir," they say cheerfully, "the locksmith has just looked at it." "Well he'd better look at it again, because it still isn't working." "Oh."
Eventually the hotel lets me out of its clutches, and I get to the convention centre and register. Following the instructions for programme participants (being a Foreign Filker to the Americans does have its advantages), I head for the Program table to find an apologetic Perianne Lurie with no program packs. Apparently they'll be along later, and if I'd like to stay around and lend a hand…. Not being a mug, I don't do this. Oh dear me, no. I go over to the Volunteer table to offer my generic services for other reasons entirely, carefully not actually promising to do anything.
Here I meet Giulia de Cesare, and we start comparing travel horror stories as we sign up. Giulia and Steve got stuck overnight in New York due to a late flight, so are well behind schedule quite apart from having had to eat more airline food than is good for anyone. Within seconds, we are leapt on by the Information desk, and stay there for the rest of the afternoon. For some reason, a Welshman and an Italian-Australian both residing in England make obvious local experts on Baltimore, at least as far as our questioners are concerned. On the plus side, most problems appear to become abruptly less urgent when faced with an English accent, and I do manage to trump all the hotel horror stories that other people come up with.
When the working day is over, Giulia and I rescue Steve from the bowels of the newsletter, meet Perianne again and all go out for some seafood. Steve is seething gently; the newsletter is in the same room as the at-con office, presumably on the theory that if you put the two noisiest offices in the convention in the same space, they can only disturb each other. Of course they disturb each other constantly, but someone seems to have thought this a small price to pay. Someone who evidently doesn't work in either team. In addition, Chaz Baden, who appears to have acquired charge of the newsletter on rather short notice, is spending all his time developing the perfect distribution system. "Which is all very well, but shouldn't we write a newsletter at some point?"
The restaurant is good, quite apart from only being two blocks from my hotel. Since Baltimore is famous for its crabs, I decide that I'd better try some, despite the fact that the last time I ate crabmeat anywhere I didn't find it particularly pleasant. I'm in the company of omnivores, I figure, what the heck. It turns out to be a good choice — the crab cakes are utterly wonderful, and I become an instant convert to cooked crustacean.
The Strand is a fun place, a complete madhouse with friendly staff and a pleasant atmosphere. It feels rather like wandering into the family dining room (with handily placed computers and a darn good espresso machine), swapping smart remarks with whichever brother or sister happens to be guarding the food at that moment in the chaos of mealtime, and just incidentally leaving some money behind. Old Cambridge residents will understand when I say it reminded me strongly of Waffles. Those who don't understand… what you have missed!
In the end, I don't get enough time to do any serious touristing before interesting programming starts. I do the usual things, and go to the usual items; go to filk concerts of people I know, for example. I also sit through the Opening Ceremony, in which the excellent musical group Pirates Royale fight a valiant but ultimately doomed action against the appalling acoustics of the main hall, helped not at all by as incompetent a bunch of sound engineers as I have ever heard. It makes me rather glad that they have not deigned to grace the filk concert hall with their presence, leaving that work to people who actually know what they're doing. Being the sort of idiot that I am, I also do another hour or so's work on the Information Desk and buy too much in the book room. There go resolutions 1 and 2, "Don't work much" and "Don't buy much." Never mind, I've still got plenty more to break later on. I haven't been rude to any Americans yet, for instance….
I return to The Strand for dinner. The staff seem a little bemused — Steve had lunched here on Tuesday, enjoyed himself and written them a good review for the first newsletter. As a result, all these strange people have walked in and demanded to be fed. They will survive. Probably. It might have been easier if they hadn't only just started doing a dinner menu the previous weekend, but what the heck. Anyway, after dinner I head back to the Omni, where the late night programming gradually descends into filk. I do discover that apparently my reputation for writing ferociously complex song arrangements has reached even these shores; at any rate it is quite amusing to sit unknown through a discussion of arrangements and how to get them (write your own, it's the only answer!). I end up in a filking room with Kate Soley-Barton, Chris Croughton, Erica Neely, Jordin Kare and a pile of other people I don't know, and end up staying until 1am. The night is yet young, but I'm in trouble…
I decide to try out the fast eateries in the Inner Harbour shopping mall that evening, and pick on a Thai food counter. The food is highly forgetable, consisting mostly of noodles in a greasy soup, and doesn't taste at all like the Thai food I get in Cambridge. The company, however, is very pleasant. I find myself chatting with a couple of people who are part of the warm-up act for Clam Chowder tomorrow, who needed somewhere to sit when all the other tables were taken. We end up talking about all sorts of bizarre things that you wouldn't normally expect to be talking about with complete strangers. No, not that sort of thing, I mean stuff like 16th century music, what Oxford is like and how it differs from Cambridge. All in all, a most relaxing time, even if the food was awful.
Afterwards, I sniff around the games room (which is heaving) and the filk (likewise). I don't stay for terribly long, though; bed is calling, and I opt for an early (ha!) night given how much sleep I didn't get last night.
Logres Weyr, for those who are interested (and also for those who aren't), is a Pern writing group cum fan club, writing about a new place set up on the Southern continent of Pern somewhat after all the ballyhoo from Anne McCaffrey's main stories has settled down. This could be a terrible idea, filled with sweetness, light, and more saccharine than the stomach can comfortably imagine. Fortunately Holly and Smitty, being the storyzine and continuity editors respectively, are evil, evil women and set the place up with one leader who is a control freak and another who is effectively Dave from Drop The Dead Donkey. They also firmly believe that one ought to be cruel to one's characters, and lose few opportunities to suggest plot lines to poor, innocent writers that make perfect sense at the time, but are none the less extremely silly.
Anyway, back in Baltimore, in the allegedly real world, nothing much happens during the day. I do get put on a panel with Decadent Dave Clement, Mary Creasey an Steve Brinich on the state of filk around the world, but that isn't terribly well attended. Besides, I have to talk about filking in Europe, and I really haven't got much of a clue about what goes on in Germany, for instance. I know several german filkers who regularly come over to the UK, but I don't know what they do at home, so to speak. Fortunately, neither does anyone else present, so I can get away with a lot of bluffing.
The evening filking is quite fun — evidently people haven't heard me that afternoon — with lots of good songs and singing, and the recitation of Mark Evanier's "How I Got An Elephant Into A TV Studio." It seems that Mark was chief staff writer on a comedy show, and rashly stated that he could get the producers to hire anything he wanted. Of course, having hired the elephant, he had to come up with a sketch to use it in…. It being that sort of evening, I haul out the Barron Knight's little ditty "Heavin' on a Jet Plane", which causes the woman next to me to corpse violently. It was a bit worrying really, I thought she was choking.
I amble the couple of blocks from the hotel over to the convention centre to discover that I've missed most of the programme items that I was interested in, and that the cloud cover makes Baltimore a gloomy and actually rather chilly place. Vaguely wishing that I'd put a long-sleeved shirt on this morning, I mooch around the place — Information doesn't need more people just yet — even taking the long hike up to the Hilton and the Omni to find out what the daytime programming there is doing. Nothing much is the answer and since I can't be bothered to find my way to the other hotels where the fan lounge, con suite and volunteers hidey-hole have been set up, I make my way back down the hill again. Then it's time for my Passing Fancy.
Passing Fancies sounded like a really good idea at the time. I know, I know, I should say "No" more often, but this really did sound like fun. The basic idea was to stick performers (not just filkers, but anyone who wanted to do a stand-up or sit-down routine — Simo for instance, had he been there) at one point in the main hall area, just outside the dealer's "room", where they would command the attention of the people noshing away at the centre's single eating place and generally speaking entertain them. There won't be much audience feedback, but that's not what I really expect anyway. Not a bad idea, I think you'll agree, and I put myself down to do a half-hour spot of Dowland. This was all arranged long in advance, so I had plenty of time to rehearse. I didn't, but that's my problem.
Anyway, I arrive half an hour early for my slot so that I can (a) have some lunch an (b) give Erica Neely some moral support as she performs some of her filks. It is only then that it strikes me quite how horrible the setup is. There is no amplification, which is vaguely reasonable in principle; unfortunately the Food Corner has sound absorbent walls and ceilings, and the background noise levels are quite high. The acoustics in general are quite awful. Erica doesn't have the quietest of voices (though she no Julia Eklar), but she is completely inaudible if you sit more than two tables away from the front.
Annoyingly, while the con hadn't planned on using any amplification, some kindly soul had lent a small amp to the Passing Fancies corner. It wasn't much of an amp, but it was enough to let voices carry into the crowd of people eating. Unfortunately, one of the american dealers blew his top at having his ears offended by several decibels of sound (rather less than he generated himself), and con security decided to back him up rather than tell him to go take a running jump. This probably ought to be considered as a business mistake; after all, as the old adage says, "Do not anger a bard, for your name is silly and scans to Greensleeves."
I fare somewhat better than Erica, purely because I'm singing countertenor and I've been trained to project my voice. It still feels like singing in the middle of a field, which is hard work. My voice seems to pierce and carry well, and I get several compliments on my singing. Not just from friends, either, so I must have done something right. Fortunately, my guitar-playing doesn't carry all that well. This is fortunate because I'm not a classical guitarist, the songs were written for lute accompaniment anyway, and in any case all I've got is a piano reduction. I improvise my way through, hastily transposing some songs to make them playable at all, but it's hardly art.
I flee when my time is up, leaving Jordin Kare to face the indifferent hordes alone. Rank cowardice I know, but the Babylon 5 presentation sounds interesting even without JMS present. One of his assistants fronts the showing of some previews and a couple of blooper reels; she tries hard, but it's obvious that she hasn't really had time to prepare for this. It doesn't really matter, because the presentations are a lot of fun. The cast members appear to be completely crazy, and eminently capable of standing in front of the camera and going off on a complete tangent. Just seeing the Narn In Black sequence, for instance, or Londo advertising the Book of G'kar as an ideal Christmas present, is refreshingly silly. I really needed something like that after the hard work of singing.
Afterwards, it's back to the Info desk, where I put in another couple of hours of pointing out the bloody obvious and searching for information that we don't have. "Where is Registration ma'am? If you look behind you, where those big banners are that you saw when you came up the stairs… yes, that's right, the ones saying Registration…." I try to get away from the Info desk promptly at 6pm to get to what promises to be a wonderful pair of concerts: TJ & Mitchell Burnside-Clapp followed by Musical Chairs. Sadly I am detained by a woman who wants to speak to John Pomerantz about a freebie package that hasn't arrived, though privately we suspect that it has and has merely been put out without her knowing. She keeps me hanging on and hanging on, repeating the same tired old rant as I give her the same tired old responses — no, I don't know where Pomerantz is, yes he has been paged, no I can't get him here any faster, yes you are burning up my goodwill faster than an Australian bush fire. Eventually I get away from her, and make it to the concert hall nearly half an hour late. Fortunately the concerts are also running half an hour late, because no one was sufficiently obvious in telling a previous group when to stop.
The concerts are indeed wonderful. Mitch and TJ perform a number of favourites, including Mitch's "Hangar My Heart" (TJ: "I feel a bit embarrassed singing harmony on a love song to me." Mitch: "She got over it, though") and the ever-popular "Falling Down on New Jersey" (an asteroid story that long predates this last year's rash of films) and "Lullaby for a Weary World." It helps considerably that they are excellent singers and musicians, and that for the last songs Musical Chairs join them to fill out the harmonies — they are a female vocal trio, and also excellent. In their own slot, Musical Chairs put us on an emotional rollercoaster, varying the pace from the light and fluffy "Mr Coffee" to the heart-wrenching "Cranes Over Hiroshima", and picking up the mood again at the end with a quick verse of "A Grazing Mace." Linda is fluent in American Sign Language, and as usual several songs are accompanied by signing. This time she includes "Falling Down", standing behind Mitch as she signs it, and almost causes him to corpse. Fortunately for him, Australians are made of sterner stuff than that.
I have to leave rather quickly after that, missing Leslie Fish's second concert, since Kate Soley-Barton and I have to rehearse at some point before our concert the following morning. Since there is both a major pop concert and a ball-game on in Baltimore tonight, I deduce (correctly) that the major eating places will be packed out, and therefore I seek the sanctuary of The Strand. It serves nobly as ever. Then after a fast rehearsal I decide that I really can't be bothered to go to the Masquerade. Instead I head up to the games rooms in the Hilton to find out what an odd-sounding time travel RPG is all about. It's not bad at all, it turns out, and I take part in the play-test idly considering how to convert it to work under my favourites systems. Since it's well past 1am when we finish, I'm not nearly as inventive as I ought to be in the final time combat, most of which revolves around finding out what someone else knows to have happened and changing their reality by preventing it from happening that way. No filking for me tonight, I fear.
Not much happens in the morning. The convention is clearly winding down, and four days of partying are beginning to tell on people. Naturally Kate and I consider that the high point is our concert at midday, which goes well. We actually run fast enough to stick a couple of extra songs in despite starting late, and when we finish someone presents us both with flowers! So ghasted is my flabber that I completely forget to retrieve a songbook from Kate. Oh well, at least I left it with someone who will be going back to Britain!
After the concert, I head over to the Information Desk — not to work this time, but because Melanie has asked us to foregather with dire warnings of what will happen if we don't. What will happen is actually that we wouldn't get any of the chocolates that Melanie distributes to the staff, which are very pleasant and give a chance to unwind together. We proceed to hang around, tear down the desk and keep answering questions despite the fact that all our pieces of paper have been tidied up. Convention over, go home, go home!
I finally get over to the Wharf Rat for a late lunch. This is an English-style pub with its own brewery, just over the road from the convention centre, which serves reasonable food and fine (if cold) beers. The only reason that I haven't been before is that the place is usually heaving with fans by the time that I poke my head in, and I make a mental note to come back later and sample more of the beers.
I spend the rest of the afternoon collecting my gopher bag, sampling more beer, reading and hanging around with Smitty, Holly and Judith. Well, OK, mostly I'm avoiding doing any work on the teardown. Successfully. In the evening we all go out to the restaurant next door to the hotel for that most American of meals, the curry. Despite my forebodings this is actually very good quality, even if the choice of curries is nothing like as wide as you would get in Britain. My Rogan Josh is very tender, if not terribly hot.
During the meal, I discover that the girls did go to the Masquerade last night. They were, it seems, significantly underimpressed. Other sources have commented with delight on the half dozen or so truly excellent costumes and sets that were there, but it seems that these didn't appear until the very end. The girls lasted until contestant 45 before deciding that this was boring and giving up, no decent costumes having yet appeared. It was possible that some had, but merely couldn't be seen because the tech team failed to get the lights up. In fact, it seemed to be the case that you could have the contestant on stage with lights but no sound, or contestant and sound with no lights, or even on occasion lights and sound but no contestant, but getting all three together seemed to be well beyond the competence of the techies.
Proceedings were not helped by the MC, who was dressed in a vampire costume and leapt in every time there was a break of more than five seconds (which was most of the time, given that the techies couldn't get it together) to tell another bad vampire joke. Apparently he had gone out and found a website full of bad vampire jokes, just to be fully stocked up for the occasion. These weren't good bad vampire jokes either, they were just bad jokes that carried on well past the point where they might have once been funny, if you were generous. At one point when Mr Vampire started, Smitty heard a leaden voice behind her say "Oh God, I've heard this one before. It's long." A long time later a weak punchline arrived, and while the audience laughed and applauded and generally gave thanks for surviving another one, Leaden Voice said quietly "No, wait, it carries on." And it did. For a long time.
Even this was not the crowning inglory of proceedings, though. Right at the beginning, the masquerade prizes were brought out on a table to be shown to the audience. They were well worth admiring, apparently, being glass trophies etched to perfection by Michael Whelan. As the camera zoomed in to get a good close-up, Mr Vampire walked round behind the table and discovered that the edge of the stage wasn't where he thought it was. As he toppled off, he grasped for anything to support himself with, and found the table. It and the glassware followed him, with a very musical tinkling sound. Thus is was that the prizes became do-it-yourself Michael Whelan glassware kits.
It takes me a little while to digest this story, not to mention the meal. The girls, however want to rush over the road to The Strand to give Josh the waiter a surprise present. He has apparently decided that they are completely mad, and the feeling is mutual, so they decided that they had to leave him something to remember them by. We compromise, and waddle over. Sadly, it seems that Josh left a quarter of an hour ago, so we all get Chai To Go and stagger back to our rooms. Chai, which the girls are utterly addicted to, appears to be the spiced tea equivalent of drinking chocolate. I am saved from instant addiction only by the fact that I am too full to drink it comfortably, so I have to leave it for a while. It turns out to be very pleasant when cold too, and apparently that's the way that Holly is used to drinking it. The Strand being a cybercafe, they cheerfully tell me all about the Pacific Chai web site so that I can work out how to import some into the UK.
Two hours later, I've finally digested enough to feel like wandering back to the main hotels where the Dead Dog Filk is happening. Sadly some genius has put this in the same room as the Dead Dog Party, with the result that you have to yell at the top of your voice or no one can hear you. This pleases neither the filkers nor the party-goers. We try singing outside in the corridor, but the hotel staff object and move us on, so we have to colonize one end of the party room and do our best to drive everyone else out. Most of the noise is provided by myself, Mitch, T.J., filk organiser Harold Feld and Kate, which at least makes for some interesting harmonies. It's fun, if unsatisfyingly hard work, but at least we do prove beyond all reasonable doubt that you can sing anything you want to Alice's Restaurant.
With Smitty and co heading back to Holly's home in Boston, I'm on my own again in tourist mode. I decide to visit the Baltimore Aquarium, which I'm assured is great. It is. I spend hours walking round the smallish but tightly packed tanks, pools and displays, admiring the dolphin show and taking pictures of rays and sharks. Like other sea-life centres I have seen, they strongly believe in educating their visitors, and piles of information are always available on everything you can see. Oddly for an aquarium, they also have an interesting walk-through Tropical Rain-Forest section, where I admire a particularly splendid scarlet ibis, and an exhibition of venomous beasties that I admire rather less. I still hate spiders, even if have managed to suppress the urge to kill all of them on sight.
Somewhat to my surprise I find that it's mid-afternoon, so I grab a bagel for lunch and decide to sample a few more beers from the Wharf Rat. They are good. And woe is me, it begins to rain heavily so I have to stay in and sample some more. They are good too. Baltimore doesn't seem to do things by halves; when it rains it really rains, enough to have you soaked to the skin the moment you step outside. They don't do beer by halves either — well, they probably would if you asked — so I enjoy myself. The time spent not drinking is divided between chatting with the locals, who are most amused with my "Email of the Species" T-shirt, and tapping in the start of a story that Smitty suggested, evil woman that she is. I end up writing most of the thing in Baltimore, then waiting three months to finish off the last couple of paragraphs. Much like this diary, really.
By about half-past six the rain lets up enough to allow me to wobble unsteadily back to The Strand, who feed me good food and hot chai. Overcome by all this — well, mostly by the feeling that I am completely full — I go to bed. Night life? Me? Ha!
Following George the Chef's advice, I trundle down to the baseball stadium to pick up a MARC train to DC. The ticket vendor takes my announcement that I am a clueless tourist a little too seriously, and sells me a ticket for a train that has already left. Not to worry, he tells me, eventually, I can take the Light Rail up to Pennsylvania Station and catch a train to DC there on the same ticket. OK, so apparently RailTrack information services can get worse. Now all I have to do is to find the right Light Rail train… which of course I don't. After standing for a while on the wrong platform, I find that Penn is on a branch from the main line, that the train didn't indicate where it was going, and that for once the driver failed to announce at the previous stop where the next stop would be. Presumably it was obvious, for some definition of 'obvious' that doesn't include having only one possibility. I overshoot, catch the next train back and walk from Mt Pleasant, this being on the whole the easiest way to get to Penn Station that I can see. The net effect is that I leave Baltimore over an hour after I first tried. I begin to wonder if there are any similarities to be drawn with The Village.
Then, of course, I am presented with the ultimate idiocy of privatisation. I get on the first train at Penn for Washington. Unfortunately it's an AmTrak, and my ticket is for the local MARC. That means that I have to get off at the next station (Baltimore-Washington International Airport as it happens) and wait another hour for the next MARC train to wend its weary way along the line. Suffice it to say that I am underimpressed with US train services. Having to sit facing the wrong way because all the other seats in my carriage are taken doesn't improve my temper any.
Washington, when I finally get there, is well worth seeing. Unfortunately a lot of other people seem to agree with me, which makes the queues for some of the sites a little excessive. The next unbooked entry ticket to the Washington Monument, for instance, isn't until 9:30pm (it now being around 1pm), so I content myself with viewing it from a distance. I then wander down the Mall, commenting quietly on the very poor state of the grass, and try out the Air and Space Museum. This is much better, being (a) free and (b) not (quite) crowded to extinction. Some of the exhibits are quite interesting, although it has to be said that some tell me rather less than I already know about the subject. Oh, and the queues for the restaurant and cafe are horrendous. Still, it's nice to know that so many people are taking an interest in the history and projected future of aviation and astrogation. Says he, naively.
Anyway, continuing on I have a good long look at the Capitol buildings — from the outside, since even the unguided tour queues look several hours long. I briefly consider joining up with a pair of rollerbladers in the vain hope of finding somewhere that will let any of us in in less than an hour, but decide instead to amble slowly back to Union Station and just soak in the atmosphere. This turns out to be a great blessing, as I discover the Capitol City Brewing Company. They do a pleasant variety of beers, mostly lagers and wheat beers, but also a porter and "St Adrian's Alt", which would pass for English were it not so cold.
On the whole, it's a good thing that they have to throw me out to make room for a private party. On the one hand, I didn't think I was that large all on my own. On the other, at least I make a train at a plausible hour. On getting back to Baltimore (now being aware that only MARCs are any good for me), I decide to check out the whinging of some convention members by walking back from the station. It's a fair old way, not something that I'd do with a bag of books and a guitar but not utterly ridiculous. At least I build up a good appetite by the time I get back to The Strand — why yes, I do like the place, why do you ask?
Anyway, I make my slow way back and do one last tour of the Inner Harbour shopping places. I finally succumb to the temptation of the Fudge Counter, but at least I promise myself that I won't touch any of it until I get back to the UK. Hopefully I'll manage to pack it somewhere where it won't squidge out over everything — better leave my new socks still in their wrappers.
Finally I head back to The Strand for one last lunch. Josh gives me the Duck-on-a-Stick as my place marker, so I promptly stick it down the back of my shirt. Well how else am I supposed to carry it? "You're weird," he tell me. High praise indeed.
I am just about to leave, typing up my diary entries, when the new chairs for the bar arrive. High wooden swivel chairs with backs to them, very stylish. Everyone pitches in to get the chairs in place and shuffle the tables a bit further away, and somewhat to my surprise I find myself installed at the bar with a complementary beer. "Come and be our first customer at the bar." Gosh, another fannish first. The beer in question is an Oregon Nut Brown, so I'm not objecting, but I do have to be off all too soon to make it to the airport on time.
The taxi fare to BWI is nicely calculated to remove all my remaining money. It actually leaves me with a whole dollar to spare, which isn't really enough to do anything with. At least I'll have plenty to keep me busy in the hour and a half wait before I can board the plane. Now if only the departure board was visible from any of the seating!
A little while later, Jan van 't Ent turns up, and we chat. It takes a little while to work out that we really are on different flights despite having to use the same departure area. I'm a little suspicious myself, since the last time I was in the States for a worldcon I met Barbara Mascetti in the departure area, we got onto different flights and then caught the same tube train back in London. Is another honoured tradition about to be started? Jan assures me that he is not going to London, not unless something goes very wrong with his flight.
My flight is straightforward, at any rate. Overnight, over the Atlantic. What could be better? Well, almost anything if like me you cannot sleep in airplane seats. They are comfy enough, but fundamentally not horizontal, that's the problem. The result is that I sit there, trying not to disturb the lady sitting next to me, getting more tired (not sleepy) and more grumpy as the entertainment gets more inane (why spend money on something that no one is watching).
Despite that, I'm actually quite alert when we finally land. And Jan is nowhere in sight.