The Return to Fandom Fest (part 1)

You may ask yourself how I could return somewhere that I never mentioned being the first time. The reason I never mentioned Fandom Fest is that it was about two weeks before my stroke and I didn't get the chance to write anything down. Not that I didn't plan to write about it; I took copious notes and did a couple of interviews with people, mainly about a game called "Hobomancer."

The concept was brilliant, I thought. Hoboes and tramps were the one essential piece of Americana thaat hadn't had a turn in the pop culture spotlight. Cowboys and Miners are everywhere, the Hobo, not so much. The gist of the game was that hoboes were actually wizards and that the rail lines functioned like ley lines. They crisscrossed the country and where they crossed, those were places of great power.

Every player had a hobo power (for instance the ability to make a stew out of any available ingredients) and for my character I chose the ability to find random objects in his pocket.

The downside of this ability (every hobo power had to have a positive and a negative aspect) was that every time my character would put something in his pocket, had to roll a die to see if he randomly lost the item.

Anyway, I had fun, they were nice guys and I planned to write a story about their concept. I started the story a couple of different times and even had half an essay written before the show. Some vaguely inspirational drivel about Woody Guthrie and the American Spirit.

I honestly don't know if it was dreck or not because I had the stroke and lost all half a dozen drafts in my computer somewhere. I don't know where, but I lost lots of things from my computer when I went in the hospital.

For instance, I've been locked out of my web site for the past six months because I can't remember the database password.

I still have all the data, I just can't put it back on the internet because I can't figure out my own password. My father keeps telling me I should hack it, but I take internet security very personally and all of my passwords are unhackable.

(Now that I've said that, I'm hoping one of you will try to hack into my web site and prove me wrong. If you do manage to find my password, send me what it is, please.)

In 2011, Fandom Fest was disorganized and chaotic. Rooms were double booked, tables were double booked and it was so hot that the air conditioner gave out in the main exhibit hall. To complicate matters, the air conditioners for the rooms all emptied out into the main atrium, making the temperature unbearable.

Our room was on the backside of the hotel, and it would have been bearable, but our door opened on to a glass covered hallway, which functioned as a greenhouse and also had the heat from a couple of dozen air conditioners pumping hot air into it. The walkway was unbearable especially in the hot August weather.

Running to the room was not an option, but neither was walking. Even walking down a 120 degree hallway would leave you dripping sweat by the time you made to the door. If your keycard decided not to work (which it frequently did) then by the time you got in to your room you would be out of breath. The heat was a dry heat, as though you were inhaling pine trees or sitting in a redwood sauna.

As if that wasn't bad enough, the gaming track was placed by the pool, and the lifeguards, being told that the pool would be closed over the weekend, decided to shock the pool.

Shocking the pool is a process in which you dump bagged chlorine directly into the pool, raising the chlorine to ten or twenty parts per million (a good number is usually three, at the YMCA we would have to close the pool if it tested at 5 parts per million or higher.)

Kirk, the evil mustachioed maintenance man of whom I refuse to talk about in print because he seems like the bitter sort of person who would sue me over mentioning his name, shocked the pool every Friday before I taught swim lessons on Saturday morning. It wasn't pleasant and he wasn't pleasant. The rumor was that he was a germophobe, but I think he was a mean, spiteful man who hated children.

My friend Rob said he came in once while Rob was teaching a swim class and shocked the pool with children in the water. He was a mean spiteful man.

Anyway, the pool at the hotel had been shocked and you could tell there was too much chlorine in the water by looking at it. When pool water has too much chlorine it's visible in the water, and the pool at the hotel had visible chlorine.

Which isn't a problem with an outdoor pool because sunlight burns off the chlorine. But the hotel pool at Fern Valley was indoors, at the back of an atrium, with tables set up for gaming all around it. The place smelled like a chlorine leak. It made my eyes red, it was so strong.

Before chlorine was used in pools it was considered a chemical weapon. Derek Jones, guy in my father's scout troop, worked as a lifeguard at one of the Frankfort pools and caught a lungful of chlorine. It reduced his lung capacity to the point that he couldn't get in the military. He married a woman who was in the army and now he lives with her on a military base in Germany, but that's not the same thing.

Anyway, chlorine is bad, was the point, and you could tell there was too much in the pool.