pleasedAfter packing out of the hotel room and getting checked out today, Lisa and I had a few hours on the final day of Westercon with not a whole lot to do before the final event of the convention, the Opening Ceremonies. (Westercon 65 was running backwards, this being the end of time and all that.)
While going through the Dealers' Room for the last time, Lisa found a hat that she decided suited me well, and she bought it for me.
By Jove, it's Colonel Chinstrap!
After taking our purchases to the van, we headed off to lunch. Returning to the hotel, we hung around in the lobby chatting with folks until it was time for Opening Ceremonies.
This and the following photo aren't that great since my camera phone is not good with non-flash low-light photos. The above photo is Westercon 65's guests, with chair Bobbie DuFault at far right behind the lecturn.
After bantering with the guests, who discussed, among other things, how Westercon 65 was going to be (it was Opening Ceremonies, remember), Bobbie sort of surprised me when she called Lisa, Kuma Bear, and by implication me up on stage to talk about what had been going on with Tonopah.
travelswithkuma was called upon to make a speech, but he is a Bear of few words, so Lisa had to speak for him. She thanked Bobbie for being so nice to us regarding the Tonopah Westercon. I then briefly told people about how the breech in the timelines seems to have healed, but that there might be 27 very confused fans showing up at Sacramento next year without their luggage and wondering what year it was.(You have to read The Majestic Files to understand why.)
Finally, it was the turn of Westercon 67 chair Dave Doering and Westercon 66 co-chairs Kevin Roche and Andy Trembley to come up on stage and invite us to their respective Westercons and generally wrap things up, which they did ably.
I always hate leaving a convention and would have liked to have stayed longer, but we had a long way to travel still, so soon after the final event, Lisa and I bade farewell to Westercon and set out south for Portland.
During the final event of the convention, Chair Bobbie DuFault announced that Westercon 65 drew around 800 attendees ("warm body count") and about 1000 total members. This exceeds San Jose's count last year and may indicate something of an uptick in attendance after more than a decade of decline. The Seattle Doubletree is a little large for a convention of this size compared to the relative overcrowding of Norwescon, and therefore it was not as obvious that we had 800 people there. If we draw that or more to Sacramento next year, it's going to be even more awesome than we originally thought.