September 5th-8th is the date.
I’ve investigated hotels and deals.
Here’s the plan.
The Doubletree hotel downtown is the big convention hotel in Spokane. It also does a room rate that can be 149.00 for four people, two queen beds.
IF just one person shows up for those 3 days, Jane and I can be nice city hosts.
If a dozen or two dozen show up we have, around that hotel: the Loof Carousel. Duck feeding: bring your own bread. Numerous restaurants within walking distance. Numerous pubs within walking distance. The gondola over the falls. The bridge across the falls. Riverfront park. Wonders of the World inside the Old Flour Mill, which is a gew-gaw shop ranging from the extravagantly expensive to the whimsical and cheap. And various places where, in that season, we can watch the water, feed the ducks, ride the Carousel, and otherwise just sit in the hotel bar or restaurant or somebody’s room and have a good time. You will also be next to the INB, which is Spokane’s live theater: sometimes they have shows. You’re pretty well on your own for booking that, because they’re sometimes Broadway Show prices and we’re not going to try to organize anything.
We’re not doing the kayak and lake cruise this year: that’s also organization and handling money and we don’t propose to do that: we have to write. BUT we will be able to entertain you (everybody on their own ticket! We can’t afford to pay for it), talk, shoot the bull, and if we have enough people with cars or can make multiple 3-passenger trips in the Prius—we can get you to our house for a backyard barbecue in pretty temperate weather, at that time in Spokane, and that won’t cost you anything. We can come and get you at the airport [we also suspect the Doubletree has a bus], meet you at the train station/bus station, and generally use the blog to help everybody coordinate: you can put the discussion in this thread.
We’re hoping to get everyone housed for as little as 38.00 each a night—if you pair up in fours and share…or 50.00 a night if you pair up in twos for the 109.00 room. Food is, well, you can hike all over that area (including a Chili’s and an Azteca next door) and eat either more expensively or far cheaper than there. There’s a very nice sports bar about a 4 block hike away.
Nothing that I can think of will be further than a 4-5 block walk, and if that’s a trial for you, we can figure some way to get you there.
So what we’re proposing is this:
If you group up and reserve rooms now, you’ve got the option to cancel them if your plans change.
We’re setting aside those 3 days. It’s the best choice we can make for our schedule. If one person shows up, we’ll still have a good time, but we really hope a lot of you can show up. If 5000 of you show up, we’re in trouble, and we’ll be contacting the local convention-throwers for helicopter assistance…
Our focus in this is getting together with you guys, as many as can make it. We want to keep it affordable for everybody if you can just get here, we want to be in a period when we can hope for comfortable weather, we want you to have plenty available to do in the area, and we’ll be there to talk, sit about, and generally have a 3-day party.
That should work for me, though I’m likely to fly in despite delays and missed flights for ShejiCon III. *bounce bounce bounce*
Eri, ReadyGuy and I will try to act as welcoming committee at hotel and terminal pick-up coordinators. Is there any role you would like to take on during the ShejiCon IV?
I will certainly help, Ready-my-sister. Nothing specific comes to mind, unless it’s ferrying folks to or from the airport. Message me at Shejidan with what you might have in mind, OK? If I need to come in a day early or stay a day later, my schedule is flexible, I just need to know so I can get those days off.
Fun, fun, fun! Oh how I dearly wish! There’s a job opening up for me in Sandpoint Idaho that I cam compete tor. If that works out, oh yeah I’m coming! Since the announcement isn’t out yet, it’ll probably be a couple of months before I know anything.
Good luck!
Thanks do much. Little anxious about the way the to things there, but we’d be much closer to a lot of my family and closer to were we want yo retire at. All ya can ti is try!
I would definitely like to come. The problem is I can’t say for sure until I get access to schedule PTO. Work won’t allow you to access more than the four months on your current schedule. We bid based on performance every four months. So it would be the last of July before I could say for sure. I would be leaving from N OKC and could take an extra body in my car.
I’ve put the dates on my calendar, and it doesn’t conflict with any other plans. Southwest flies to Spokane, so booking early enough to get the cheap fare should work. It would be a seriously long drive from Maryland. I’ll check car rentals with Budget & Enterprise; over a weekend the rates are usually reasonable. Can’t guarantee I’ll be able to make it, but I’d really like to meet everyone
If the Universe is willing, I’ll be there!
dhawktx, think it would work if we team up for the room and Spokane transportation? We would have three counting rat and I know you know someone who could be the fourth.
I haz a “WAAHH!!” All these fine people whom I only know from CC et. al. promising to be in attendance, and I will have to stand down for at least this year…
If we can make this work smoothly, maybe there will be another!
I do have a request: that we all have name badges with our names and our screen names. Perhaps we could contrive to print out our avatars to have on them. 😉
Oooh! Ooooh! I have the software that might do that, but I’d have to have everyone’s avatar, screen name, and I guess it’s our first name or do you want full names????
I’ve also got the badges and the badge holders that pin on…..
Sorry, I can’t do the engraved plastic like you see at various places of business…..
I suppose Kinko’s can print on T-shirts, but I don’t think any of the resolutions I have wouldn’t result in the “jaggies”, so perhaps buttons would be better. Let’s keep this in mind.
I think full names. But you can write them smaller, so that we can only see those when we’re talking to each other. 😉
Please place any ShejiCon IV comments up in the ShejiCon IV Planning tab (last entry on the bottom row above the Wave Without a Shore logo). Thanks