Hey, Lydy! What'cha doin' in July?

[gerisullivan]

July is an iconic month to take a summer vacation. Come to Detcon1 in Detroit. You can hang out in the fanzine lounge I'm running as we celebrate the presence of keen Detcon1 GoHs such as our Fan GoHs Bernadette Bosky, Arthur D. Hlavaty, and Kevin J. Maroney.

We can go to Comerica Park on Moon Day. It's where the Detroit Tigers play. But in this particular case, the baseball game is all but an afterthought. In an ideal world, we'd stay over and go on Monday to celebrate my 60th birthday, but the Tigers will be in Arizona that night. Still to be confirmed, but I think that means the park is closed the 21st. So Moon Day it most likely needs to be.

I've never been to a Tigers game in Detroit. To me, the Detroit Tigers exist on the radio while I'm hanging around as my brother and Daddy work on the car, whatever car they happen to be working on that summer afternoon. Earnie Harwell provides the play-by-play -- he started in 1960 and did it for 32 years, long after I'd moved away from Battle Creek, and from Michigan, too. Often I'd just wander by Daddy and Barry from time to time, doing whatever it was I did on those long summer afternoons. Other times, I'd watch and listen, fetching and handing tools or doing whatever was useful as Daddy explained how pistons worked, what the rings did, re-packed bearings, showed me a destroyed u-joint, re-gapped the spark plugs with the feeler gauges, and all sorts of other Car Guy stuff he was always doing. My favorite was the summer they welded together the A-frame and pulled the entire engine out of the 1963 Chevy Impala 9-passenger station wagon after Mom ran it out of oil and destroyed 3 pistons. Or maybe it was 5. Barry was in college by then. To this day, there's something about seeing an engine completely out of a car, held high by chains dangling from an A-frame that speaks both comfort and reassurance to me. Few people get that far into the process without having at least something of a decent idea of what they're doing. If they didn't, the engine would have slipped its chains and crushed their arms while they were removing it. Still best not to walk directly underneath it, though.

Okay, digression there, albeit a digression that leaves me thinking I may well go for the game, too. But the reason to go with YOU, lydy is to ride the carousel behind the first base area. The All Tiger Carousel! (Okay, 30 tigers and 2 chariots. Close enough.)

Yes. Really. Tigers. Tigers! An entire carousel of TIGERS ON STICKS!

There are apparently tigers all over the park, not just on the carousel.

Here's Detcon1 PR1. Please come. Because Tigers! And lots of other mighty fine times.

While the above is written to lure lydy, the sentiment applies to all. Detcon1. July 17-20, 2014. Complete with optional Tigers...on sticks!

Comments

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

I am, regrettably, in a situation where such travel is impractical. *sigh* Cons have always been fun, and I'd really like to attend one in Detroit -- I lived there for about three years, just prior to moving to Southern California, bracketed around 1942 (on Dec. 7 I walked in the rain & 12-year-old angst along Woodward Ave.) and spent a fair amount of time in the newsstand in the basement of my parents' apartment building reading the Science Fiction Prozines (& even buying a few of them).

[gerisullivan.livejournal.com]

If there's a way for that situation to become practicable and something less than impractical if not fully practical, it'd make the bestest 60th b'day prezzie EVAR and you know I'd happily see what I could do in the way of Geri-Magic to help make it happen, right? Right. Including retyping the first three paragraphs of this reply when an attempt to create a special character erased everything I'd done and put a screen full of Twitter in its place.

I wouldn't even make you co-run the Fanzine Lounge. You would, of course, be welcome to do whatever you wanted to to enjoy your time there.

Chuch Harris & compatriots demonstrated that keyboard and notepad communications can work in a variety of convention settings; I rather suspect we could come up with an enjoyable (and capable) traveling companion both ways; and I'd much prefer the real you than printing your face on a T-shirt and having people converse with you via fabric markers while I'm wearing it, though that, too, has be demonstrated to work (well, after a fashion) lo' these 22 years ago when I wore Vin¢ Clarke to MagiCon.

You & me, in Michigan, at the same time. At a convention in Detroit. Not even in the winter, though I'll be at ConFusion next weekend.....

So, hey, are there things within a fan's reach to transform that impractical into possible and worth doing? Inquiring minds, and All That Jazz....

[supergee.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the kind words. We are looking forward to seeing you there.

[fgherman.livejournal.com]

Carpool from Minneapolis?

[thirdworld.livejournal.com]

I'm seriously considering going to Detroit for Detcon1, mostly because of how many awesome folks they have on staff! Also because I'm fond of Detroit. It was the my first US city.