Orycon and the Viscount

I do not know what the spirit of a philosopher could more wish to be than a good dancer. For the dance is his ideal, also his fine art, finally also the only kind of piety he knows, his "divine service."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche

Friday, November 9, 2001
One year ago: Catching Up
Four years ago: Orycon I

Ha! My title sounds like a mysterious romance novel, I think.

In aid of getting started on our drive south to Orycon at a reasonable time, we asked Jack's daughter H---- to pack her things for the weekend and leave them on the couch. That way, we wouldn't have to come back to our place after picking her up from school. She remembered to do this, which was great.

Unfortunately, the traffic was terrible driving to Olympia, where her mom lives. We inched and crawled along, so a drive that can take about an hour took about two and a half! Jack was most put out, and even I was a bit irked at times. I try not to let things get to me, though, when there's not a thing that can be done about it. Yes, other drivers are idiots; yes, backups are mysterious and have no visible cause -- I try and take a buddhist attitude and go with the flow.

As we were driving down the gravel road to the trailer, H--- brought up the fact that she didn't have school on Monday, which we hadn't quite realized. She'd like to stay over another night. We left it that we'd call if we decided to take an extra day and see the Washington Coast or something.

Things improved once we were past Olympia, though of course by this time it was dark and raining. Jack was further put upon when I and the cashier messed up his order at Jack in the Box -- they left the mayonnaise off (good!) but didn't add the ketchup and mustard. I received a different sandwich than I'd ordered, but the bacon cheeseburger was good enough.

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My only concern was that we didn't really have a reservation at the Oxford Suites at Jantzen Beach in Oregon. What if they were sold out? Turned out that they only had "Executive" suites left, but that was ok by us. The woman at the desk had a few difficulties taking care of the cash deposit (needed because we paid in cash) but finally got it sorted. She gave me a special key to the safety deposit box, where the envelope with my cash would reside until we checked out.

We'd packed the ice chest (but didn't put ice in it) with sodas, bread, peanut butter, and honey. So we brought in our stuff, stocked the fridge, then drove over to the Doubletree Inn where the convention was actually happening.

We picked up our badges, no problem, and checked out a few things (and reading email at the very fine Internet room). We met Jane and Luke in the hall, and talked about them possibly joining us in our Leonid-viewing trip next week. That would be great! I'd made plans to go out dancing tonight, so I left Jack to party on, and drove to the Viscount Ballroom. (Don't say Viss-count, say Vie-count.) This is a venue that I'd heard a lot about but had never visited before. It's an older building, on Burnside, that's been fixed up tastefully. I didn't have too much trouble finding it. Plus, I'd put on my dancing gear (a rayon batik baby-doll dress) before leaving Seattle.

The most amusing thing about my coming out to dance in Portland this evening: someone on the Portland swing dance mailing list had sent a message about how, since this evening was supposed to be a very crowded one, the "better" dancers should make a point of dancing upstairs on another dance floor. This caused a bunch of feathers to fly, of course. The elitism vs. inclusion topic is a perennial debate in all social dance scenes, and is a special case of the general "clique" vs "group-of-friends" issue in any social group. I teased some of the dance buddies I met about it.

The evening was a lot of fun! Casey MacGill and the Spirits of Rhythm were the band, and sounded very good. I danced upstairs and down, with some folks I already knew, and some I'd never seen before. (You can be surprised asking partners at random; those who look like they know what they are doing when standing beside the dance floor may be quite at a loss when actually dancing.)

Tonight happened to be Scott Larson's birthday, whom I'd met online but not in person before. Despite my shyness, I did manage to go out in the circle for his birthday dance.

I stayed until the end, then walked the few blocks to my car. For some reason I couldn't find the entrance ramp to the freeway, and the signs sent me on a wild goose chase, crossing the river twice! before actually getting on the highway. Surely there was a better way but I didn't see it. I had the mapblast map from their webpage, but it doesn't get very clear about on- and off-ramps.

Jack was still out when I returned to the hotel, after a stop at the nearby grocery store, but I decided not to go out to try to find him. I turned on the TV and cosied up in bed.

Turned out that Jack didn't get back until four in the morning!