Brooke has done a fantastic email about the upcoming Kohacon, and has given me permission to post it here, so here it is.

Salvete!

You might not have realised it, being neck deep in the hypnotising pages of your AACR2R, or perhaps your tawdry RDA, but

There’s a Conference!

and

It’s happening where the tricksy Hobbitses live!

Yeah, yeah, I know the lame yet understandable and valid excuses you’re about to spout about it being very, very, very far indeed as well as quite expensive. But here’s how I look at it. I am young right now at this very moment. Folks that I served committee with have since taken the West Road, so now is the best time to reward myself with the trip of a lifetime, seeing as how I have no terrible lower back pain, fake knees, heart conditions, et cetera. Also, Chris has hauled hisself to the US who knows how many times on our account, not to mention totally missed the millennial New Years programming Koha. Consider the same for Paul, and think about how bad the US will look if we don’t play nicely with the other Koha kids that swim many miles of rough choppy dolphin infested current to come and visit us every time we put on a conference.

If you know me at all, you know at least three things

1) I am painfully cheap. Some people think that it’s frugal or Foolish, but I see it as cheap.
2) I am quite stubborn and will spend a very long time indeed handling a Reference question or researching summat.
3) I can be quite squirrelly and do not generally enjoy being pent up in confined spaces, such as airplanes, for prolonged periods of time.

If I can get mahself to NZ, so can you.

Und nao, to ze point.

I finally broke down this very morning and secured passage to NZ. While trying to figure out the cheapest/fastest/best way to get there, I learnt many things. I considered just about every option – private jet, freight on a steamer, becoming an air courier, upgrading my tickets, swimming from one island to the next, et cetera. Hopefully some of these are useful to other people that haven’t yet booked their trip.

* You’re prolly gonna have to fly through Los Angeles. (LAX) That said, it was very much worth flying cheaply from the right coast to the left coast. I had daydreams about taking Amtrak at one point, but I didn’t want to super duper prolong the inevitable. So, went with Southwest from my backyard to LAX for $250 roundtrip. Be extra super duper careful when you break up travel to LA, as you’re wrestling with the dreaded International Date Line, not to mention connecting flights. Large mice have been spotted in a neighbourhood known as Disneyland about a half hour to an hour south of the city, so mind your purse and any cheese you might have on your person. In theory, you could win a sky auction from LAX to WLG for about $900, but I’ve never done it myself before, and I didn’t want to experiment this time round.
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