Pennsic 34 Land Grab

[sorrowmonkey]

Note: Some names have been deleted to protect me from the likehilood of the guilty finding themselves within. There was much that is left out, such as hollering, vexing knights before they've had their coffee, or panting in the shade of the truck. However, this is an adequate representation of the weekend.

Friday morning I got up and told work I wasn't coming in. I proceeded to spend the next three hours taking the dog to the kennel, finishing up the last of the preparations and picking up the rental truck. zohra went off to the store while I was doing some packing, so we were in good shape.

I got an excellent deal from Budget on the rental truck, about a 30% discount on both the truck's daily rate and mileage rate. For the daily rate, that wasn't a big deal, but anything times 600 miles (300 miles each way) is a lot of dinero. The truck had about 49,000 miles on it, but was a little scratched up. I was very much impressed with the quality of the contruction however, so that was cool. Overall, the truck wasn't bad, just a broken off radio antenna (what do you mean I can't get any stations) and a very loud rattle from the door to the cargo compartment. Compared to some of my U-Haul experiences, it was heaven.

It took about an hour and a half to get everything packed, mostly because I have to tie-down a lot of stuff, and I had to figure out my new ratchet straps and such. We took off at about 3:00 PM, and called baronadhemar to let him know what we were running behind, and not to hold up dinner. We had a fairly uneventful drive, and arrived at Pennsic at about 7:30 PM.

Troll was lightning fast: we were preregistered (duh), and there was only a few hundred people on site. We parked the truck, and wandered off to look for baronadhemar. That didn't take long, as the battlefield isn't that large, and was still about two-thirds empty at that point. We chilled for a while, and went up to the barn for the whole check-in thing. Check-in with the land office took all of five minutes, and then we wandered back. We grabbed a couple of chairs and chatted the evening away.

We slept in the truck, which would have been eminently comfortable if we had retrieved enough blankets from the containers. As it was, by the time we got cold, we were too tired to bother getting up for more blankets. That is stupid, I know, but an entirely honest account of what happened. The neighbors were very noisy, and there conversation was very stupid. I tried to block it out as much as possible.

In the morning, we got up and nearly walked into thorsbaby who had only recently completed his long haul from Vermont. We talked for a while, and then toddled up to the joyous pleasure that was the land grab meeting and negotiations. Our group started negotiating at around 7:00 AM, wandered up to the land and back, and we broke for the meeting at 9:00 AM. I want to make it clear that by this point, zohra had already irritated one of the spouses of the other land agents to the point where he had to go away and place himself in time-out.

The meeting was unimportant. We met with Master John Lyttleton and explained our land issues. He promised that his office would help us however they could. Nice guy, like him: good sense of humor.

We went back up to the land again. To call his a debacle is probably an understandment of the worst sort. There were a number of groups that already had signed maps before the 9:00 AM meeting. I believe that our map was signed and accepted by the land office (who were crusing our block even 5-10 minutes) at around 1:00 PM. The intervening time was not unlike two children fighting over an obnoxious chore.

Stierbach had probably the area of the block most likely to flood, and it was centered in their proposed space; amusingly, their Land Agent did not complain about it, but would explain throughly their past experiences if pressed. One of the other groups was completely unwilling to have anything to do with the space which has flooded in the past, but was perfectly willing to suggest alternative layouts that put other groups in the affected area. This rapidly disintegrated to a DEFCON 5 situation which was cleverly (or so I thought) defused by the LA from Horn & Crown's decision to go measure and record on the map the affected area. This was probably about 9:30 AM, many blocks around us are already setting up.

So, we spend about a half hour surveying the potential flooding area, and start hashing out plans to handle it. We eventually find a solution that is equally unacceptable to the affected parties and it is verbally agreed to, with some reservations. Somebody suggests that we should measure it all out, mark off the proposed areas, and then look at it again. Whoever this was, I hate you. It is now 10:00 AM.

Flash forward to around 11:30 AM. I have returned from a visit to Dragonship Haven to retrieve the Duchy's perimeter stakes to find many areas surveyed and marked, but many are being redone because they're wrong. I guessimate the locations of our land by using the existing markers for other folks land. Running around in circles and a bit of shouting later, the LA from H&C is lying down sketching out the map and double-checking land areas. We all sign the map, eagerly. The regional land deputy comes by and promised to come back with our parking passes so that we don't all have to go up to the barn. It is now 12:30 PM.

Hurry up and wait. I don't enjoy waiting in the sun in armor, for SCA bureaucracy. However, I find that waiting in the sun, in mundanes, with a bunch of angry land agents, their spice, and the already waiting members of their groups for SCA bureacracy is not much better. We got our parking passes at something like 1:00 PM. I pull the truck onto the land around 1:15.

I measured the space, and marked it down. I calculated the area, and measured again. I called up master_mr and double-checked our allotment. We were in good shape, but in a different one from any of the plans he had done up. I worked with him to make sure this would be okay, and we talked about it. So, we finally start unpacking the truck and setting stuff up. Note, it is now about 2:00 PM or 2:30 PM, and we've reached the hottest part of the day. I've never suffered like that setting up our pavilion before, but I normally do it in the morning or at night. It was awful.

Around 4:30, I think it was, we have the pavilion up, and the furniture to the point where we could move the truck out and still keep all of our stuff off the ground and out of any potential rain. I drove the truck across the Midlands space, they weren't home and it was the only way out since the alley was blocked with cars, and the corners would not accomodate a 15-foot box truck anyhow. We were going back to mundania to get some food. On the way out, we (obviously) passed the battefield. They now have four chutes backed up from troll almost all the way to the bend in Currie Road. Scary.

We found a little place, had some sandwiches. That part of Pennsylvania is not particularly exciting, but the food was good and cheap. On our way back (maybe an hour and a half or two hours later) the chutes were almost entirely empty. There was one chute with maybe six cars in it. Huzzah for the troll folks, I guess. It was amazing to me.

When we got home, parked the truck, went back to the pavilion and couldn't find zohra. It didn't take long to look at her potential route from where I had dropped her, and I deduce that she was somewhere nearby. I found her chatting with thorsbaby and we helped set up a neat pavilion and chill.

I said "hi" to vonsussen on my way to visit the showers later on, and came back to find some sort of "sheep" tile game being played. The rules are foreign to me, but they moved on to a munchkin? variant that has a combat system remarkably like Talisman. I watched them play for a while, but every was exhausted and we retired.

In the morning, we got up wandered about, had some breakfast, and (surprise!) ended up playing more of the monster game. There were still playing it when it was time to go, so I said my goodbyes and got on my way. It was not easy leaving zohra there by herself, but luckily I have all the good people there to help her out and keep an eye on things. You know who you are, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Nothing eventful on the way home, and the cats are all lovey-dovey. I had nearly a hundred messages from school to deal with, and I wanted to get this out before I forgot it all. However, I wasn't too focused to chat for a long while with osgkar on the phone, and baronessmartha on-line. Unfortunately, I need to get up at 5:00 AM tomorrow (I normally get up at 6:00 AM) to make tomorrow's schedule work, at all.

The Nissan will be fixed either tomorrow or Tuesday, and just needed a new starter. Unfortunately, with scheduling issues, I don't think I'll be able to pick it up until Tuesday anyhow, and even then, I need to secure a ride to the garage to pick it up. I'm not sure yet how that's going to work out.

Comments

Re: Wow.

[nrawling.livejournal.com]

Well, it's over with, and I think it was relatively painless compared to some of my Royal Household experiences.