I went to the National Folk Festival!
Took the overnight train down to Richmond, VA from Boston. The train ride was long and boriing until about an hour before it was due at my stop. We hit someone on thye tracks. Probably suicide by train, or evolution in action. But it took hours for the police to come and do their thing, and the local coroner and so on to do their things before the train was allowed to proceed. this was, of course, on the main north south line in Virginia. Late, late, late....
Got into Richmond, and got a ride down to the site. IT was raining... Heavily. The festival site is on the banks of the James river. Two of the venues are actually on a small island in the river connected to the bank by a couple of bridges. The river was above flood stage. One more foot of water and it would be on the riverside street bisecting the site. Two more feet and the island would be noticably smaller. sic more feet would have most of the island underwater. Including the electrical substation behind one of hte stages. Fortunatley the rain tapered off, and the river crested about six inches below the level of Tredegar street. But the first two days were really wet, and muddy, and wet. Did I mention the mud? It was interesting seeing a big patch of grass on the side of a hill break loose and, sort-a, slump down.
The next few days were busy with putting out thousands of pounds of heavy power cables around the site. Literally thaousands of pounds. I haven't counted, but I guess it is something like 25 to 35 thousand pounds of cable and distros. Somewhere around 1500 pounds of regular edison extension cords. A souple hundred lights in the assorted tents. Stage lights in five of the six performance venues. ( the big stage is done by a local lighting company) A whole lot of rope lights, strings of christmas treee lights.
Side tasks included putting in hose to provide running water for the food vendors. One run was only 200 feet of garden hose. Another was something like 1700 feet of one inch PVC, through heavy brush and across the territory of a rather irritated sounding groundhog or badger. Propane fueled tent heaters for some of the backstage tents had to be set up. (We had frost one morning. Brrrr... ) I was also the telephone man. Planned runs were a 1100 foot run across the canal and along fence lines for an ISDN line for a radio station doing a live broadcast from the Ukrop stage. Another 1100 foot run to the CD sales tent for their credit card machines. Thursday evening I found out we had to run another phone line for the ATM from the bank, as their van with the satellite link was down doing service in an area that was flooded out. So friday morning I ran another 1300 feet of phone line to someplace I didn't think I'd be able to do so. *ugh*
Not enough time or hands to do everything. We were still putting stuff up on the second day of the festival, and some stuff we planned to do, never happened.
FUn time was had by our rigger, who got smacked by local stagehands twice, by 'accident'. First one broke his glasses. Second time cracked every credit card in his wallet. He requested that he be assisted by the labor guys from the local prison for the rest of the festival, and the stagehands should go put up the event fencing instead.
Trucks here to be loaded. More later.
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