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Back home from Maine!
Sep. 1st, 2009 05:25 pmten days later, I'm back home safe and tanned. ( Well, partly tanned, where my tshirt and work gloves were not covering me. )
First was a delayed departure from by body rebelling on my sleep deficit and I slelt thorugh my alarm clock on Saturday morning. By the time I awoke, and looked at the weather and finished packing, I decided to depart sunday morning.
Sunday I didn't oversleep my alarm clock. Got on the road aroung 9am, got up to Fyrdawgs in the late morning and partook of some fine barbaqued chicken cooked for the assembled mass, and spent an enjoyable couple of hours punching holes in paper from a distance. Midafternoon the skies opened up and washed away all the evidence. After an hour or so of socializing in the garage, decided I might as well continue on to Bangor. Thanks to Fyrdawg and his clan for inviting us up for the weekend. Hopefully next year I'll get up for the entire weekend.
Got up to Bangor Sunday evening, checked into my hotel. My roommate wasn't arriving till monday, so had the room to myself. Did have a problem with the room, (doorknob wouldn't reliably relock after entry) so had to move all my junk from one room to another after I had noticed this. Then I cut myself rather badly shaving and had to decline the dinner invitation from the rest of the festival crew.
Monday out to the site of the American Folk Festival on the Bangor Waterfront. http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Bangor,+Maine&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=48.15347,53.173828&ie=UTF8&ll=44.795305,-68.771705&spn=0.002653,0.003245&t=h&z=18&iwloc=A
Where I was one of the electricians for the festival. Working with me was Z! and the city of Bangor electrical department, who all were a joy to work with. I wish everyone was this good to work with.
Spent the rest of the week spreading out several thousand pounds of electrical cable, distribution panels, extension cords and tent lighting systems. Plus a couple thousand feet of temporary phone cable for radio stations and festival service lines. On thursday evening, I am told that I appeared on all three local TV station newscasts, and didn't have to commit any crime to do so. Just appear in colorful fall arrest harness doing stuff up on a boomlift when the TV cameraperson is looking for B-roll footage for the news report.
Friday, opening day of the festival was, as usual, a day of madness for me. Everyone is moving in and setting up and wanting their electrical power right the fark now dammit, and the lights are not on yet, and why does the breaker keep tripping when I only have five 1000 watt electric steam pans plugged in to the 20 amp outlet?!?!?! Madness.
Saturday, the skies opened up and we got an inch or two of rain. Much of the site was a muddy quagmire, but since most folks stayed home, the ground didn't get churned up too much. The rain was bad enough that the festival switched to plan B, with the open air stages being closed, and the acts rescheduled to play at the stages that are under tents. Those stayed packed, and the beer gardens did a suprising amount of business. They were, also under tents, even though one of them was at the closed main stage.
Funny thing. The festival organizers wanted to advertise to people driving by that the festival was running, so they had the stage lights on the main stage turned on, and one of the sound guys spent the day playing his IPOD over the sound system. He had his wife with him, and the two of them periodically made announcements that the festival was running on the alternate rain schedule. He had stopped at the supermarket and had bought some antifreeze to consume during this long day out in the mix tent, and it aparantly was quite a party out there at times.
But, since the main stage was planned for a live webcast by main public broadcasting, the MPBN folks dialed into their link, found music playing, and streamed it live on their website as scheduled. The sound engineer didn't find out about this till the next day, where he got some ribbing about having another entry for his resume, radio DJ.
Sunday was nice and sunny, and the crowds turned back out in force as the festival went back to normal. City of Bangor public works had road graders and dump trucks full of gravel they put down on the muddy areas and made things pretty good for the crowds. The bucket brigade collected $105 000 in donations, beating the record set last year of only $60 000. Wow.
Sunday evening we went back into overdrive taking things down and packing things back up. But I did set a personal record, I was off-site before midnight without an injury driving me off. Dwain, our TD, is one of those people who just refuses to acknowledge exhaustion, so keeps us all working long hours on the festival. Monday, got all the electrical stuff gathered back up to the operations compound, except for a few odds and ends, by lunchtime. Z! left for the airport shortly after lunch, and all the electrical stuff was essentially packed into it's boxes iby midafternoon. About 3pm, the phone service was shut off by the provider, so I pulled out the last of the phone stuff and packed that away, and disconected the ops compound power panel as pretty much the last act as electrician for the festival.
After that, spent an hour or two driving a golf cart around the site doing idiot checks for anything we forgot to pick up. I would just keep making the circuit until I was able to visit every part of the festival site and not find anything more to bring back. Twice in a row.
I was also distracted by the arrival of an 18 wheeler flatbed truck to the festival site. His load... the left crawler tread assembly for a 600 ton capacity crane. Massive. the tread assembly was large enough that it had a ladder built into it for climbing to the top of it. More parts of the crane arrived that afternoon and evening, and the next morning they had a small crane out there building the large crane. Unfortunately, they wouldn't let us get close to it so I couldn't get any pictures that were worth a damn.
Tuesday (today), checked out of the hotel and went back to the site. Made my goodbyes as the truck packing was at the stage where I had no useful input, so there was no need for me to stay. An uneventful drive back home and here I am, typing this and doing many loads of laundry.
First was a delayed departure from by body rebelling on my sleep deficit and I slelt thorugh my alarm clock on Saturday morning. By the time I awoke, and looked at the weather and finished packing, I decided to depart sunday morning.
Sunday I didn't oversleep my alarm clock. Got on the road aroung 9am, got up to Fyrdawgs in the late morning and partook of some fine barbaqued chicken cooked for the assembled mass, and spent an enjoyable couple of hours punching holes in paper from a distance. Midafternoon the skies opened up and washed away all the evidence. After an hour or so of socializing in the garage, decided I might as well continue on to Bangor. Thanks to Fyrdawg and his clan for inviting us up for the weekend. Hopefully next year I'll get up for the entire weekend.
Got up to Bangor Sunday evening, checked into my hotel. My roommate wasn't arriving till monday, so had the room to myself. Did have a problem with the room, (doorknob wouldn't reliably relock after entry) so had to move all my junk from one room to another after I had noticed this. Then I cut myself rather badly shaving and had to decline the dinner invitation from the rest of the festival crew.
Monday out to the site of the American Folk Festival on the Bangor Waterfront. http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Bangor,+Maine&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=48.15347,53.173828&ie=UTF8&ll=44.795305,-68.771705&spn=0.002653,0.003245&t=h&z=18&iwloc=A
Where I was one of the electricians for the festival. Working with me was Z! and the city of Bangor electrical department, who all were a joy to work with. I wish everyone was this good to work with.
Spent the rest of the week spreading out several thousand pounds of electrical cable, distribution panels, extension cords and tent lighting systems. Plus a couple thousand feet of temporary phone cable for radio stations and festival service lines. On thursday evening, I am told that I appeared on all three local TV station newscasts, and didn't have to commit any crime to do so. Just appear in colorful fall arrest harness doing stuff up on a boomlift when the TV cameraperson is looking for B-roll footage for the news report.
Friday, opening day of the festival was, as usual, a day of madness for me. Everyone is moving in and setting up and wanting their electrical power right the fark now dammit, and the lights are not on yet, and why does the breaker keep tripping when I only have five 1000 watt electric steam pans plugged in to the 20 amp outlet?!?!?! Madness.
Saturday, the skies opened up and we got an inch or two of rain. Much of the site was a muddy quagmire, but since most folks stayed home, the ground didn't get churned up too much. The rain was bad enough that the festival switched to plan B, with the open air stages being closed, and the acts rescheduled to play at the stages that are under tents. Those stayed packed, and the beer gardens did a suprising amount of business. They were, also under tents, even though one of them was at the closed main stage.
Funny thing. The festival organizers wanted to advertise to people driving by that the festival was running, so they had the stage lights on the main stage turned on, and one of the sound guys spent the day playing his IPOD over the sound system. He had his wife with him, and the two of them periodically made announcements that the festival was running on the alternate rain schedule. He had stopped at the supermarket and had bought some antifreeze to consume during this long day out in the mix tent, and it aparantly was quite a party out there at times.
But, since the main stage was planned for a live webcast by main public broadcasting, the MPBN folks dialed into their link, found music playing, and streamed it live on their website as scheduled. The sound engineer didn't find out about this till the next day, where he got some ribbing about having another entry for his resume, radio DJ.
Sunday was nice and sunny, and the crowds turned back out in force as the festival went back to normal. City of Bangor public works had road graders and dump trucks full of gravel they put down on the muddy areas and made things pretty good for the crowds. The bucket brigade collected $105 000 in donations, beating the record set last year of only $60 000. Wow.
Sunday evening we went back into overdrive taking things down and packing things back up. But I did set a personal record, I was off-site before midnight without an injury driving me off. Dwain, our TD, is one of those people who just refuses to acknowledge exhaustion, so keeps us all working long hours on the festival. Monday, got all the electrical stuff gathered back up to the operations compound, except for a few odds and ends, by lunchtime. Z! left for the airport shortly after lunch, and all the electrical stuff was essentially packed into it's boxes iby midafternoon. About 3pm, the phone service was shut off by the provider, so I pulled out the last of the phone stuff and packed that away, and disconected the ops compound power panel as pretty much the last act as electrician for the festival.
After that, spent an hour or two driving a golf cart around the site doing idiot checks for anything we forgot to pick up. I would just keep making the circuit until I was able to visit every part of the festival site and not find anything more to bring back. Twice in a row.
I was also distracted by the arrival of an 18 wheeler flatbed truck to the festival site. His load... the left crawler tread assembly for a 600 ton capacity crane. Massive. the tread assembly was large enough that it had a ladder built into it for climbing to the top of it. More parts of the crane arrived that afternoon and evening, and the next morning they had a small crane out there building the large crane. Unfortunately, they wouldn't let us get close to it so I couldn't get any pictures that were worth a damn.
Tuesday (today), checked out of the hotel and went back to the site. Made my goodbyes as the truck packing was at the stage where I had no useful input, so there was no need for me to stay. An uneventful drive back home and here I am, typing this and doing many loads of laundry.
