The Berkshires, June 2009
A fairly limited-view set of pix; several other collections are linked at the LJ community.
[Small images here link to larger ones like you'd expect]
And it was gorgeous by the time we arrived at the site.
Only a few minor spits of rain hampered the weekend in general. |
Reaching the mountaintop compound was not without its little
misadventures, however. That same steep section of the approach road
noted in '08 was still rather moist, and
I was loaded heavy with plenty of pressure in the tires and most of the
weight in the rear. Not exactly set up for effective sand-squirting. So
the pitch gave me more trouble than last year -- this time I couldn't get
up it at all, as I'd reach a certain point and the front wheels just
started spinning no matter how delicately I tried to feather the go-pedal.
The answer was to unload half the stuff at the sharp turn before the steep section, after which I managed to claw my way up over the hump and continue on, unload what I had and go back down for the rest. | |
Another palliative would likely have been letting lots of air out of the
front tires to give them a big squashy footprint. In fact we did this
on someone else's Prius later in the weekend, sort of as an experiment,
and that made the difference. Note, however, that sand/gravel is really
the ONLY circumstance in which softer tires generally give more traction.
Everywhere else, they want to be at sidewall or better.
[I have no idea where the anomalous breadcrumb track above the actual path taken came from. A gamma-ray burst from the planet Mongo or something, same thing that causes unintended acceleration in Toyotas.] |
The van, with rear wheel drive and a serious Tetris-job of heavyish *stuff* packed in over the business end, had no trouble at all. |
This is a three-cylinder *diesel* rig, and thus vibrates *a lot*. It is, however, quite efficient as these things go. |
One of my personal goals was to make vehicle parking even more efficient.
With between 150 - 200 people showing up carpooling is loudly and frequently
encouraged, but even making an average over two people per vehicle that's
still a lot of cars. The clearing down the hill intended as a parking lot
isn't all that big, so some tight packing is always in order.
The first task was to go patrol the entire lot and bow-saw out all the random small cut-off tree stumps sticking up near the periphery, which came close to causing some tire damage the previous year. This was a lot of grubby work kneeling low on the ground, while getting sprinkled on by a passing shower or two, but it got done and there was no place left in the usable real estate where a car would wind up hopping over a poking-up object. This would likely make space-packing easier as I wouldn't have to guide cars around little hazards while slotting them in. |
The other objective was more and better lighting. Traditionally, people
continue arriving all of Friday night and into the wee hours of Saturday
morning, so having light all night to see where the parking entrance
is and where to park is all good especially for any first-timers. This year
I found some inordinately large compact-fluorescent lamps that draw about
65 watts but throw light claimed as equivalent to 300W incandescent, and
since this area is far enough from the main generator that running power
down to it is somewhat infeasible, it all needs to run off portable sources.
This was an early deployment experiment into what I would later term redneck outdoor lighting, the investigation and expansion of which proved very useful at other events. |
The "remote" inverter, running from a deep-cycle battery in the cooler and tucked under a quick-n-dirty rain cover. With about a kilowatt-hour on tap and only a shade over 100W of load, this could run by itself all night. During the day I hauled this up-slope a short way to let it charge directly from the car's 12V system. The rest of setup involved running long cables and getting lights hung high enough in various trees to throw across large areas. Some very minimal branch trimming was needed to prevent leaves from shading the key throw directions. |
The parking area wraps around a little wooded hill which is graced by this amazing big moss-covered rock. |
... pantry organization ... |
... and lots of food prep, far into the night. And of course in the meantime, plenty of people showing up to pitch their own camps. |
Meaning that they had to come up to the reception area, unload, and then go park. We kept either myself or a few other vehicle-clueful people on duty down at the parking area, to point people toward the best spot and the most space-efficient way to either head in or back in. Or for those uncertain about their dimensions or how to back with mirrors, offer to take the helm and do it for them. In other words, Baitcon with optional valet parking. |
By the next day, the parking area had transformed into a dense mass of cars. At the top was the little "attendant station" set up at my car, also the source for the other half of the lighting power as well as where I slept. With the next day's run of battery-recharging using the Prius as a generator, letting some of the engine heat out by jamming the hood open with a stick seemed appropriate. |
That morning I noticed that oddly, someone *else* had "watermarked" my hood with my own logo in the early dew. |
A whole lot of hair-braiding went on, in fact, including for our esteemed namesake host who actually found a little time to relax here and there. |
The silks rig returned, and people lined up for quite some time to get a little coached tryout on some of the basics. |
I took a stroll down the approach road a ways past the sharp bend, and found an old barely-readable marker for the Mass / NY state line which the site practically straddles. |
Eventually it was time for dinner back at the main compound, and everyone lined up at the serving area. |
The cooks for that round of food looked on with amusement, and a profound and satisfying sense of a job well done. |
And we ran, and then we ate. And ran and ate some more. Because when an almost-annual event has achieved an honest "20 years of ice cream", that's some serious stuff. |
People could pick a variety of activities for the remainder of the evening, perhaps just mellowing out around the fire ... |
... or contra dancing in the far pavilion. |
A delicate mist accompanied Sunday morning, painting a surreal picture of light around everything. |
My trade-show-schwag "internet society" folding chair had broken one corner fitting, and a quick attempted fix with parts from the tool shed wasn't quite working as intended. |
An amusing bit of SLR manhood-sizing. |
Despite only being equipped with a small point-n-shoot, that doesn't say I can't play Creepy Camera Guy sometimes too. |
Later on, there were some silks performances. Phiz have been been working hard on more fun duets. |
This year's big new thing seemed to be PowerRisers springy-stilts, on which several people have become quite good and more began learning this afternoon right here. |
Enough to try some really silly stuff while on them. |
With the con extending into Monday this time around, even though some
people had to get back earlier it was nice that others didn't have to
worry about packing out until the next day. I found that an easy way to
estimate how many people were still left was to go count the cars in the
parking area, and hand that number off to the cooks which let them plan
much more closely.
Departures and preliminary cleanup sort of commingled over the next day, eventually leaving the core crew to finish up. Since the bulk of that work doesn't happen until the last day, most of us decided to go out for a nice relaxing dinner down in town. |
The Abode staff was made aware of this and later in the day showed up with
a whole new span of drop wire to run in place of the old one. The "hippie
electrical crew" apparently expected to have to do this at some point
anyway, given the abuse the old drop wire had taken, but possibly not
quite this soon. It was still mildly weird that it had failed on our
watch *and* while all the electrically-clueful personnel were offsite
at dinner, but then again the gennie had been pushing substantial
zoobs through
this thing for three solid days.
They had it up and rigged by late afternoon and only needed a brief outage to cut over to the new span, and cleanup/loadout had proceeded pretty normally around all this anyway. |