We knew getting to Bartow would be tiring. Neither of us have been at our best the last few weeks, so we started the weekend tired and a little overwhelmed. For one thing, we were both still working on ‘Bartow Projects’ right up until we started packing the car. Scratch that, my hubby was still working on projects even as we started packing the car on Thursday.
One of our neighbors
saw us trying to get a folding table and a gazebo in the car and came over to
see if he could help. Those were the big, awkward things we were trying to pack
first. Most everything else was smaller and lighter, and we could manage them.
But it’s nice to know we have nice neighbors.
We got most things in
the car on Thursday, and decided we had room to take a fellow Klingon who
otherwise did not have a way to get to Bartow. He showed up on Friday about 11am
and helped get the rest of the stuff in the car. Then we got on the road about
2:18 pm.
I’m a little bit of a nervous
driver these days, especially when I’m driving roads I don’t really know well,
so it was tough for me to keep my speed up near the speed limit. It should have
taken us an hour to get to our hotel in Bartow, but it actually took 1.5 hours.
We found our stuff we would need for the night and settled into our room. About
7, we walked over to Mike’s Grill for supper.
We got up about 7 on Saturday,
and went to Mike’s Grill for breakfast, because we knew it was going to be a
long and hard day. People who come to the street festival can go home when they
get tired, but vendors have to unload their vehicle, pitch their gazebo, set up
their table and get their wares displayed by 11AM, when the festival starts.
Then they are expected to man their table until 6PM, when the festival ends,
when they tear down their display, strike their tents, retrieve their vehicle
and pack everything up.
We had to do this
twice, once for MoonPhaze and once for the Klingons. Happily, my booth space
was right next to some friends, so I had help setting up the gazebo and taking
it down. And there were many Klingons there for this event, so it looked like a
mild case of bedlam when I dropped off my two Klingons and all the Klingon
stuff we had brought, but I knew they would soon have things up and running.
I assume the Klingons
had fun. I had a great day for MoonPhaze. I had 50% more book sales than I did at
the previous best event, which was a 3-day sf convention. I was very happy.
About 3:30, the
organizers told us that rain was expected in about an hour, so if we wanted to
tear down and bug out, that was acceptable. Around 4, it started misting, and
people started packing things away. By 4:30, it was raining, and the organizers
called an end to the event. By then, most of the visitors had left. I packed
all my stuff up and stored it temporarily under a store’s overhang while I
walked over to the Klingon area to get my car and load up the Klingon stuff.
Then we went back to my booth area, where our passenger repacked the car to get
everything in, and we helped our friends in the next booth take down gazebos and
load their van.
We were all cold, wet
and worn out when we got in our car and headed back to the hotel. We got there
about 7 and stopped at Mike’s Grill for supper, which included some wonderful
beef noodle soup.
Tired as we were, we
count this event as a success!
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