Coming up for air…
Sorry not to have posted anything for the past few days. It’s been a crazy 96 hours or so and we’re just getting started!
As it turned out, my snarky comments about possibly unloading at last weekend’s Green Mountain show in the middle of a Nor’easter proved to be more accurate than I really could have (should have?) predicted. Jen and I arrived in full rain gear and though it took several hours to get everything set up (the fans and the requisite electrical are probably the biggest pain), by early that evening we were staring/drooling across the table from each other over celebratory drinks at our hotel’s restaurant. Not too bad. Many thanks to all of the good folks who helped us with both setup (Jamie Paige you are my heroine, and a glutton for punishment, yet again) on Friday and take down on Sunday afternoon as well. The always enthusiastic students of the UMass Camelid Studies program were there helping any exhibitors that needed it, as they have been every year of that small but excellent show. As always they were a great credit to Steve Purdy and the program that he runs there in Amherst/Hadley. They even folded up our urine and alpaca poop soaked show mats on Sunday! Yuck. Hey Doc! How about a little extra credit, eh? I was mightily impressed. I also smelled considerably better on the 90 minute ride home than I would have otherwise.
As the 9 time organizers (along with our friends and fellow prisoners Kevin O’Leary, Deb Shields and Bob & Louise Hebeler) of the North American show, we know what it takes to put on a event like that and have it feel for the exhibitors as if it went off without a hitch. In the interest of candor, I’m not even sure that we’ve ever really pulled that off technically speaking? In any case, I digress. The fact is that as a show organizer one (read Kevin and Jen primarily at the NAAS) is always putting out small brush fires and jumping through the odd hoop whether those on the outside perceive it that way or not. The bottom line is that Brian & Bethany Cole and David & Kathleen Van Gelder ran a top shelf event last weekend and they deserve all the credit in the world. Thanks guys…
So that was last weekend. As we repacked our trailer on Sunday though for the relatively short trip home we were thinking both of having the room to fit our kids into the already crammed truck (my Godparents as it turned, out met us off of I-91 as we passed through Hartland @ 7:30 to hand off the boys and their various accoutrements), as well as keeping one eye on the upcoming Empire show which at the time was already only 5 days off. As it stands now, with a little luck we may not even need to mess with the trailer’s gooseneck cargo before early Friday morning and our departure for Syracuse. The supply of chocolate, soda, and beer is another matter of course. Regardless, in the mean time we shall enjoy a few blissful, though characteristically hectic, days and nights here at home before handing our kids back off onto their beloved surrogate grandparents Thursday PM and hitting the road yet again. Think it’ll rain on Friday?
