Vakkotaur

After last year's great Amana Colonies Renaissance Faire, jmaynard and I were looking for to going to ACRF this year. I wanted to go back and Jay wanted to see it for himself as he had to be elsewhere last year.

We won't be going this year, because there is no there to go to:

Due to the excessive recent rain and more in the forecast, the faire has been cancelled. The site is currently under 6" of water in most areas, and there is no drainage.

Not sure what we'll do with the weekend now.

I know someone took a picture or pictures of me when I was riding Captain, one of the jouster's horses, on Sunday. I'd like to get a copy of any such photos. I handed my camera to someone to take pictures of that as well and evidently they didn't take any pictures. This morning the memory card was finally read and there are no images of me riding Captain. Maybe whoever it was only pressed the "shutter" button halfway? Maybe I didn't have the camera set up right when I handed it off. I don't know.

Reading the memory card was its own little adventure. I'd have likely taken more pictures if I had been able to read the card with the laptop. I hadn't checked that until Friday night at the hotel and ran into trouble, so I was being somewhat cautious about taking pictures. I wasn't sure if the hub/card-reader or the laptop was the problem, or both. Turns out, it's both. The laptop is now having trouble reading any USB device. I'm really only waiting for Ultima Linux 8.1 to be released as stable and then I'll likely do a complete re-install, after backing up a few things so I can get things set up the way I want. But the hub/card-reader works fine with my desktop machine at home, except for properly reading CompactFlash cards. It shows up as being there, but the images all appear to be empty which makes no sense. The reader didn't work with jmaynard's Mac either. So it looks like I need to replace that. Hey, I think I might still have the receipt and there's a 90 day warranty which hasn't run out just yet. Of course, if when I get my own camera it likely will use SD cards rather than CF. Still, the reader should read everything it claims to be able to read.

We finally got the pictures from the card by using a different reader. I have a bunch of photos and a few even turned out. A bunch did not, but at least I'm not going through film and development expenses to find that out. I suppose this weekend will be spent picking which photos to show off, editing them, and getting them on the web. I probably should burn a CD or a few with that and all the large unedited pictures so I can give that to those who might desire such.

Sunday evening Bawd found her sunscreen and put it where she'd remember it, or hoped so. She jokingly asked what she'd do without me to remind her, as she had chided me for not reminding her Saturday (how was I to know, anyway?) though did mention it Sunday. So Monday morning when I figured it wasn't too early and maybe not too late I called her and wound up getting her voicemail.

Monday evening she called me and said she did remember, even though she didn't check her messages until the afternoon. I was also told things felt a bit different without me there, which is a bit of an ego boost.

That was the high point of Monday, as the rest was packing, driving, unpacking, and all the usual travel day stuff.

Mistress Bawd remarked on the very different feel of smaller faires that were reasonably well run (rather than, say, Rosenthorne - and there had to be a mention of That Mansfield Thing) and larger faires. There was general agreement that bigger is not necessarily better.

I found myself remarking that "the Iowa faires are back." That is, the feeling I had at Salisbury and Waterloo and Nishna and ARA had returned. It's not something that's easily measured. It's the effect of give-a-damn being important and not the absolute rule of make-a-buck by the organizer(s). This shows and participants are noticeably happy and it's genuine. It's not just "smile for the crowd" (cue Laugh, Clown, Laugh) and it sets up a neat positive feedback that builds on itself. Not that there is no complaint, but the downsides are dealt with and shrugged off rather than dwelt upon.

I will note that the Iowa faires have never completely left. There is Riverssance which took cues from Siouxland and there is Nodaway, both of which are faires I've heard good things about but have never (yet) been to myself.

Rob asked how ACRF compared to IRF or how the faire was for me sometime Sunday. I told him that is was like he took IRF's site and weekend (which he did) and performed a "radical suckectomy" on it. This was passed on to Gilroy and the term seems to have amused him even more than it amused me.

One thing I didn't notice, because it wasn't there, was the tired wooden poseable man figure with the sad "Blimey, this is free!" sign by it. That was always at IRF and while the poseable figure might not be bad, it wasn't maintained (some paint every few years and tightening the bolts doesn't take that much) and the sign to point out it was free just made the whole place look yet another bit cheaper. ACRF benefitted from the absence of that junk.

I arrived just a bit after opening or as it was still going on. It was odd as ACRF looked almost like IRF, but not quite. The layout was different and, I think, better. The area that had been IRF participant parking was now part of the faire site and the encampment that had been sort of off in a valley away from things was in this closer area. The vendors were a bit more spread out and the crowd felt smaller, but it was more that it was just spread out and not cramped.

I saw Minstrosity, Danza Mystique (who only had three of their groups, well four if you count Ra, there as some had various family issues to deal with) and Mistress Bawd, among others. In the afternoon foolscap001 and irpooh showed up, visiting. I hope they are there next year as Concentio Agnorum. When I asked about the different feel between IRF and ACRF, the only comparison not in ACRF's favor was there wasn't any street music performance.

No acts were scheduled in the large "pub" building, but both Minstrosity and Bawd (and others?) performed there at times. Mistress Bawd also did a bit of body painting (Bawdy painting? Except not bawdy...) with henna. I got painted and the results are still somewhat visible.

I didn't see the worst part of the day, and indeed the weekend. One of the jousters was injured when his horse went down and he wound up under it for a moment. The horse was fine, but the jouster has pins holding his ankle together for now.

The rest of the day went much better, with the only glitch I knew about being that there was no gate closer to soundly mark the end of the faire day.

Arrangements were made to have a bit of a gathering at the Colony Village restaurant near I-80. I sat near Minstrosity and Mistress Bawd, and Billie and James were a bit further away as they were evidently doing a bit of babysitting and figured the separation would be beneficial. Danza Mystique was at another table and a good time was had. It's always interesting to hear how the day went for the things I didn't see or notice. The interesting thing that I recall from Saturday night was what wasn't said. I don't recall anyone having anything bad to say about ACRF. The closest to anything bad to say were general remarks on the order of it being a first year event and having a few bugs to be worked out.

I'm omitting quite a bit from all day, really, but this what I remember now.