Our Adventures at Syfy Bartow
We knew getting toBartow 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, wewere both still working on ‘Bartow Projects’ right up until we started packingthe car. Scratch that, my hubby was still working on projects even as westarted packing the car on Thursday.
One of our neighborssaw us trying to get a folding table and a gazebo in the car and came over tosee if he could help. Those were the big, awkward things we were trying to packfirst. 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 inthe car on Thursday, and decided we had room to take a fellow Klingon whootherwise did not have a way to get to Bartow. He showed up on Friday about 11amand helped get the rest of the stuff in the car. Then we got on the road about2:18 pm.
I’m a little bit of a nervousdriver 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 havetaken 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. About7, 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 along and hard day. People who come to the street festival can go home when theyget tired, but vendors have to unload their vehicle, pitch their gazebo, set uptheir 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 vehicleand pack everything up.
We had to do thistwice, once for MoonPhaze and once for the Klingons. Happily, my booth spacewas right next to some friends, so I had help setting up the gazebo and takingit down. And there were many Klingons there for this event, so it looked like amild case of bedlam when I dropped off my two Klingons and all the Klingonstuff we had brought, but I knew they would soon have things up and running.
I assume the Klingonshad fun. I had a great day for MoonPhaze. I had 50% more book sales than I did atthe previous best event, which was a 3-day sf convention. I was very happy.
About 3:30, theorganizers told us that rain was expected in about an hour, so if we wanted totear down and bug out, that was acceptable. Around 4, it started misting, andpeople started packing things away. By 4:30, it was raining, and the organizerscalled an end to the event. By then, most of the visitors had left. I packedall my stuff up and stored it temporarily under a store’s overhang while Iwalked 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 geteverything in, and we helped our friends in the next booth take down gazebos andload their van.
We were all cold, wetand worn out when we got in our car and headed back to the hotel. We got thereabout 7 and stopped at Mike’s Grill for supper, which included some wonderfulbeef noodle soup.
Tired as we were, wecount this event as a success!
