Weekend adventures

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Yesterday was our show for the International School of Dundee. It’s an elementary school in southern CT. This was our 4th year there. The other three were in early June. This year, they decided to move it to October.
October is often clear and cool.
Yesterday was rain and wind.

Usually, it is our biggest 1 day show of the year. Most shows we do 3-4 acts and give between 20 and 30 sword lessons. Here we usually do 6 shows and last year gave more than 120 sword lessons. (At $5 each, but we split it with the school as it is a fund raiser.
This year, we did our usual 6 shows, but only got 39 sword lessons. That would be great for any other faire, but is way down for ISD.

I don’t know if it was the weather, October instead of June, the failing economy, or all of the above. But, the faire didn’t have as many customers, the kids seemed younger than previous years and they didn’t seem to stay as long.

We had to get up at 4:15 to get there in time. But, we made great time, even crossing Connecticut. So we got there about 8 and were totally set up by 9.

Our shows went well enough. I’m told people had trouble hearing us, but it was very windy.
How windy?
Three tents got uprooted and blown across the faire. One landing in the audience on top of a kid. It was the acrobatic show too. I guess it could have been worse if it hit their trapeze while they were up it, but landing on a kid was pretty bad.

We’ve lost tents to wind in the past. So, we found a few elves to hold ours down.
The picture really doesn’t do it justice as you can’t see their pointed ears. But, I think it’s great to have our tent held in place by elves. How can you beat that?

adorabrightmoon, on the right, has helped out at our faires a number of times and it is always good to see her at our shows.

By the end of the day the crowd was pretty much gone.

A few shows went on in the gymnasium, but there were only a dozen or so folks watching. We did our last fire show just outside the gym under a cement roof. There were maybe 10 people watching. But, the folks who worked the faire seemed very impressed we did our show under those conditions.

There was one point when I looked up and saw an ambulance come into the faire with siren blaring and stop near our tent. That sort of thing worries me.
It turned out a girl had been skateboarding down the hill near us and fell off.


Sadly it looked like she fractured her arm and they took her away in the ambulance. I feel sorry for her, but I’m glad it wasn’t anything with the troupe.

Folks were great helping pack up. In addition to most of our people really pitching in, as usual, we also had more help from our friendly elves.

Despite the rain and all we managed to get home by 9:30. I fell asleep almost immediately and woke up about 8 in the morning.

Today we had our dress rehearsal for the Mobile show three weeks from this weekend.
First, we had to unload the cars from all of our stuff.


We brought in “guest judges” to look at the fights. My coworker Jay and his family, and one of the students who works for my wife. We had them watch us do our fights and rate them on how they liked them.
It was good to get some unbiased eyes watching them. We see them so often it is hard to be objective.

I did break a sword while doing a fight.
It was bad because we broke one yesterday too. This one I’ve been using for several years, and I’ve always worried about it as it is very similar to the one that broke on my wife in a fight. This one wasn’t as dramatic, but I still regret it. Yesterday’s it was just the threaded tang on the sword. This was a full break.


But, it happens.

Afterwards we went out for Chinese food with folks then home.
After this weekend, I’m very glad to be home.
I doubt there will be any trouble sleeping tonight...