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Yesterday we performed at the 2010 Pipes in the Valley Celtic festival

Last year we brought our small trebuchet with us and the show organizer specifically asked us to bring a bigger one this year.

Of course, if you’re going to have siege weapons, you should involve Romans.

Romans also make good business card holders.

They will also strip for people on hot days.

Last year we were across from the Scottish Highland Games. While interesting to watch, it was hard to compete against.
This year, we were across from the portojohns.

Maybe not a good background, but less of a distraction for an audience.

Of course the other side was the river. It’s nice to be along the river, but the 10’ drop down to the water is a bit worrying when you’re doing a roll in a sword fight or something similar.

But, it does make a good backdrop for the sword fights.

And, it gave us a good place to launch the trebuchet. To make sure we had a payload as biodegradable as possible, and safe to launch around people, one of our members mowed his lawn that morning and brought us the grass trimmings. We then put those in paper lunch bags with a bit of water and launched them out into the river.

It is a Frank powered trebuchet, and by the end of the day, my back was reasonably sore from launching grass into the river.

The bags broke apart fairly quickly in the water and only left a grass slick on top.

After a few launches into the river (and no matter what anyone tells you, we were no where near that tourist boat with it) the Hartford river police showed up on some jet skis and hovered just off shore for a while.

So, we suspended launching while they were there. After about 10 minutes the went under the bridge and down river.

Later some police on foot came up and spent a lot of time looking at it and talking on their radio to someone. We were busy with a sword show at the time, so not using it anyhow. Eventually they went away too.
I’m not sure of the legality of launching grass into a river with a trebuchet. But, I wasn’t big on discussing it with the authorities during a show.

We had no firm schedule other then the fire show at 7. So, we put on several sword shows through the day when we thought were good times.

morgan_lafaye was totally being hit on by this puppet.

I’m not sure about the guy pulling the strings, but the puppet spent a lot of time trying to get her to go have a beer.

The sword shows went well, and lots of people watched them.

But, the grass was very dry and lots of folks got grassy.

(I was surprised it was so dry only a few yards from the biggest river in New England. But, it was 10’ up...)

We’ve got a lot of folks from Connecticut these days, so it seemed appropriate for them to do a lot in the state capitol.

(I know

blue_micha doesn’t live there any more. But, she’s from there.)
And

perrin_o_ravnos, who does still live in CT, did a good job knocking my spear out of the air.

As the day wound down, we put away the swords and carried the fire equipment up to the top of the bridge for the fire show.

(I do want to say how nice it was to have lots of helpful people there this year. It made breaking down and setting up much easier.)

As with last year, we were right over the northbound lane of Interstate 91.