Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Norman, OK

Finally! I get to sit down and write some. Norman Medieval Faire was just awesome and everyone there was great. We've got another show under out belt that we can tell stories about, so here goes.

All that work leading up to Norman went well. We were packed and loaded about 1 pm on Thursday afternoon. Since our set up is easy, we figured we could get in anytime and be ready for opeing on Friday morning. But, as per the ol' "April showers bring May flowers" saying goes, Texas on that day had a terrific line of thunderstorms that were just stewing along I-35 from Oklahoma City to Waco. We sat and watched the Weather channel for several hours. We figured as the storms moved eastward, we could leave here and slip up along the back side of the system. Larry choose wrong this time. It seems the storms just stalled right on I-35 and kept moving northward without moving east. Finally, about 4:30 pm we decided it wasn't getting any better so we headed out. Things looked ok and just cloudy until we hit Waco. Suddenly there was this BIG BLACK wall of clouds and the rain started. Well, at least it started on us. Seems it had been pouring rain on Waco all day - we'd just got there. We headed north on I-35 in one of those god-awful walls of water where you could barely see the hood of the truck. Just about mile marker 359 it all came to a halt. Lo and behold we were in the first 50 or so cars that the Texas DOT stopped. They shut down the interstate due to 4 feet of water across the northbound side. This happened a little after 6 pm. So we sat. We listened to the CB and all the crap the truckers talked about. And we sat some more. Fortunately we had some food in the cooler in the back and our truck cab opens into the camper, so we could get comfortable. Finally, even the truckers had listened to enough of thier BS and they started shutting down the trucks and climbing into thier sleepers. It was 10:30 before the flood waters receded and they let us continue.

And that was a good start to the weekend.

We got there about 3 am and crawled into our sleeper/camper until 7 am. Storms were forcasted for the day and it didn't look good, but during the morning it was grey and cloudy, but no rain. Everyone set up and the show began. Fridays at Norman usually aren't very big. The kids came out and as most years - with or without storms - they were pretty much all gone by 2 pm. Then, about 2:30 pm they went around and anounced the fair was closing until the next day, everyone go home and get dry. Poor Larry was crashed out in the truck because he'd been up all night driving. I closed up the booth just as the rain started and got a bit wet. Me and the dog ran to the truck and jumped in. Spent the rest of the evening relaxing at the motel and watchng tornado's form and dissapate over us.

Not very encouraging.

Saturday moring dawn with the most perfect weather anyone could have asked for anywhere! The rest of the weekend just rocked, everyone came out to the fair and had a wonderful time and bought LOTS AND LOTS of stuff from everyone. we were so very busy Saturday, but I did get out and get some pictures.

Here we are....cute little vardo.

And our neighbors for many, many years, Glenda and Connie. They are such a hoot! They love our dog more that they love us.....seems every time I turned around Shadow was over at Glenda's wanting another biscite.

Cooper does some really cool woodwork. I met Cooper about 25 years ago when I went to my first renaissance festival. He is the one in the green shirt.

More pictures around the fair......


And Larry chatting ....
Larry's in the black shirt.....
Our next show is the Pecan Street Festival in Austin, Texas and on the same weekend starts the Tennessee Renaissance Festival in Arrington-Triune, Tennessee just south of Nashville. Kristen will be there for us.

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