Rennie road trips

Gotta say, I think rennies must have the best road trip stories. Even if we haven't gotten on the road yet! Larry and I have been working for several weeks without break in mid-ninety-something degree weather and we are about whupped. This vagabond traveling makes for great campfire stories, but sure is tough when it's happening.

Last summer, if you remember, we bought us a big trailer. This spring we bought us a big truck to pull our big trailer. The Tennessee Renaissance Festival was suppose to finance the putting together and fixing up stuff, but because of the massive flooding and the rain in Tennessee, the faire made the budget a bit tighter. But that really isn't the problem. It's time.

Time is what Larry doesn't have. At his age, it is just difficult to be crawling around under a truck fixing things, picking up and pushing things. It takes longer - so it seems - to do things. When you are 30 or 35 years old, hell, even 45 or 50 years old, a person still has a good measure of strength and endurance. Larry celebrated - if you call it that - his 71st birthday a week ago today.

But I think it isn't even that. This truck IS a good truck, but every day it seems Larry finds another thing that needs fixing before we can put it on the road hauling a 42 foot trailer.

First we had to take off all the lettering, which was my job, and clean it and then paint on "Non-Commercial For Recreational Use Only" to help get past the DOT. Both Texas and Colorado DOT told us that is what we need to have in order to not be pulled over. And the truck is a class 4-6 and under the 26,000 lb weight limit for CDL, so I think we will be cool there, but there is always the occasional trooper that has to check things out. I hope there will never be a blog about that.

Then I put in some carpet and carpet padding (not in that order!). All the while Larry is finishing up a few basics in the trailer - mostly the pony stall. Then he has to drill through 3/4" steel and mount the ball for the gooseneck, and put on a sheet of plywood for a makeshift 'bed' behind the cab. Then he had to fix the brake lights on the truck. Before all that he had to put the seats back in the truck and fix the air lines. I had the fun of getting under the truck to put on the washers and nuts. Got to know my drive line real good there.

Somewhere in there I put on some limo tint on the back window of both the big rig and the pickup. Helps keep the heat down in the cabs as we head west. The big truck doesn't have any A/C, so Larry will have to drive with the windows down, but once we get to Amarillo it will be better. Less humidity but the weather is forcasting 100 degree days up in the Texas panhandle for the next couple of days. As we are also hauling some livestock (our two ponys, which you can read about on my other blog Hoofbeats), we are seriously considering doing some driving at night.

At one point Larry fires up the truck to move it, and the brakes are stuck...that took nearly a day to unfreeze. Today he finally hooks the truck to the trailer for the first time and spent nearly an hour fixing the wiring on the pigtail because the turn signal wires were switched. Oh yea, he had already had to correct them when he fixed the brake lights earlier, because he had the wires backwards. When you turned on the left blinker the front left and the right rear would go off and visa versa. Once he got the truck blinkers all in sync, the trailer lights were switched! Larry was smart enough to put in a terminal fuse block on the trailer wires, so it was easier to work with. For anyone who has tried to wire a trailer pigtail and get all the right wires matched up with the correct wires on your truck, you know what a headache THAT can be. In fact, when we picked up the trailer last August in Hobbs, NM, it took Larry and two others all day long to try and get turn signals and brake lights working correctly......and never did.

So Larry pulls the trailer out and is going to run it down to Dave's Country Store for a test run, see how it feels. Larry doesn't stop at Dave's because Larry doesn't have brakes. Uh oh......

Another job. It is obvious we aren't leaving in the morning. I am beginning to think I have done something bad to someone and it's my karma to keep staying here on the Texas Gulf Coast in June. Hot. Humid. Sticky. Mosquitos. This is one t-shirt a day weather.

Trip number 582 to the NAPA parts store. More calls to the local International Truck place with questions. It is a air brake canister. Good news, it is on sale this month for only $48. Beats the $87 International wanted.

And all this before we even pull out of the driveway. Larry won't get his CB put in either. One of these days I will find that 5 page story that the late Bear wrote about how it took him 2 weeks to get from the Colorado Renaissance Festival to the Michigan Renaissance Festival. Ever rennie has a road story.

Bi-annual moving

Packing up the shop is always a challenge. After doing this at least twice a year for the past, oh, 18 years, you would think I have a system down. Not so! This is because we don't always have the same truck or trailer to work with. And this spring is challenging because I gave a lot of my tupperwares to Kevin. Larry's oldest son Kevin, came to live with us for a while after Larry had triple by-pass heart surgery on March 17, 2009, and Kevin left back in January. He packed a bunch of stuff and didn't have enough weatherproof tupperwares to put it all in, so I said "Here, use these, I'll get some more later" Did I? What do you think?

This year, as well, we are packing different things. I have decided to persue my childhood dream of drawing horses, so I am trying to pack up an artist studio as well as all the things that go with Crystal Mountain. Crystal Mountain usually just consists of lot of large jugs of oils, a box or two of punks, and 30 shoebox size plastic boxes of made incense, jewelry making stuff (small boxes), and various shipping and packing things.

This year, we have a BIG trailer to put it all in!

We also got ourselves a BIG truck to pull it with!

These are old pictures. The picture of the trailer was taken somewhere near Carls Corner in New Mexico last July on our way back to Colordo from buying it. It now has a bunch of windows and Larry has stripped out the inside and is rebuilding it. I will probably get pictures of that in the ensuing weeks. The picture of the truck is also right after we bought it, before we had the bent frame fixed. We shortened the frame and we've taken off the lettering. Eventually we will pimp it out! But we love projects. Just wish we had more energy and more hours in a day to work (without the 90+ degress thank you very much).

And that is where Erika comes in. To help with the shows and with Crystal Mountain in general, so Larry can retire and do what he wants to do, and so I can have more time to paint horses. We thought Misty would be the one to step in, but that was not ment to be. Erika has been waiting and working in the wings for 10+ years, and she is ready. But Erika has lost her internet connection this past week or so, so it looks like she will be catching up on her stories on this blog after she gets to Colorado. She is leaving in the morning for the final weekend of Tennessee, with a 40-50% chance of thunderstorms all weekend. If she can make it through this, she can make it through anything.

Best of luck, Erika.

The Mad Rush of Spring

I've been waiting for Erika to post her Tennessee adventures, but she is having problems with her internet access, so I guess it's up to me. Erika has been pretty busy at home during the week, but she says the weekends are her escapes from the responsibilites at home. I understand that. That is why renaissance festivals are so popular, even when times are tough. A chance to escape the everyday, to get away from CNN, or FOX, to forget the partisan name calling, the oil spills.

Erika hasn't had a chance to talk about her first weekend excitement. Of course the show was shut down all weekend, and she had worked her butt off getting ready for.......................................................................................nothing.

She spent the whole weekend in her motel room. Saturday evening she went to the closest Walmart for some mud boots, not knowing that the show wasn't even going to open the next day, got stuck dead in the traffic on I-24 for a while watching the water rise ever more. Sunday she said she was fine, she had her bottle of vodka and the tv and she was sittin' pretty!

She will get back online soon, and once in Colorado she will have plenty of time to talk about Tennessee as well as Colorado. Erika has never been to Colorado so Larry and I are looking forward to showing her all the high points (no pun intended). She is calling herself 'Gypsy-in-training'!

Meanwhile I have been busy trying to get everything ready to go. I've bbeen cleaning a extra set of display bottles so Larry and I can bring Crystal Mountain back to some of the little mountain shows we were attending before we got into the Colorado Renaissance Festival. But I've gone through an entire case of incense punks (10,000) in just 3 weeks - that's a lot of incense orders! And a lot of other errands, chores, distractions - you name it. So what am I doing sitting here typing a blog? So much to do, so little time....

We are looking to leave for Colorado next Tuesday, we won't know if we will be ready or not, but I guess we will load up and go in some stage of preparedness or not. Seems like ages ago since we've been there and I am SO looking forward to it! Not sure if I'll get another blog in before then, but I will get one in before the show starts.

Geez, I hope I don't forget anything.

Tennessee Renaissance Festival

The Tennessee Renaissance Festival started on May 1, 2010. Unfortuately mother nature was hitting us with a massive flood that Tennessee hasnt seen in over 100 years. The faire opened for 2 hours on Saturday, May 1 but the rains keep coming but not the customers, so the faire closed down and never reopened the first weekend. I was fortuate to have a hotel room where i spent the whole weekend high and dry til the roads opened up. After billions of dollars of damage the previous weekend, we had great weather for the second weekend a huge happy crowd gathered and there seem to be no signs that there was a massive flood the weekend before.
My first year on the road for Crystal Mountain started with alot of excitement and Im so looking forward to more adventures on the road.

A Year In A Day

May 9, 2009.  363 days ago. It has been a long and busy year.  I know you guys aren't out there reading this, but I'm writing anyway.  A lot of goals have been achieved in various forms.  Crystal Mountain is doing well at the shows and while I know the fans are out there, we only just signed up for Facebook yesterday and the fans that are 'friending' have just amazed us.  87 in 36 hours!  So that is what prompted me to write an entry.Erika, brave Erika, is heading back to Tennessee this weekend.  She will tell us all about it after she gets back.  Officially the show started last weekend, but we won't count that, with all the flooding and all.  The show was open for a whole 2 hours of what was suppose to be a 3 day weekend.  Well THAT was a bummer!  And with no disrepect for those whose have lost so much in the flooding, because to put it mildly, they had a bummer weekend too.Melissa is learning to turn our wooden aromanecklaces and she is really getting into the lathe work.  Her creations will be presented at the Colorado Renaissance Festival this summer.Misty has moved on.  She is engaged to Charlie and her heart really lies in tattoo art, which she is persueing.  Erika is making more smoking bottles and leatherwraps, Debbie is cranking out the wirewraps and stonewraps, and Larry is still building big things.  Me, I'm just working on keeping it all centered and going forward.Can't wait to hear about Erika's weekend.

Spring....uh, summer actually

Winter has been good this year. Larry is coming along great and is back to work with a few limitations still in effect. Spring lasted the traditional 3 days here, and now it is summer. Normann was great again! Thanks everyone! Spring Pecan Street was a normal ok. Looking forward to doing Tennessee next year. Anxious to get started on Colorado and our new booth.

We bought Michael DeVeny's booth "Alchemaille". It isn't a big booth but we don't need a lot of space. or those of you who go to Colorado it is on the left as you come in the front gate just past Lloyd Studios the awesome bone carver.

Been busy working with the shows and the usual mail order and such. It was a bit busy while Larry was recuperating, but that's over with. A lot of my time has been taken up with a new business that I'm trying to get off of the ground. www.nickersandsnorts.com. I've always wanted to do horse art so I'm giving it a go. Over the next 2 years you will see more and more of Erika at Crystal Mountain.

I hate to post and run, but there isn't a lot of news. Once we get to Colorado I'll post some pictures and introduce you to our Christmas present.....

This winter has kept us busy and then this.....

One should always be prepared to go with the flow of life. Sometimes it isn't what we want, but the ability to accept what is happening and face it head on allows us to take control of it and make more choices in the results. My cancer episode. Now Larry.

Back in January Larry THOUGHT he had a hernia. For several days he tried to ignore it. It had sorta bothered him for several months but finally he went to a doctor to see if something could be done. It wasn't acting like a regular hernia so we weren't sure, but it sure hurt. While there the doctor of course wanted to run some bloodwork and Larry was cool with that because he has been wanting to know what his cholesterol was. The results weren't nice. His cholesterol was 279 and his tryglycerides were 500+. Doc says go see a cardiologist.

Cardiologist does a echocardiogram. Nothing found there. Then has Larry run a stress test. Larry does so-so on that. So Doc says he thinks larry has some blockages and sends Larry off to do a CT scan. CT scan shows what was suspected and unwelcome. Blockages. Two about 70-80%. Doc says it's Larry call to put in some stents. We think about it for a week. Larry had a heart attack in 1989 due to too much fun (cocaine induced) and had a angyoplasty done then on one artery. So he is taking this seriously. We decide to do the stents. After all, the procedure is a day surgery and only mildly invasive. We feel like we are in control and taking care of things. Kinda like keeping your oil changed regularly.

So Larry goes in for the day procedure and while in surgery the doc discovers from the cathe lab imaging that is done prior to inserting the stents that Larry was worse that they thought. Three blockages - 75%, 95% and 100%!

So the Doctor won't do stents with blockages like that and says bypass is the only thing. That was a blow. It took us a week to research that and think, but Larry decided to 'getter dun'. Better fix that now than risk a heart attack later.

So that's the story. Yep, it was like having a freight train run over you. After all, surgery on your heart is about the most invasive thing you can do. Of all the risk factors from this type of surgery the doctors said Larry had none of them. Larry is healing fast and will soon be back to normal. Already he is noticing some differences that he didn't even realize. The effects of circulation can be very subtle and you don't even notice it.

So (you've heard this before!) eat right and exercise. It is all about quality of life not quantity. And appreciate life.