Erika's Colorado Adventure

After settling in behind the booth at the Colorado Renaissance, I found my accommations extremely modern. Especially with some of the other faires, its either a tent or a hotel room. Havin an efficient apartment right behind where I work is the ULTIMATE. My drive from Alabama to Larkspur, Colorado was long but very beautiful! My co-pilot Tasha was enjoying the ride herself. She is such a great travelin companion. Makings of a good rennie dog...lol

Life is definitely interesting on the road. Im used to that everyday hustle of the corporate world. The job that is always in the same place...how boring! My first week in Colorado was one for the books in my travels. Colorado Renaissance started off on a harsh note. It was so cold and wet and instead of bringing a heater on the road I brought a fan instead. Must remember to prepare for anything on the road. Thank god I wasnt in a tent!

Last week, Larry and Kerry took me on a quided tour of absolutely beautiful scenery and a drive up to their property up in Whitehorn. It was a WOW kind of day. With the cold weather we had that weekend, the mountain tops were covered in snow. As soon as I figure out my digital camera I will post some pictures.

Its an absolutely beautiful day here today, so Im taking Kerry's advice and Im taking the day off to go on a walkabout with Tasha. Need to remember to buy batteries for the camera.

Short - REALLY short - updates

I keep telling Erika to enjoy her time in Colorado but yesterday I realized that we are working her a bit too hard. Thanks for being such a trooper Erika, but this week we will insist on you getting out and relaxing some.

Second Saturday at CRF was perfect weather. Sunny, yet with enough afternoon clouds to keep it cool. The new sales help Domonique seems like she will fit in just fine. But after hanging out at the fair longer than I intended to, I'm tired and I am off to bed!

Arrival!

Where did I just say just say blogging is like time/money? If you have money, you usually don't have time, and if you have time, you usually don't have any money. So with blogging, if I have something to write about, I don't have time to write, and if I have time to write, I don't have anything to blog about.

Our trip up here was fairly uneventful. We had one stop south of Fort Worth to replace some coolant hoses, then on our way. It was hot - for Larry mostly, as me and Shadow had A/C in the Ford. We arrived at the ranch where we are staying about 5 pm. After unloading the ponies and parking the trailer, we drove over to the faire site and unloaded the pickup.

Sunday saw about 2 more 'unloadings'. I think when I die I will have my tombstone read

"Finally Unloaded"

The booth is in amazingly good shape. There is very little to do to get ready except rearrange a few shelves to accomidate a slightly different setup in the back room. The sign out front needs a small touch up.

Everyone is there of course. If they aren't there, they are pulling in everytime I turn around. Irish is already there. Cricket is there. And Zak on the other side. Yes, this is a good booth location.

Erika drove long on Monday. She left Fort Smith Arkansas Monday morning and got into Colorado Springs about 11:15 pm. We met her at a local 7-11 and guided her to the booth. I hop in her car as we follow Larry. Tasha her pomeranian isn't very sharing with the front seat. Erika is packed to the gills and her car smells like ours! Waifs of aromas meander by with every turn!

It's only 8 miles to site. "Here ya go, Erika. See you in the morning". We don't stay long.

The next morning we all slept in. How can you not sleep well up here in the cool, dry mountain air?

Tuesday. Erika has gotten all her stuff unloaded and set up in her bedroom and even showered. She is thrilled! And it IS a very comfy bedroom for a booth. I've been in and stayed in a lot of different renn booths over the past 30 years. There are some nice apartments and then there are some no better than a cardboard box and you have to argue with the rats for sleeping space.

At one point I take Erika on a tour of the site. I just keep trudging away, up hill, down hill. At first Erika stops a few times. I'm trying to tell her that she REALLY will consider quiting smoking after this trip to Colorado. I hope so.

Lots to do. Today I will get Erika's internet connection set up so she can start talking about Tennessee and her thoughts on Colorado. That will be good, because I have a lot of catching up to to on my other blog. But now we are done traveling for a bit, I will have more time on the 'puter, assuming I don't fall asleep early like I did last night.

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.