40 Year Celebration

Friday:

8:30 am: Jessica and Dorothy have arrived at our house by 8:30 as requested, and we're nowhere near ready. I'm in the process of topping up the coolant on the van, which had been overheating, and Sara is running around doing the packing we didn't do the night before. I was absolutely exhausted from a week of late nights, so I had a nap after work. Sara decided (thanks hun!) that I could probably use the sleep, so she didn't wake me up for dinner and packing, and I proceeded to sleep through till morning, 12 hours later. We got up at 7:30 and started packing and getting things ready, but after an hour, we still had a long ways to go.

Sara had spent Thursday driving to Dorothy and Jessica's places to get their stuff, but it was kind of haphazardly packed in the van, so that needed to be all unloaded, and repacked, without stuff, so we could get it all in. That took a while, and to make things even more fun, it decided to rain, and even hail, while we were in the process. We had to cover everything we unloaded with tarps so that it didn't get soaked.

Around 10:30 am we finally had everything packed, and hit the road.

The drive down was fairly uneventful until Renton. We were ripping down the 405, through Renton, looking for the exit to the 167, which I missed, when I suddenly realized that we were crossing the I-5, heading west. Whoops, wrong way. Turning around didn't look feasable, as there was miles of backed up traffic heading back east on the 405, so we took a little detour, and got on the I-5 heading south, which was an alternate route to the event. But, it was not to be. Traffic on the I-5 was horribly, so we found an exit in Tacoma that would take us over to Puyalluo, which was back on the route we had planned. So, after an hour long detour, we were back on track.

We stopped in Randle at the Adams-St Hellens Family Restaurant for a delicious pork chop dinner (we all had the pork chops), and raided the market next door for food and booze. We arrived at the site around 8:30 pm, as the sun was dipping below the horizon, and had just enough time to set up two of the three tents before darkness desended, leaving us to set up the third in the dark.

The site tokens for the event are beautiful stamped coins. They're quite large, and very nicely done. Some merchants were holders for them to wear around your neck, so we bought the ones Redwolf was selling. They're nice silver rings to go around the golden tokens. I don't know what either is actually made of, so by silver and gold I just mean the color.

The first night there we were quite shocked how cold it got. There was heavy frost on the ground in the morning, which the scorching sun promply eliminated. Thankfully we all had loads and loads of blankets. Despite that, the cold did cause lack of sleep for some.

Saturday:

On Saturday, we had breadfast at the Dew Drop Inn. There, we met Phillip (pronounced very Frenchly, Philleep), the Thief of An Tir. He took our orders, which he relayed to the lackey at the back, and we chatted with him while waiting for our Uber Breakfasts. He has some very interesting stories about food, amongst other things.

Later that day, Sara talked to Silverstone, the owner of the Inn, and arranged to do some chair massage for him, Phillip, and another, in exchange for some free meals for her and I. Gotta love barter.

In the afternoon, I popped over to the archery range, while Sara was doing massage, and shot a few rounds. I wasn't feeling particularly energetic in the heat, so I just shot at a close target a bunch, and watched my score go from 11 to 18 over the course of about 6 rounds. Oh, I almost forgot. I was wearing my wonderful new bracers that I bought at the event, from Arrow Leather. I bought a hat there on Sunday too, so I don't have to steal Sara's hat any more.

In the evening, after a delicious (free!) burger at the Dew Drop Inn, I layed down for a nap while Sara did some sewing on her new dress. From 9pm until midnight, some of the merchants where having a "midnight madness" sale, so we took advantage of that to pick up a few things. Unfortunatly, the hat place was closed, so I had to wait until Sunday morning to get my hat.