Estrella 2011, Good, Bad and Windy

The most important thing that you should know about my trip to the Estrella War is that I enjoyed myself. I feel this is important to mention right off the bat because I'm going to be spending most this post bitching. I enjoyed myself, but it was by no means a perfect event.

The trip to the event was, for me, fairly uneventful. For mommaquilter and oblivions, it was a bit of a comedy of errors. Their flight was delayed by two hours and then they spent 30 minutes on the ground waiting for the plane to park. We finally all hooked up in the airport and met IB and KK who came out from site to meet us. I was initially told that minyata was picking us up. I had about six text messages/status reports in to her before she let slip that she was still on site. Meanwhile, IB was texting my home number instead of my cell phone.

We took a quick 75 minute drive out to the site and proceeded to drink our faces off on fresh-squeezed lemonade and vodka. Only the grotto or othelianna could get me more drunk than that.

Wednesday I went in to Mesa to get supplies. This took about four hours. Thursday I went into Tempe to get supplies. This took five hours. Along the way I went in to the World-of-Booze, running into some fellow Avacalians. Sadly, they were out of the booze I wanted to buy, that I can't get in Canada. I did manage to buy a $15 dice bag that came with a free bottle of whisky.

Friday I once again attempted to volunteer on the archery range. I don't know why I bother - clearly the Atenveldtians are not interested in any help. Even though they desperately need better marshals. Even though the organization of the shoots is piss poor. Here's an example: The Estrella site is mostly flat scrub and hardpack surrounding a large alfalfa field. Archery is always on an edge of the site, so we're pretty much shooting on hard pack dirt. it's outdoors obviously so if you miss the target, you're going to be spending a lot of time hunting for your lost arrows behind the targets. Last year I suggested they invest in archery netting to catch mal-aimed arrows and was basically poo-pooed. In a tote in the archery area's supply/volunteer point was two large nets. They were not set up.

The shoot was fun at least. I scored on every target and didn't lose any arrows. I'm still nowhere near as good as I was a few years ago, but I did OK. Still, it was lonely being the only Avacalian archer on the site (that bothered to shoot). I did see a hottie Duchess from a neighbouring kingdom shooting. I wonder if she's single, because it would be nice to have another woman on my radar that I'm never going to ask out.

During the evenings I acted as mommaquilter's guard/retinue, which involved me being a pack mule for the most part. This was the primary reason I went to the event in the first place, so I'm glad I had managed to get this right. On the bright side, being a pack mule is rather easy.

There was a bunch of parties each night and I checked them out, sometimes by myself, and sometimes while trailing a dutiful distance behind Her Highness. I was once again struck (as I often am at large parties) by how difficult it is for me to make conversation with people. I really do need to go with someone to really enjoy it. Ideally this person would be my wife. Or I could spend a quiet romantic evening with this hypothetical wife-person, which would be better.

Hmm. I went to an odd little zone there.

I didn't do a lot of drinking this week, aside from the first night. I just didn't feel like it. I sensed that I was near a depressive incident, so I backed off on the consumption of depressants. Happily, no such incident occurred, not even close.

Today (Saturday) was to be the second day of shooting. I didn't get far into that though on account of the near-hurricane that blew through the site around noon. The wind picked up and blew so much dust and dirt onto the site that the two armies fighting the war couldn't see each other. I ran back to camp to batten down the hatches. The wind got so intense that it collapsed 1/3 of the tents on the site and blew over about 1/4 of the biffies. Event stewards where driving through the site with bullhorns telling the attendees that this would keep up for several more hours and then be followed by rain.

I did not shoot at all today.

Everyone decided to pow-wow to decide what to do. "Let's break camp and spend the night in Phoenix" I say only to have no one acknowledge this as an option. So I repeat myself (it was very windy, perhaps they hadn't heard me clearly). "You made your point the first time." they snapped.

Plan A consisted of us triaging our stuff to better handle the wind in the hopes that we could wait it out. I proceeded to start packing my stuff up as if we were going to leave site anyway. When the Baronial Pavilion's main support nearly snapped from the strain, we decided to collapse it. Canvas pavilions turn into parachutes under gale-force winds, which made this task rather "fun".

IB & JW's tent was behind the pavilion so suddenly it was in danger of collapsing, so we transferred their bedding and stuff to my tent, which was (barely) standing up to the wind better. We jammed everything else into assorted vehicles.

Finally the folks who didn't like my break-camp-and-spend-the-night-in-Phoenix idea decided that the best course would be to break camp and spend the night in Phoenix. Reasonable people are certainly entitled to change their minds when confronted with new evidence, but I find it personally irritating when they downplay my ideas in nasty little passive-aggressive ways and then jump on the idea when someone higher ranked has it.

Now we had to move everyone and everything off site - a task that is normally performed in two trips rather than one. Thankfully we had an assist from D&C and DG. We managed to get everything loaded up, but it was tight. We left site about an hour after it started to rain. The rumour mill suggested that a bunch of Kings and Queens were going to skip out on grand court tonight too.

Avacal took care of its own. Together we conquer.

I can't walk straight now - I managed to throw my back out, so that's not a great end to the event. Still, I accomplished what I set out to do. Next time, a buddy will make the event better. Next time won't be until 2013 though - I've had my fill of Estrella for now.