jamesq | Whipping Winds

I'd been hearing about this event from its habitués for years now and I was looking forward to heading down this year. I skipped Avacal's Investiture the week before precisely so that I wouldn't be burned out this time. And I was successful.

There wasn't much to Whipping Winds - There was a small war, some tournaments for all the martial arts (including archery, which I did OK at, but nothing special). I shot, I napped, I drank, I got all muddy in the creek. It was a basic relaxing time with cool people but nothing really stood out for me.

Billy Wilder defined a good movie as "3 good scenes, no bad scenes". Applying this to SCA events, Whipping Winds was a good event. It had 3 good 'things' and no bad 'things'. My three highlights were:

Hanging around with friends.
Splashing around in the creek with the beautiful sirens of House Fine Lame.
A whirlwind infatuation with a cute girl that was never going to go anywhere even if I'd acted on it.

As for the girl, she was probably too young for me and she had the crazy eyes. I've now returned to my normal Montengarde crushes.

The feast wasn't as good as advertised. The pig roast was good, but everything else seemed to be store-bought. It fueled the engine but that was about all that could be said about it.

All in all the event was good enough that I'm willing to try it again next year (provided I'm not sick of camping that late in the season). It wasn't as cool as I'd been led to believe but I suspect a big part of that coolness factor is the people. It takes me awhile to warm up to people so it will take me multiple iterations to get the same oomph out of this event as others.

thekillerb69 (who was not there, but is a fan) likened it to Quad War - it has a lot of firm supporters, but they support it because of the rememberance of good times past and the anticipation of good friends to come. I can certainly accept that and I look forward to the day when it's as special to me as it is to them.