peteyfrogboy

I've returned safe and sound from another Pennsic. It was a busy war this year, so hopefully I won't forget anything important. I got to take serafinalamanni to her first Pennsic, which was a lot of fun.

A week before leaving, my left ankle suddenly decided to start feeling like I'd sprained it for no good reason. Just to be safe, I made a pilgrim's staff to take with me, along with a few extras just in case. The ankle was mostly better in a few days, but it was still a bit iffy all week, so I was glad to have the stick with me. I walked around with it all war and I think it helped my feet from being as sore as usual.

I left on Friday and picked up Serafina before heading up to Richmond to crash with grinnellian2001 and jeoshua. There was a bit of a mishap on the way up when part of the roof rack broke and sent the tarp-wrapped burrito on top of the car flying off to drag on the interstate until we managed to get pulled over. Amazingly, all the pieces of the rack were still there (minus three of the rubber pads that we replaced with folded up sudoku book pages), so I rerouted the straps and put everything back up. The tarp got a lot of holes in it and a couple of the extra staves got some new beveled ends, but for the most part we were able to recover from the incident.

Saturday morning we hit the road, rendezvoused with more friends in DC, and then got on site that afternoon. We were able to get everything set up in beautiful weather and sunlight for once. I took Serafina on a short tour of some of the sights before we turned in for the night.

Sunday was mostly shopping and more sightseeing, followed by the very well attended beginners' ball in the dance tent. The floor was packed and my ankle decided it didn't like doing slips, so we bailed on dancing pretty early that night.

Monday was the start of the busy middle of my war. We went to one of Cathy's dance classes during the day, and I helped her host the "Corsets & Codpieces" 16th century ball in the evening. The party seemed to go well as far as I could tell.

Tuesday I went to an early morning class on buttons that was so-so, tried to go to a class on giornea construction that was cancelled, and then taught my men's 15th century Italian clothing class that got bumped last year. I had about 25 people there, and the response seemed pretty good, so I was happy with how that went. Later we went to the I Sebastiani show at ICOD, which was fun as usual. After that I stopped by baronessv's vigil before going to the barn for the Grand Ball. We only made it through the first set before the concrete floor and general tiredness won out and we headed back to camp.

Wednesday I started out by teaching a beginners' ECD class, and then a class on Contrapasso and Rostiboli in the afternoon. Judith asked me to help host the Ulm ball in the afternoon, which was fun once enough people showed up. I got back to camp in time to pick over the remnants of the pot luck supper before Drunken Court and Cynnabar's Got Talent. Both were highly entertaining, and I got up to recite a couple of poems for the latter half of the festivities. We did some Midnight Madness shopping after that, but I don't think we actually bought anything (we went back to buy the still-on-sale linen the next day when the lines were shorter). There was some more dancing later in the evening, but it didn't compete well with bed.

Thursday morning nobody showed up for the Almans class in the morning, so I bailed on that early. I also failed to get to any of the other dance classes I wanted to go to except a refresher on La Fia Guilemina which was fun. Instead of the morning classes we took the bus down to the lake and got a very nice tour of Casa Bardicci, which I didn't get to see in daylight last year. The 15th century ball that evening was well attended and a lot of fun.

Friday morning we got everything packed up in the cool weather, then went to watch a field battle from the top of Mt. Aislinn. After that we helped tear down the dance floor (Serafina was dubbed the "trailer babe") and then changed clothes for the first leg of the trip home. We opted to not take the turnpike on the way back, which led to a GPS-induced impromptu tour of downtown Pittsburgh and a very scenic (if longer) route back to Richmond.

This morning we got up, went out for breakfast, then drove home with less dawdling than we did going up. The car is still mostly packed, but I should be able to get everything out and start doing laundry tomorrow. For now, it's bed time!