things went A LOT more smoothly than… just about ANY other OCF since i have been attending…

i left at 09:00 and pulled in to the public lot (i think it’s called “Trotter’s Field”) at around 14:30, and i WALKED UP to the registration booth — there was NO waiting in line in the broiling sun for hours at a time — and the guy found my name in his registration book right away… it took MAYBE twenty minutes, total! then, while i was on the way back to my car, i realised that my car was parked in THE MIDDLE of a huge, colossal, developing, traffic FUCK-UP that it was going to take me an hour to slog through… so i decided to wait in line, and not stress about it…

the guy in the car DIRECTLY behind me, on the other hand, was definitely impatient and stressed. he kept honking his horn and yelling, as though i could have gone anywhere. the traffic-control hippie eventually went back and talked to him, but he still kept yelling until i pulled away from him, at which point he started yelling even louder, because the traffic-control hippies weren’t letting him bully his way into the line ahead of everyone else. 🤣

then i proceeded to the “full-load teddy” booth, but the second-to-last hippie before the booth said that if i wasn’t actually driving into the eight, that i didn’t need a teddy, and to just drive right on through, which i did… i very quickly found out that this was a LIE, but, by the time i found out, i was already most of the way to the stage, and the hippie that informed me of the lie wasn’t going to waste my time by sending me back for a teddy. 😉

i drove up to the stage, unloaded my gear, got the second choice of camping spots — the first one had too much undergrowth and wasn’t big enough for my tent 😢 — got my tent set up and my gear loaded in, and took my car to where the SCOFlot used to be, only to discover that they have turned the SCOFlot into camping, and the new “handicapped” lot is north miss piggy, which is across the street and back towards registration, but still not that far from where i was camped. i found the lot, and parked, with the assurance that, as long as i had a handicapped placard, that all would be well, AT LEAST until thursday, and MAYBE all weekend, but the hippie in charge of the lot wasn’t sure.

so i left my car with the assurance that, if i came back tomorrow, they would let me know whether or not i had to move it somewhere else at that time… and it turned out that i didn’t have to move it at all… and i was a little stressed about having an expired handicapped placard, but they didn’t ask, and i didn’t tell, so i was able to use the handicapped placard with no problems… and, as sasha said, it’s not as though my handicap expires when the placard expires… even though it’s not REALLY my placard to begin with… 😉

i walked back to camp and was drinking a (cold) beer, backstage at the morningwood odditorium, by 18:30, a full TWO HOURS before i was planning! 👍👍

the shows were, typically, disorganised and chaotic at first, but not bad. the band member who missed the last rehearsal at the sweat shop who said he “absolutely was going to make the dress rehearsal at the stage”, arrived after the dress rehearsal was over, but it didn’t make any difference. we put together music for a last-minute show called “Pappenspiel”, which was two older german people (from berlin) doing bizarre, clown/puppet/mask-type stuff, which went A LOT better than i expected the first time, and got progressively better every show. i forgot to pack ear plugs (they’re already on the list for next year), which was a bit of a problem friday night, but nothing i couldn’t sleep through, and there was a booth two or three down “Phun Way” from morningwood, that was giving away free narcan, free COVID tests, and free earplugs, which was a LIFE SAVER saturday night! 😎 the bassoon player and her partner tested positive for COVID saturday evening, and left, hurriedly, sunday morning, before the first show, but, somehow, we managed to adjust the show tunes to cover the fact that we were missing an instrument… and — SO FAR (fingers crossed) — there hasn’t been anybody ELSE in our crew that has tested positive since then. we took down the stage, and had all of the crew stuff mostly packed up and staged for the arrival of the truck by 21:00 sunday evening, and, once again, i sat around back “stage” at morningwood drank beer, smoked pot, and talked about The Church of Tina Chopp with a pretty young girl who is a philosophy major in college, but never heard of it before… 😈

it was UNREASONABLY hot — between 95° and 110° every day from about 10:00 until sunset, but it cooled off nicely once the sun went away… but, of course, the lack of sun at night only encouraged the mosquitos, which were RAVENOUS. the backstage area had some new bug-repeller devices that worked better than the ones we have used previously, so it wasn’t so bad backstage, but everywhere else the bugs were endemic. i went by white bird on wednesday evening, to warn them about my recent bout of diverticulitis, but the only time we actually NEEDED someone from white bird was when one of the UkeLadies had not been hydrating enough and passed out just as she was going on stage… she had to be hauled out in a moving cart, but i saw her the next day and she said she was fine. once again, i avoided the ritz — i didn’t even walk by it, because of the heat — and i only took one shower, which was 5 minutes (or “three pushes” of the knob that lets out the water) of INTENSELY cold water, which was enough… but it was not enough, and i took a LONG shower pretty much as soon as i got home… five days of unreasonably hot weather and only one shower was a little much, but it wasn’t enough to make me even THINK about not going again next year…

monday morning, i woke up around 07:30 and decided that it would be a GOOD THING to break camp and pack up BEFORE it got to be hot as hell, with the result being that i pulled out at 09:15 and arrived home at 14:35.

and now, the pictures:

i don’t know how he was handling the heat… it was 100° in the shade, and he was wearing a full-body fur-suit… i would have DIED! 😱

Varigated Meadowhawk is Sympetrum corruptum, which is an interesting binomial name, but it gets even more interesting when you realise that there is also a Sympetrum ambiguum, or “blue-faced” meadowhawk… 😉

Some Random Hippie from 2004 to 2019… then EVERYONE missed two years, because of COVID, and then i missed a FURTHER year because of COVID (😒)… then Some Random Hippie from 2023.

next year i qualify for elder status! 😉👍