Setting up in the rain

[offcntr]

...is a lot like getting dressed inside a sleeping bag. You keep shifting stuff around until you find the next thing to put on.

Up at Edmonds, setting up in a drizzle. The show takes place on a baseball field, with one way in and one way out, so setup is incredibly organized. Regimented, even.

To begin with, it's divided into two-hour blocks. First in are the over-sized folks, people with trailers and so forth. Next come the south-facing booths, then north-facing booths, then all the corner booths along the main concourse. Last shift is a pick-up period for anyone who missed their time, and God help anyone who shows up with a trailer. You've got forty-five minutes, tops, to get everything unloaded and your vehicle offsite. We managed it in under thirty.

Even within this structure, there's fine-tuning. We figured there wouldn't be that many over-size, so arrived fifteen minutes before our time, got in line behind three other vendors and gave them our booth number. When they radioed ahead to volunteers on the field, they found room at our space, so pulled us out of line and sent us ahead. They do something similar at load out, necessary because the queue runs six or eight blocks at that point.

In any event, we parked in front of our spot around ten of ten, immediately set up the canopy, then I hustled in boxes of pots while Denise shifted shelves and stands. At 10:23, I was backing and filling to turn around and cut across a neighboring space to move out and make room for the next vehicle.

Setting up... well, on a dry day, we'd have put stacks of pots out front, or in the empty north-facing booths behind us while we assembled shelves. Today, everything had to stay indoors, so it was a lot like those sliding tile puzzles, or, as I said, like dressing in your sleeping bag during winter camping.

Still, aside from rain blowing on the edges, we managed to keep everything reasonably dry, and got things out and organized to the point where we could leave the rest for morning by a little after one pm, including a lunch break. Ran a few errands, gassed up the van, and had a leisurely afternoon in our hotel room, listening to someone's lonely doggie crying, down the hall.