Pennsic report

I had fun at Pennsic. It was relaxing -- I spent a lot of time just visiting with folks instead of doing stuff -- but I needed that.

The weather was fairly cooperative -- a couple storms, but nothing that forced us to pull down the dining flies. It was mostly sunny and dry. I got all the way to Thursday of the second week before I had to start taking my once-a-day allergy pills every 16 hours instead; last year I was having serious problems by Tuesday of the second week, and I even went home for one night just to get away from the allergens for a while. (Today I still apparently have to take the allergy pills more frequently -- residual effects, I guess. With luck, things will be back to normal tomorrow.)

We ended up breaking down the camp yesterday. I'm going to make a separate entry about that, because it had Shabbat implications that make me uncomfortable.

( some stuff I did )

( score! )

( architecture )

( mechanical woes )

Pennsic logistics and Shabbat

The final Shabbat of Pennsic poses a challenge. The event used to end informally on Sunday or Monday, but now people have to be out by mid-day Sunday so a lot of people spend Saturday packing up. (Remember, we bring and set up a lot of stuff.) This year a lot of people were packing up and leaving on Friday, which is kind of depressing. Last year I stayed through the end of Shabbat, noting the increased desolation around me, and thought about spending the final Shabbat in Pittsburgh this year (inviting some observant friends along) and then coming back Sunday to pack. It turned out that said observant friends were leaving on Friday this year to beat Shabbat, and there was some stuff on Friday night that I wanted to be able to attend, so I decided to stay against my better judgement.

But, last year my staying in the house that long impeded camp tear-down. And they were predicting rain for Saturday afternoon and all of Sunday. And, I found out on Saturday, Johan was highly motivated to leave on Saturday. (He had to be somewhere on Sunday.) So when all was said and done, I had decided to violate Shabbat to the extent of driving and tearing down camp. This ended up making me much more unhappy than I had anticipated, and I will not do it again.

But it seems likely that our camp will always have to do a bunch of its tear-down on Saturday. I'm trying to figure out how I can keep Shabbat without slacking off and not doing my share of the work. I really don't like driving home in the dark, which is what I did last year. Staying over to Sunday makes the camp situation worse, not better. Leaving Friday and returning Sunday means I don't do much of the tear-down work. Leaving Saturday during the day after helping with tear-down was this year's unacceptable-for-the-future implementation.

Now granted, I did do a lot of the setup work, because I was one of the early arrivals. But so did the other early arrivals, and they also stick around until the end. A few people, in particular, ended up doing much more than their fair share of the work. (I think I did approximately my fair share. There was one person who did much much less than the rest of us from what I saw, but knowing that I did more than her doesn't really make me feel better.)

One idea I'm toying with is to spend the first Shabbat there next year, acting as the camp's representative instead of Johan, and then go home on Sunday and return mid-week. I'd have to take Friday off from work to do that (and would probably end up sleeping in my car Friday night), but I could work Monday to balance that extra vacation day and then go up Tuesday or Wednesday. Maybe if I did that I would be justified in skipping out at the end. We have a post-mortem camp discussion next Sunday; I'll bring up the idea there.