Saturday at Sea-Pac
Saturday was the critical day around which our nominal reason for coming to Seaside was built: the Sea-Pac amateur radio convention.
While the convention spans three days, including programming, the period from about 9 AM to about 3 PM on Saturday is when the most activity happens, because the largest part of the swap meet is on the ground floor and runs only on Saturday; furthermore, many of the people on the ground floor pack up their tables after only a few hours.
The commercial exhibits (around the pipe-and-drape) and the upstairs tables on the balcony (from where I took this photo) are open both Saturday and Sunday.
Lisa and I skipped the scrum at opening time, but once we got there about 10, Lisa applied herself to shopping with a will. I followed in her wake with the tote back to carry things. But there were things for me as well, like a new holster for my personal mobile phone from Western Case Company, and some interesting dried-fruit products from one of the non-radio vendors at the show.
After a couple of hours of this, my feet hurt and Lisa had found most of what she could (she'd hoped for some things that weren't there, but that's the way of the flea market), and we went back to the condo for lunch. The fog still hadn't really lifted from the beach, but beach-goers were still making the best of it.
By my pedometer, it's about 500 steps from the convention center to the condo, which isn't too bad, but we racked up lots of steps this week. The morning overcast laid in quite a while on Saturday, not lifting until after about 2 PM when we went back to the convention center.
The convention has hourly prize drawings to try and keep people in the building, and in particular 2:30 PM Saturday and 11 AM Sunday must-be-present drawings. As you can see here, by 2:30 Saturday, many of the ground-floor flea market vendors had already pulled up stakes, which made for more room for those of us waiting to see if we won something. I'd hoped to win something useful, like a gift certificate from the ice cream store or for a couple of helicopter rides. It's not as though we've never won anything (we've won drawings several times in the past, just never for anything personally useful). In any event, we got nothing this year.
We had set aside some stuff with one dealer and then went back to the condo to rest for a while, but by the time we came back, the doors had closed for the day at 5 PM. I walked to Safeway to get a couple of things and headed back in, planning to collect stuff from the vendor in the morning.
While the convention spans three days, including programming, the period from about 9 AM to about 3 PM on Saturday is when the most activity happens, because the largest part of the swap meet is on the ground floor and runs only on Saturday; furthermore, many of the people on the ground floor pack up their tables after only a few hours.
The commercial exhibits (around the pipe-and-drape) and the upstairs tables on the balcony (from where I took this photo) are open both Saturday and Sunday.
Lisa and I skipped the scrum at opening time, but once we got there about 10, Lisa applied herself to shopping with a will. I followed in her wake with the tote back to carry things. But there were things for me as well, like a new holster for my personal mobile phone from Western Case Company, and some interesting dried-fruit products from one of the non-radio vendors at the show.
After a couple of hours of this, my feet hurt and Lisa had found most of what she could (she'd hoped for some things that weren't there, but that's the way of the flea market), and we went back to the condo for lunch. The fog still hadn't really lifted from the beach, but beach-goers were still making the best of it.
By my pedometer, it's about 500 steps from the convention center to the condo, which isn't too bad, but we racked up lots of steps this week. The morning overcast laid in quite a while on Saturday, not lifting until after about 2 PM when we went back to the convention center.
The convention has hourly prize drawings to try and keep people in the building, and in particular 2:30 PM Saturday and 11 AM Sunday must-be-present drawings. As you can see here, by 2:30 Saturday, many of the ground-floor flea market vendors had already pulled up stakes, which made for more room for those of us waiting to see if we won something. I'd hoped to win something useful, like a gift certificate from the ice cream store or for a couple of helicopter rides. It's not as though we've never won anything (we've won drawings several times in the past, just never for anything personally useful). In any event, we got nothing this year.
We had set aside some stuff with one dealer and then went back to the condo to rest for a while, but by the time we came back, the doors had closed for the day at 5 PM. I walked to Safeway to get a couple of things and headed back in, planning to collect stuff from the vendor in the morning.