back to the future
Okay so I've been away for a while. The past two weekends I spent out at Smithville Lake camping with the Society for Creative Anachronism at the War of the Lilies. I actually spent all week out there except for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Anyway, so I am now a member of the Barony of Forgotten Sea in the kingdom of Calontir. I guess. I have a lot to learn. For those who don't know, the SCA is a medieval reinactment group, sort of. My friends Rita and Tom have been members for several years now, and I have gone out to events when the general public was allowed but never for the whole week before, because the BFS encampment likes for everything to be as medieval as possible, meaning no modern trapings can be visible for very long. The tents are big and canvas and heavy, the chairs are all wooden, no folding nylon chairs, no paper plates or plastic forks or camp stoves. No denim shorts or cotton tees. It's actually surprising how cool a full-length linen dress can be when it's 95 degrees Farenheit outside. So the first weekend I stayed Friday night and Saturday night. I didn't think I could stand to be out there all week and it was also supposed to rain on Sunday night and I didn't have any interest in experiencing that. So Saturday night as my friends and I were walking back to our tents to turn in, I looked up at the beautiful starry sky and spotted a satellite. I ducked into my tent and straightened up a few things, put on my night clothes and went out to go to the porta-potty. I looked up and noticed the sky was a little hazy. Hmmmm. So I did my business and returned to my tent only to notice the sky was now overcast. I had a bad feeling about that, but the weatherman said it wasn't supposed to rain 'til Sunday night right? I proceeded to go to sleep. Now, I never sleep very well when I go camping. Being in a strange place, hearing strange noises, being excited about camping, all tends to keep me from sleeping very deep if at all. Well, apparently I was so exhausted from all the walking around that I immediately went out like a light. Only to be woke up later in the night...what was that....thunder? Shit!!! It was thunder and it was close. I immediately panic. I've been trapped in a tent in a thunderstorm before, it's not a pleasant experience. On top of that, how in the hell did it not wake me up sooner? Even in my bed at home with the windows closed, distant thunder wakes me up. So I'm panicking, trying to get together some things that I don't want to get wet so I can make a dash for my car. Unfortunatly, since this is a medieval reinactment, the cars are parked quite literally 3/4 of a mile away. I hear another peal of thunder and realize there's no way I'm making it to the car before the storm hits. So I resign myself to weathering the storm in my tent and decide at the very least I'm going to the bathroom. I dash up to the porta-potties again. I stand in the road a moment...a few other people are milling about. I look up at the dark, mouldering sky. It's quiet, and I can HEAR the storm. It hasn't hit yet, it's still in the distance but I can HEAR it....it's a noise I've heard before when I've been out in the open with a storm coming. A gentle distant wooshing noise. I do my business and dash back and before I get to my tent it starts to rain. I notice oddly, that the ties on the outside of my tent are tied halfway down. This tent is a double-belled wedge that my friends kludged together from the top portion of a much larger tent and has two overlapping flaps, one that ties on the outside and one that ties on the inside. Yes, there were no zippers in the middle ages. So the storm hits and although I am totally enthralled with storms and would chase one in an instant, I do NOT like being caught out without shelter. The support poles for this tent are two metal pipes with another pipe across the top. My camp cot is aluminum. Damn! The lightning is striking really close, the thunder exploding as soon as the light flashes. I squat in the middle of my tent as far as I can get from the metal poles because that's what you're supposed to do when caught out in lightning....grab your ankles, put your head between your knees, and kiss your ass goodbye. It rains very hard for quite some time and eventually, the seams of the tent get saturated and it starts to leak, I move some things around so they don't get wet but there's my bed getting dripped on. Fortunately my dad taught me to be prepared and I had grabbed a plastic tarp I had at home before I left. I unfolded it, draped it over my bed and squatted some more. Eventually the lightning lessened but it was still raining. I extended my tripod to make it tall, unfolded more of the tarp and draped it up over the tripod at the head of the bed, then I climbed in, the tripod keeping the tarp off my head. Oy. When the weathermen blow a forecast, they really know how to do it with style. It stops raining but starts up again in a way that suggest it will rain for quite some time. I get out some rope, another purchase I made just in case of emergency, and tie a line between the two poles. I drape the tarp over the line and tie the corners off to the tent stakes. Oh yeah this tent doesn't have a floor either. I sleep under the tarp the rest of the morning. When the rain slacks off, Rita comes over to my tent and laughs when she sees my setup, then wishes she was smart enough to do the same. Her bedding got soaked. Which sucks because their tent is brand new. Anyway, she said she started hearing the thunder really early in the night and came over to try to wake me. She said she couldn't wake me up from outside and was afraid if she came inside I might hit her or something LOL but she was the one that tied the outside ties to try and keep it dry inside. Okay this was a long story. I'll tell more about the SCA and the War of the Lilies later.