War of the Wings
I'm way late in writing this, I had to leave for Colorado directly after war of the wings, (hope I unpacked my armor...)
I'm on the plane home now. When I work out there every minutes is Spoken for. I don't have time to while away the hours writing my memoirs.
Jill was just getting back from Chili Friday, the original plan was to meet Tao in Rockville, and grab Jill on the way down. But SNAFU reigns in my life so I ended up getting Jill first then driving up to Frederick to get Tao. Not hat big a difference and I don't like going down 85 anyway.
All well and good except...we got stuck in a miserable traffic jam in Frederick that was caused by a bomb scare. If I had that guy by the collops...
So we sat on the exit ramp for about an hour before grabbing some welcome dinner at Barley and Hops.
On to the event, it's a long way down. Next year I think I’ll try and go a day earlier so I can enjoy Friday as well.
TBC...
Got to site latish, unpacked and set up A’s tent, a matter of flinging it in the spot you want and letting it pop up. (Handy that) then turned the back of the Rav-4 into a bed. This was the first attempt of sleeping in the Rav-4 like we do in the Tahoe. It worked well. Not as roomy, but I was able to lay almost full length, and there was enough space side to side. I will work out a better system for a pad as our air mattresses don't lay side by side as they used to and the overlap is a nusciance. The right sized futon mattress might be just the ticket.
Got Jill set up to sleep then put on garb and went hoping for some bardic or at least some fire and conversation. Came up empty on both scores. The site was just about dead so after a long walk from dark camp to dark camp we gave up and headed back to the car.
Sat morning I learned the importance of letting your Squire know where they are supposed to me the night before and also the wisdom of having a camp sign out board so one can leave a quick note as to where they can be found. Amanda had gotten up just before I did and headed off to shower and troll in, resulting is us walking back and forth all over site each trying to find the other.
But I was able to get the day shade set up with the help of a couple WT squires, (thanks) and eventually found my own. The day shade worked very nicely, once I am able to reinforce the grommet holes and stress points it will be a fixture of our events as a nice place to consolidate our gear and ourselves at events.
The squires tourney took for-ever... Not sure how that was run since I did not enter Amanda, but I hope we can speed it along in the future.
The main fighting... Sigh. I do not like to run down the hard work that I know people put into a big event like this, but I am disappointed that for the second year in a row we did the very same thing that did not work the first time. A three hour res battle is just not a great scenario. Especially with uneven sides. But you fight the war you have and I attached myself to a small unit to start with. But of course in the conveyer belt of a battle that this was the "unit" we were with disappeared In short order. So Amanda and I trotted from engagement to engagement fighting where I thought we would do the most good. Reinforcing a line here, threatening a flank there, and pretty much had a good time though thinking it was going to be a very long day I held us back as much as possible. About an hour in someone decided that this was just not fun anymore and called the "war" With the idea that we would then do a regional war practice. (How that differed from what we were doing already I do not know). That caused a bit of kerfluffel and eventually we got some melee style engagements again, but I don't think we every really got back on track. There was no actually "training" simply a few more scenarios. I pulled Amanda off to the side to get some training with Count Robert that was helpful to both of us, and I fought a long series of pickups with a few fighters that were interested. (I'm excluding a long section here about how little interest I've seen from unbelts on the pickup field lately)
After the fighting wound down I headed over to the Chiv meeting. Not much I want to or can say about that.
Then grabbed a bit of court before heading off to get some food into the three of us. Found a few good sticks of Rattan on the way to dinner as well.
Ate at one of the food vendors, and made plans for the evening. Dinner was nice, sitting down with Jill and Amanda and relaxing over some food helped transition from the long and not entirely fun day into the (hopefully) more fun evening.
Back to the car to change and grab our gear and instruments. We committed to be in two places that evening, so after warming up a bit at Christian Thomas' camp we headed over to Gil's where Ursus had asked us to stop by. Had a nice warm up bardic there and Gil's hospitality was very fine. Then back to Christian Thomas' with Ursus in tow. That bardic ended up being the high point of my event, and everything I had hoped it would be. Good songs by a number of bards, and a very friendly and jovial atmosphere, since we started early Jill was pretty worn out earlier in the evening than usual and my voice was shot as you can't just jump into bardic without practice anymore than you can fighting. I hadn't sung at a bardic in the better part of a year. We wound down and took Jill back to the car. Amanda and I went back out but things had pretty well died down. So we also went back and went to sleep.
Sunday we packed up and I had a brief session with Roeshia. Then we headed out. Hit the Pirates Landing a few miles north of site, (very good food and service if you get the chance) and did the long drive home.
This is a pretty bald account, I should not have left it so long but just haven't had a chance to get it down.
I promised a section on the first year of having a squire but I want to wait just a bit more in that. It deserves the time I can only give it when I'm free from other responsibilities. Right now I'm sitting in a hospital room with a friend keeping a late watch and just can't seem to dwell on my own thoughts very much.
-Justus
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