ShowLog – Deland – 7/14/2018
ShowLog – Deland – 7/14/2018
ood show today. Lots of people came in for setup (we had enough that when we had to move 2/3rds of the layout after some mis-surveying, we got it moved in three huge chunks). Anyway, there were trains running and kids giggling and feet hurting and food over-charging, everything that makes these things a Deland event.
The interesting thing came after the show, when we had to take down. We waiting until the venders were wrapping up and still went down progressively (for my angry-political friends, this means we slowly took down things while leaving trains running, so when we did our final knock down, most of the labor-intensive parts and skirts were already stowed, so save me your editorials). The layout when down clean (the G-scale guys sighing as we put it all away like a Swiss army knife). It was about a million and five degrees outside and I asked around if someone could meet Bob at the club for our usual ten minutes put-away. No takers (that I knew of) so I told him I’d spot for him. Jumped in the mini and off I went, swinging down I-4, working up through the gearbox until… I came to a total bumper to bumper stop.
Yeah, this is the sort of thing I got my folding bike to avoid.
I inched along with nothing to show for it. The distant sign was showing two miles to an incident, right lanes closed (so everyone was merging right to run down the faster lanes) (remember that when you let people in). Finally I pulled out my tiny steam powered phone and started the calls.
Reached Bob and found out he was already rolling with the truck, going an easterly route.
Looked through my phone – could find nobody in my contact lists I could call.
Called my wife – asked her to see if she could find an old club roster and find Jerry’s number. I told her to call back – phones and pitching bumpers and shifting make me nervous.
Got a call from Terry. He’d agreed to get Bob in the gate (I thought that was my job). Turns out he was even further back than me.
Got a call from the wife. She’d gotten Jerry. He said he’d run over and let Bob in. Great.
More bumper to bumper. Finally we got to rolling again and from that point down to my drop off, it was scary hot heavy traffic, a level of hell not described by Dante.
Limped into the house, tired and worn. Just dropped my stuff in the corner when the phone rang.
“Where’s Jerry?” Bob demanded.
Oh shit. I half turned and called out, “JANE!” I thought she’d told me….
“WHAT?!?” she snapped back, ready to go to wet-ferret fighting with me over whatever this was about.
“No, I’m joking. He’s here. It’s all put away,” Bob laughed.
I put the phone down and turned to deal with my angry hackle-raised wife. Yeah, just another day at the show.