2003-05-29 - 12:58 p.m.

OKay, so...Sapphire...what to say about Sapphire.

I think the best way to put it is "we had a plan, and then it rained".

RIR is, surprisingly, a pretty darned good site for an event of this size. Bryce said we had something like 600 people on site, and I never felt crowded at all. Lots of space available...way cool.

Unfortunately, the weather Gods didn't cooperate (note to self, next year make sure the chickens are virgins BEFORE the sacrifice...), so Friday was wet and rainy. Got camp set up though, so that was cool.

Our dogs determined that we didn't need sleep, though, and were barking at everything that went past the pavillion. This isn't good, especially when you're camped across from the porta-johns. Eventually Rhiannon got fed up and took them to the kennel for the rest of the weekend.

Saturday turned out to be a fairly nice day. Good weather for the tournaments, not too hot, not too cold. Had a good day with the rapier, going 2-5 in the tournament, and actually having 4 of the 5 losses be good fights that I just came out on the losing end of. Not bad, all told. Even managed to defend myself for 2 minutes with just my left hand and a schlager. Was tres cool.

Spent Saturday night as the on-call chirurgeon. Fortunately, no one needed a chirurgeon.

Sunday it was rainy again, so we packed out, mostly. Left the pavillion standing, in the hopes that it would dry out before we came back to help break camp and site down on Monday.

well...then it rained cats and dogs and other furry creatures...somehow it sheared off the pin holding our finial onto the center pole...so the guide ropes weren't guiding much.

But hey, the pavillion stood, and wasn't damaged (beyond needing to rework the pin). So mucho credit to Sorcha and Andrew and cotton covered nylon thread.

Oh, did I mention that during Court on Saturday I got to announce that my beloved wife won the Sapphire prize *and* Baronial artisan? She rocks :)

So yes, it was a good event. Good site. Hopefully it at least came close to being breakeven enough that we can do it again next year.

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