Miasmatic Review

One less re-enactment to do.

We got back from our re-enactment last night. I’ve just been so out of it I haven’t posted anything. We didn’t leave until late Friday night. There was a Raptors game and Wes and I went to that, afterwards we headed straight home, grabbed the family, jumped into the truck and rove up to Fort Atkinson. Wes rode with us to the event. We got there around midnight. Unlike in years past, we didn’t have a problem with finding someone to tell us were we could or couldn’t set up. We just pulled in found a spot and set up. I didn’t even try to find anyone to ask, since I have a hard time finding anyone at 5:00PM; I doubt I’d be able to find someone at midnight.

The next morning when I finally got around to trying to register, it took me over an hour again. I went to the registration table and they weren’t ready. After waiting for a while, they just gave me a packet and I went off and had breakfast. Even after breakfast they still weren’t ready. Then when I was finally able to register I find out they increased their fees to $25.00. I guess if I had read the literature better I would have known that they made that change.

After that we took a walk around both the upper and lower camps to see if we knew anyone there. Other then a couple of the vendors, there were two demonstrators I talk to on a regular basis. The rest were all ones I know in passing or as acquaintances. The attendance for this event was down drastically from last year. There were no new faces that I saw, but a lot that weren’t there from years past. Some of the people did a walk through, but didn’t camp. After conversing with many of them, it seems that the quality of the event coupled with increased prices on everything is keeping them at bay.

The weather was actually pretty good. Of course we were rained on Saturday. We always plan on getting wet at this event. The temps were fabulous. Highs in the low 70s, lows in the mid 50s. We built a fire to help ward off a chill, but it never too cold. We couldn’t have asked for better weather.

I also got hit with more bad news. Three re-enactors I know had heart attacks since my last event. And I just found out that another one had died a couple of months back. It seems that most people thought I knew so didn’t repeat the information, thus I never found out. It has been a dark year for re-enactors. That brings the count up to 4 deaths and 9 with serious health issues for the year. That is not a good count this early on.

Saturday night the camp was pretty dead, which is very unusual. Finally later in the evening we had a bunch of people show up. Most of them committee members or spouses of committee members, it made us wonder they read some of my reviews of the event and were trying to butter me up for better ones. That and the way I was treated all weekend was kind of weird. Everyone on the committee was overly nice to me.

Saturday night also led to Wes and I having the most idiotic conversation we’d ever had with other re-enactors. I’m not going to go into all the details, but it started over me not wanting to pay $55.00 per person in my family to do an event, it devolved into one person not liking me calling my outfit costuming and my tent at tent. They wanted me to call it wardrobe and a lodge. I know that a lot of re-enactors do it, but it’s a matter of semantics and I just don’t care. Then they got pissed because I referred to re-enacting as a hobby, they said it was a lifestyle. I pressed on with it being a hobby, mainly because at that point I had been drinking for hours, and my inner arsehole had come out and I was just trying to piss the individual off. Finally it reached the point where one said Wes and I weren’t really into it, and that we don’t take rendezvous serious. Yea… It was an interesting conversation.

Sunday was uneventful. Except for Wes making a name for himself in the re-enacting circle. He protected some kids from an animal attack. I’d include that story in this post, but that deserves one all of its own.

All in all it was pretty much decided that unless we have some other friends going next year, we won’t be back to this one.