For starters, sleep was fitful and oft-interrupted.
My dehydrating myself last evening failed to keep me from needing to pee overnight.
I had hoped to be able to bundle up overnight in the back of my pickup with my little dog Tequila in my sleeping bag and not need to get up and get out of my truck into the cold night and slink in the dark across the school grounds to the dark porta-potties to pee where I can't see nasty stains or crusts.
Reality was much worse than even my fears were trying to avoid as not only did I need to pee a few times overnight but also found myself experiencing a lose bowel and had to deal with all of this in the pitch black of a dark porta-potty.
Remember, these porta-potties were used by hundreds of people the previous day, some of whom were hippy low-lifes with the hygenic standards of Third Worlders.
To make this even more pleasant many of the porta-potties were out of toilet paper or hadn't enough in them to finish a "job".
Therefore, suffering with cramps in the cold, dark night I had to first check porta-potties via feel for a good-sized roll of toilet paper until I found one that had one I could use and then do my business there in a cold, pitch dark, porta-potty with residual god-knows what on the lid not to mention I can't see what I'm doing in cleaning up afterwards.
As if this weren't bad enough I was physically uncomfortable with my bedding arrangement which was way too hard on my back as I had used a foam pad instead of an inflatable one.
Furthermore, I suffer from a chronic post-nasal drip at night that can fill my lungs with fluid if I sleep on my back so I have to rest on my side with my head moderately elevated and doing that last night with the padding problem only worked to compound my discomfort.
Then, I started to notice the gathering light of dawn as I was finally getting too exhausted to stay awake and people around me began to stir so I eventually just gave up and got up and got my day under way.
By now I was on a roll as my problems deepened.
Remember yesterday's realization that my truck seemed to be heading towards a problem as its ability to start seemed to be deteriorating ?
Well guess what? When I tried to move it out of the festival grounds and back out to the parking area on the north side of the school it wouldn't start.
First I tried to get my pickup jumped but that didn't work and then I had somebody bang on the solenoid while I tried to start it but both were to no avail so I got some help pushing it out to the parking lot.
Even that didn't go so smooth as the only parking I could get into coasting was way out in Timbuktu and remember: at the end of the day I'd have to carry all my stuff from the festival grounds out to my pickup.
On the final push I received to get my pickup out of the way one of the dealers named Justin cut his hand on my broken window handle which further made me look like an inept and incompetent fool.
To say I was down by this point would have been an understatement.
After I got past all that I got our booth opened up and ready for business.
A bit later Mike showed up and told him what happened and when an opportunity presented itself I walked across the street to Sand Dollar Beach and used the pay phone there to make a toll free call to AAA to set up an appointment for a tow truck to meet me after the show after I had loaded up my truck.
The day started slow as Sunday's always do but the 17th Annual Big Sur Jade Festival did receive a decent amount of foot traffic later in the morning into the afternoon.
To my surprise I had my best day of the festival on Sunday as it seemed folks who had been drifting around all weekend circling like hawks waiting for deals swooped in during the last few hours and tried (and often succeeded) to negotiate deals.
Given I already generously price things I find this process annoying and even a bit insulting but I was so desperate I went with it and cleaned up a little bit which was satisfying although tempered with disappointment that Saturday couldn't have been as good or even better.
That being said I was nonetheless grateful and that helped me get my mojo back by the end of the day.
Some more photos from yesterday's belly dancer act.
A scene from the best musical act last night.
Towards the end of the day one of our visitors whom was a diver by trade but also could rock climb and thus is being employed by Cal-Trans to climb cliffs in the area that overlook Highway 1 and pull rocks out of the mountainside and send them crashing to the road below before somebody can get hurt by them was loitering around our booth for an extended period of time visiting.
A lady visiting our booth overheard something he said and asked us if we knew about the emergency personnel she had seen up the coast on Saturday who seemed to be involved in a cliff rescue down the mountain from the road.
He felt it was a training drill as he claimed he had not heard of anybody going over the side and seemed satisfied that he was in the loop enough to not have missed a story like that.
As it turns out three Stanford University students on their way down the coast this weekend to visit friends drove over the side of a cliff after dark and ended up 600 feet down and quite dead. We had noticed a CHP chopper circling around above us Saturday which made sense in light of this, but I didn't even read about this incident until I got home and found it here.
Again today we received some repeat customers of whom some are like friends now which was nice. Even they weren't spending money like in the past which told me the economy, not my material was to blame as some of these folks are the sorts who'd buy something just to buy something just to be nice even if they weren't interested in anything which was definitely not the case.
By the end of the day I was just happy it was over and ready to go home and desirous to get the damned tow truck ride on that damned high road with me on the passenger side over with ASAP.
I tried to guess how long it would take to break things down and load up my truck and arrange for the tow to be there accordingly and got it reasonably close as the driver only had to wait about 20 minutes for me and he was very cool about the whole thing.
I nearly got a coronary carrying often heavy stuff to my truck a good ways but I did receive help in the form of a load being driven out to my pickup by some neighboring dealers on their way out to leave as well as repeated loads by the young son of another neighboring dealer all of which helped tremendously.
Anywho, when I was done the tow truck operator saddled up my truck onto the flat bed and away we went.
He and I hit it off right away and had a delightful conversation the entire way home and this largely distracted me on the drive along the side of the mountain just north and south of Salmon Creek although I was aware of what was going on and even shared with him my discomfort.
Hearing of that wreck on Friday night that killed those three Stanford students near Hurricane Point didn't help calm my mind, but I managed to be okay in spite of that.
I got in safe and sound and had my pickup dropped off on my driveway and bid the tow truck operator farewell and went inside my house and crashed.
It was incredibly nice to be home and I was overwhelmed by a sense of euphoria tempered with exhaustion.
The next morning I made arrangements with Colony Auto in Atascadero to look at my pickup to which they assented and then I made arrangements to have my pickup towed there.
I made that call BEFORE I had unpacked my truck but given how long it normally takes to get a tow truck to arrive I went ahead with that so I wouldn't have to wait. Stupid me!
The tow truck arrived within 15 minutes or so for the second day in a row, a tow truck operator had to wait for me to move stuff into or out of my pickup. Thankfully, I didn't make this guy wait as long as the guy last night and this guy was cool, too.
At one point while waiting for me to finish he called me over to try to turn over my engine while he banged on the solenoid which he did for longer than I did at the show yesterday morning while the tow truck operator last night didn't' bother doing as extensively as this guy went on doing it and on different parts of the solenoid.
Ultimately, he was successful which made me wonder if that would have worked last evening at the Jade Festival. Oh well, I'll make a mental note on all of this for future reference.
It was nice to be able to drive my pickup to it's check-up.
It was determined that my starter was shot so we got that replaced and I'm back in business which is a good thing given I have the 2008 Placerville Show coming up next weekend.
Kimmer
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