Impressions of Pennsic: Weather
Aug. 13th, 2007 04:23 pmNow that I'm back and mostly unpacked, it's time for the LJ diary of my summer vacation. As has become my style, I'm going to cover it a bit impressionistically, with several short entries about the high points and interesting bits arranged more or less topically, completely ignoring chronological order.
So to start off, let's get the whining out of the way, and talk about the weather, since that really was the principal topic of conversation *at* Pennsic.
Hot: hot hot hot, oh, hot
You know it's an excessively warm Pennsic when you go into the solar shower, turn on the tap, and your first reaction is, "Damn -- the water's warm".
Really, I can't complain that much: I gather that it was brutally hot for the week when I *wasn't* there, and the heat was basically unrelieved. But the list for next Pennsic definitely includes a fan for inside the tent at night, for times when it's that bad.
Wet: wet wet wet, oh, wet
You know it's an excessively damp Pennsic when, on Thursday morning, you take out the shoes that you wore through the Great Monsoon of Doom on Tuesday, and they've gotten fuzzy. And mind, I don't mean little spots of mildew here: I mean a fine magnificant white beard of fine little hairs, a good half-inch long, all over the shoes. Never have I been so eager to consign an article of clothing to the depths of the trash can.
The problem wasn't so much the rain itself, which was sufficiently over-the-top to be kind of fun. My backgammon class was during the Monsoon, and the result of walking from Lochleven to the Games Tent was me getting wetter than I've ever been in my life. (Finally outdoing the hurley event, which had been my previous benchmark.) But it was a relatively warm rain on a very hot day, and past a certain point you simply have to accept the amusement of wishing that your eyes were equipped with windshield wipers.
No, the problem was the fact that the rain was consistently followed by more heat and humidity, so that nothing could really get dry. By about Thursday, I had largely resigned myself to this, and wasn't generally bothering to change when I got wet, on the theory that I was rapidly running out of dry clothes anyway. But in general, the synergy of the rain and heat pretty much sucked, resulting in an enervating gooiness throughout.
All that said, it's worth noting that Friday and Saturday were particularly glorious, in the "I've stopped beating my head against the wall!" sense. For the last day or so, we got what I think of as nice, ordinary Pennsic weather, which was downright beautiful compared with the previous days. This allowed us to finish on a high note, and get a bunch of things dry before they were packed...
So to start off, let's get the whining out of the way, and talk about the weather, since that really was the principal topic of conversation *at* Pennsic.
Hot: hot hot hot, oh, hot
You know it's an excessively warm Pennsic when you go into the solar shower, turn on the tap, and your first reaction is, "Damn -- the water's warm".
Really, I can't complain that much: I gather that it was brutally hot for the week when I *wasn't* there, and the heat was basically unrelieved. But the list for next Pennsic definitely includes a fan for inside the tent at night, for times when it's that bad.
Wet: wet wet wet, oh, wet
You know it's an excessively damp Pennsic when, on Thursday morning, you take out the shoes that you wore through the Great Monsoon of Doom on Tuesday, and they've gotten fuzzy. And mind, I don't mean little spots of mildew here: I mean a fine magnificant white beard of fine little hairs, a good half-inch long, all over the shoes. Never have I been so eager to consign an article of clothing to the depths of the trash can.
The problem wasn't so much the rain itself, which was sufficiently over-the-top to be kind of fun. My backgammon class was during the Monsoon, and the result of walking from Lochleven to the Games Tent was me getting wetter than I've ever been in my life. (Finally outdoing the hurley event, which had been my previous benchmark.) But it was a relatively warm rain on a very hot day, and past a certain point you simply have to accept the amusement of wishing that your eyes were equipped with windshield wipers.
No, the problem was the fact that the rain was consistently followed by more heat and humidity, so that nothing could really get dry. By about Thursday, I had largely resigned myself to this, and wasn't generally bothering to change when I got wet, on the theory that I was rapidly running out of dry clothes anyway. But in general, the synergy of the rain and heat pretty much sucked, resulting in an enervating gooiness throughout.
All that said, it's worth noting that Friday and Saturday were particularly glorious, in the "I've stopped beating my head against the wall!" sense. For the last day or so, we got what I think of as nice, ordinary Pennsic weather, which was downright beautiful compared with the previous days. This allowed us to finish on a high note, and get a bunch of things dry before they were packed...