Thought Repository

Rain, My Mortal Enemy


Today was the second day of the Music Midtown concerts. We woke up a little later today, but it was still Patrick and I heading over to get set up. We stopped for some snacks and then unloaded me and the gear. While he went to get people I cleaned up our area and set up everything except a few things we wouldn't need until much later.

The weather in the morning was cloudy by good. It was hot out when I was running around fixing fuses in the speakers, shaking old rain out of tarps, and hanging new PlayMotion! banners from our "booth". It only lasted for a little while though. Before long it was raining again. At first it was light and plesant, particularly from our dry tent. As it went on it only got stronger. Other people, friends and friends of friends, started coming by. They were wet from the rain and they brought it in, crowded our little space, and ate our food. I wouldn't normally be so inhospitable, but it was the weather and I wasn't comfortable anymore. When I have no place to go I don't always mind getting wet, but when there's a little bit of shelter the small about of water that finds its way in or the small amount of time I have to spend out starts to really aggitate me. I went out to the Honestly concert, taking the rain head on, but my spirits were down. We came back to the tent where I was soaked, could barely get in underneath the cover, couldn't sit down, and couldn't imagine having to spend 6 more hours out in that foul weather. It was absolutely pouring. We hadn't set up the projector and the table was even tarped. I was sure there was no way we were going to be able to run our stuff, also dissappointing.

Then someone had a great idea. I'd though several times, "If only the tent were bigger like the size of the area we have fence in." Someone suggested we use our tarps and our zip ties to do just that. We extended two of the sides of the tent out to the bike racks, giving us a huge covered space. Things were still damp, but people had cleared out and things were getting better. We set up the projector and stuff and started demoing. The rain let up a little for a while. There was a great John Foggerty concerted followed by Tom Petty. The Cuervo guys gave us free drinks. We had tons of people coming over and playing with out system. The two kids who came by twice last night, got there about 8 tonight and were a big sad that we weren't set up yet. Once we were, at 9, they started playing immediately and did not stop until the police made us turn it off so they would leave a bit after midnight.

The end of the night, we sat back and watched Animusic on the big screen. Then we broke stuff down, packed all the gear, and loaded it into the car. It was raining harder off and on and most of the things were were coiling or moving were wet, but so were we. It shouldn't have been that much fun, as strike usually isn't to begin with. The people we were with though made it great. We were all just running around, joking around, etc. We wanted to see if a 10k lumen projector could hit a cloud and we decided to test it. Matt bet that it couldn't and won himself 4 Snickers bars.

Comments