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Flexing My Biceps On Site Crew  So I survived Folk Fest 2004. Barely. I had decided earlier in the year that I wanted the experience of being a jacket-holder, a 100 hour + volunteer. This was my third year, and the 25th anniversary of the festival. In my first year, I barely made my 48-hour requirement and the second year I injured my back at roughly 68 hours, although I probably wouldn�t have made it to 100 anyway. This year would be different: this year I had a bit of extra vacation time that I could spend on Folk Fest, this year Bear and I were renting a hotel room for the festival weekend to save on transportation time and hassle. This was the year! I volunteer on the site crew, which means that I help to build everything on the site, maintain it during the festival and tear it down afterwards. This includes plumbing, electrical, scaffolding, putting up snow fence, raising tents, building stages, erecting the main stage, digging trenches, painting, right down to fluffing the grass after festival weekend. Site Crew go from our regular jobs during the day to become painters, apprentice plumbers, forklift drivers, foremen, construction workers and brute strength on evenings and weekends.
It�s always a challenge learning people's capabilities and limitations. The biggest challenge for me is working with the older men who are set in their ways. You know the ones: if a female has a suggestion it�s automatically wrong, women should just sit quietly off to the side or do jobs like cleaning and cooking. These men make my blood boil. I have no problem deferring to someone with greater knowledge and experience in that area, or even someone with greater strength for a job that is at the limit of my own strength, but to have someone with no authority dismiss me because of a chromosome is unforgivable. This year, I chose a new strategy to deal with these louts. If someone did this, I would just leave that crew as soon as possible. If they made me angry enough I would just smile and say, �oh, my shift is done. I�m off for the day. See you tomorrow.� I had the luxury of time, of returning another day for my hours. I also did a lot of deep breathing. Two weeks of setup had passed, and 50 hours of my volunteer time accumulated, when I fractured my ankle at a wedding. I suppose it�s a measure of my dedication to Folk Fest that my first thought was, �Oh crap, I�m going to get kicked off site crew. There�s no way I can work a festival shift like this.� It turned out that I could work in the office. They needed people so badly that I actually ended up with about 110 hours all told; making me eligible to be a jacket-holder after all (I�ve always wondered why they call it a jacket-holder and not a jacket-wearer or a jacket-recipient. Who just stands around holding their jacket? Weird.). I learned far more about the workings of the festival from this vantage point and met many more of my fellow site crew members. I also earned myself the nickname of �Shuffle�, since it was too much of a hassle to crutch around in such a small space but I couldn�t quite walk yet.
(That's Channers wrestling with Bond. She's scrappy!) Festival weekend was a joy and a trial. Our festival site is very hilly and spread out, and it took me enormous amounts of energy to crutch around without killing myself on the grass/mud/covermaster etc. From pure exhaustion I ended up missing about half of the performances that I had hoped to take in. I was lucky to catch rides from the schleppers every so often and my friends made sure that our tarps were low on the hill and accessible for me.
Highlights of the festival included: - painting back stage during Great Big Sea�s sound check - the lovely boxed lunch that Tom prepared and delivered to Bear and I on the fish day - watching Ceili run up and down every hill in sight, pretending she�s older and bigger than she is - Lucky Dube, Spirit of the West and the Paperboys performances at the Volunteer parties - riding the shuttle with Geoff Kelly of SOTW, which made Bond gush all over the place - watching Chnanners with HotPete
- Chnanners informing a performer in an elevator that she was on Site Crew, and then flexing her bicep at him - hanging out with Bbb, who I never get to spend time with - seeing Sailor soo happy on his birthday with his signed Blue Rodeo songbook - the umbrella acrobatics - listening to GBS �Sea of No Cares� leaning back into Bear�s embrace - getting the guys from Spirit of the West to sign my cast, since the fracture was from dancing to �Home for a Rest�
The best part of the weekend is always getting to hang out with my FF family, which includes Bear, my parents, my aunt, uncle and cousins (Beck, Bink & Bonk), Bear�s parents (who volunteer on site), Plaid and sometimes Rider & Ceili, Chnanners (site), Bbb (performer hospitality), Gerg (site), Sailor & Grate (performer hospitality), Bond (first year on site), Big and Small (site and site kitchen) and other occasional visitors.
2004-08-14 || 10:23 a.m. |
That's Bbb at 12 o'clock, Gerg at 2, Kristus at 4, Plaid at 5, Me at 7, Bear at 9 and Chnanners at 11.
