so, this phase runs roughly from friday, august 25 thru sunday, august 27, as it represents the time before the event actually started. i will say, though, that this year, it seemed like, on monday, BAM, the entire city was there, and it happened fast. maybe it’s because i was busy…..
when we got there on thursday, longpig and aspen and cody were there already and they were all working. longpig was at camp with juju, we said hello and then they said they had to get back to work. this year, before we headed out, there were a slew of emails from the org and from other volunteer departments stating that people who were on the early arrival list were there to ensure that the infrastructure of the city went up before the city opened. it went so far as to say that no personal shade structures would be allowed, and that people should put up the minimum allowable to live until the event started because, essentially, we were there for them early and we could take care of ourselves after the event started. part of me thinks "this is not the way to treat volunteers"….but then again, when you have already given many of these volunteers free tickets to what is becoming an expensive event and now granted them early entry, i do understand it. but it still made me sort of feel like big brother was standing over me. yikes!
when we arrived, there was precious little around, but we were advised to take this day to rest up, take care of basic needs, and get situated because the expectation was going to be that the next day, the work would begin. we had been through a major trauma already because when we requested early entry into the event for daughter, we weren’t sure until a few days before we left whether or not we were going to be allowed to get her in and what we would do with her as far as volunteering went once she was in. we didn’t want to take more resources than we were entitled to or burden said infrastructure, we wanted to contribute and feel like we were doing our share. this issue would surface again at the end of the event, but in the end, it was all a pleasant thing.
the large shade structure wasn’t up yet because of the aforementioned directive, but we did manage to get situated in a way that seemed like it would work for the camp in general and us specifically.
for the last few years, i have wanted to get into the technical side of the ranger org, but this ended up being my year. i think they are distrustful because they want to make sure that dedicated volunteers are going to stick around, not just be a flash in the pan and get bored with rangering and move on to other stuff. i can’t actually remember if this happened to first day or the second day, but at some point….hmmm, i am going to clarify this, i will come back and finish this later….
we went over to ranger outpost tokyo and discovered that some of our friends and favorite people were already there. dirtwitch is one of them, and she and her camping mate feline invited us near their place for dinner. this was very cool.
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