Firetending:
Arrive on site Friday evening. Chilly and wet, raining. Spend most of the time soaked. Takes three hours to build the fire up to a level where its giving off enough warmth to be of any real use. Footing is horrible, as this pit doesn't have a sand or stone circle around the pit, and the whole area is flooded and being churned up by dancing, dirty hippies.
Proceed to go off duty and get blitzed. Did not die of hypothermia.
3 hours sleep
Saturday:
Morning:
Rain stops, so I rake the coals out of the firepit to dry the mud, and spend 45 minutes rolling a log around it to pack it down. It drys to become very solid. If I had straw, I would have made an adobe circle for us to work with. Consider this a cardio session.
Evening:
Woodbusting/ build: Hauling logs, flipping logs, rolling, turning, and wrestling a 10 foot tall, 30 inch in diameter hollow-esque log upright into the center of the pit, bracing it with huge stumps and cabin logs, etc. Totally worn out. End up firetending first shift just due to the ludicrous danger that the log represented (if it would have tipped on its own, it would have been a half ton or rolling, flaming death.)
Go off duty on midnight, mix up some Manhattans. Back on duty at 3 AM-7:00 as a backup. More drinking at dawn as the shift ends.
Impressions:
This was a bitch of a festival as far as the fire went. Mud, wet timber, giant unstable logs due to the previous two, etc all made for some ass-puckering moments. Other than that, had a blast. Sparred with a girl (blocking drill) who does Toughgirl contests. She got one through and nailed me over the right eye, hard enough to cause swelling and bruising. Should have brought my gloves.
Ripped a callous down to the meat off of my left hand, about the size and shape of a triple-wad of chewing gum. Good times.
Lots of hijinks with fireworks and magnesium phosphate. Pleading the 5th for the rest of that story. One girl had a flaming hoola hoop that pretty bad ass.
