So Starts Camping Season 2014

Hapy Memorial Day.  I just got back from a weekend of camping, music and relaxing.  Today's post covers that.

Starting Again

middle row seat = camp couch

It seems like every Spring-Summer, I troll back through this blog to see if I posted a list of stuff to bring camping.  Every year, I'm disappointed that I didn't create such a list.  I have one now... on paper, that I'll try to remember to post.  We knew that where we were going, once we were in, we couldn't leave, but our tickets and camping spot were paid for.  Also, we had almost no money and the only things we could buy while we were there would require cash.  So, with the added pressure, Boo and I set off to plan for a weekend with Hapy.  She's quite experienced with car-camping, so between us, we remembered just about everything.  In the end, we didn't want for anything, and we didn't spend a cent.  We did find that we were the only bay-window bus there, and we spotted 3 Vanagons, including one tin-top.  Hopefully, one of my fellow bus driver/readers will feel inspired to join us next year.

To and Fro

Horning's Hideout

The drive was incredibly easy.  I checked the fuel log and concluded that we didn't need fuel for our round trip.  So, we fired up Hapy and nosed West to Horning's Hideout (North Plains, OR).  He purred the whole way.  Between the spring dampeners, removing the window screens and all the equipment we were carrying, he made almost no noise.  The only racket came from the belly pan when we got near 60mph on the freeway.  The ride home was equally uneventful, enjoying the views out the window, and the music from an iPhone.  The driver's seat belt is becoming problematic.  I may have to break out the wallet and buy a new retractable set, replacing the recycled-from-a-Mercedes set I installed a few years ago.

Horning's Hideout
I hadn't been to Horning's Hideout in probably ten years.  The last time was for the McMenamin's company picnic where a band I was playing with had a spot on one of the smaller stages.  That stage wasn't even there anymore, and you couldn't really tell where it used to be.  I was able to find about where it was based on my memory of the view.  Horning's has had trouble keeping music because of neighbor complaints and unruly patrons.  We were especially grateful that they allowed this multi-band multi-day event take place.  The Hideout hosts a stocked fishing pond and multiple 18 hole disc golf courses.  Our focus was the main stage where 10 bands played over two days.  I'll review the bands in another post.  For now, I'll just focus on the event.

Hootenanny

view from main stage

The Horning's Hideout Hootenanny was the brain-child of Scott McKay over ten years ago.  It started as a birthday party for him, and it's gotten bigger every year.  As Boo and I were saying our "thank you" and "good-bye", he described this year's event as the fulfillment of that dream.  It has been so successful, he's not sure how to move forward.  To grow anymore will require infrastructure, and more staff, probably more rules, and greater restrictions.  Facing that future, he posed that if he didn't do it, 100 people would probably show up anyway.  With the highest turnout ever, I think it also resulted in Scott's least sleep ever and shortest amount of free time to see bands ever as well.  For such a giving guy, it's truly a shame that he wasn't really able to enjoy the beautiful scene he created.  There were craft vendors, multiple food options (including coffee/espresso and smoothies), and even a pot-luck supper on Saturday.  He had the 10 staged bands, but there were pick-up jams happening in the upper camp zone all the time.  There was a 2-day disc golf tournament with prizes down to 10th place in multiple divisions.

I hope Scottie chooses to host this again next year.  Boo and I suggested a few ways to make it work, and he already had a few ideas of his own.  I think we will start with volunteering to help out however we can.  If we can get each attendee to do just one hour of effort for the greater good over the course of the weekend, we can keep the load at a manageable level.  Maybe then, Scott can see some of the bands he booked and not have that 100-mile stare from no sleep and managing chaos all weekend.

Camping
This has already gotten long, but I wanted to touch on how the bus handled camping after a Winter of improvements.  The new deep-cycle battery and supporting electrical systems worked almost perfectly.  The dome light, kitchen lights, and the 12V outlet by the slider door were flawless.  We strung up a set of 12V lights around the awning/canopy for night-time lighting, creating a nice mellow vibe.  The awning hadn't been used in years, and I'd lost the old rain-gutter mounts.  Instead, I used 2 vice-grips to hold the bus-side edge to the top of the pop-top scissor supports.  It ended up higher, and better, than before.  At a stop at Goodwill last weekend, I got a 4' square indoor-outdoor rubber-backed rug for outside the bus door.  I also bought a bolt of 2-tone blue fabric at the same Goodwill stop.  Between bands, Boo cut the material into thirds, creating 3 rectangular strips that perfectly covered the jalousie windows, the front windows and the windscreen.  It was so dark, we slept until 10 on Sunday morning; unheard of in the bus.  Last, we nabbed a full-size bed memory-foam from home, and used that on top of the stock cushions on the rock-n-roll bed.  Sleep was amazing.

That's it for today.  As I mentioned above, I reviewed the bands separately; see these links for day One and Two.  It was a fantastic weekend. Hapy drove flawlessly, the company was spectacular and the energy of the whole event was deliciously mellow.  More next time-

Hey Strangers

I apologize for not posting anything in the last couple of months. After that last post, describing a pretty radical life change event, I kinda left you hanging. Honestly, not much has really happened since then... at least it doesn't seem like it. I'll run down some highlights, though.

New Digs
I have a lease on a place near where I work in Beaverton that I found on rent.com. I tried the usual CL, but it wasn't as effective as I would have expected. I take possession in the middle of April, so I'll be couch-surfing for a few more weeks. I was unexpectedly able to land a townhouse with a 2-car garage, so I'll be able to complete the bus work in a dry location. When I consider that my commute will shrink from 30-45 minutes each way to 5 minutes (by car or 10 by foot), I will gain almost an hour. The key will be not wasting that time at work :)
I have lots of unfinished projects on the bus that I could get after with that time. I intend to return to my regular postings here to keep me honest about that. The townhouse has the usual apartment complex amenities, and the boys liked that - swimming pools... movie stars... The fact that a 7-11 and a Subway are very close met with their approval as well. Its funny what boys find most important. They were unmoved by how far it is from their mom's place (30 minutes), for example. Funny.

Office Move
As if there weren't enough changes already, by employer is moving a handful of departments from over-crowded conditions into a couple of new buildings. My department is one of them, so the end of March will be consumed with that move too. To paraphrase an old Jerry Seinfeld bit "when you're moving your whole world becomes all about boxes". Yeah, I totally hear that. Boxing the office, and boxing my at-home possessions have an eerie parallel.

Allergies Again
My St. Patrick's Day joke has arrived a few days early this year. I don't think I made a big deal about this in previous years, but every March, around the start of March Madness, my allergies kick in without warning. I think of it as the St. Patrick's leprechaun cursing me. I get dizzy so I can't maintain vertical and sleep like 20 hours a day while I remember again that its allergies and take lots of anti-histamine. This year is no different, and after spending a long Saturday at the house packing up the last of my bus parts, CD's, some books, etc, I spent Sunday couch-ridden. Like previous years, it will take a few days of Benadryl at night and Zyrtec in the morning to chase this nastiness away. Now that I have a clear pattern, though, I hope next year, I'll remember better and start taking my Zyrtec on the first of March.
If you're suffering now, trees are blooming, so you probably have tree pollen allergies. The trees of interest are cherry and apple, for fruit trees, but there are many non-fruit trees producing pollen right now: maple, red cedar, sycamore, oak, elm, walnut, birch, hickory, ash, poplar, and cypress. Of course, if you live in the Pacific NorthWest, you have mold and moss at this time of year too, so you could have an allergy there.

That's all I have for now. I haven't touched the bus except to load stuff into him for moving. I'll be car-hauling him behind the truck rather than driving him. I haven't taken enough test flights to be sure I won't have a cooling issue. One more thing for Spring-