2004-07-20 - 8:20 a.m.

This weekend was the AEPG. Avalon East Pagan Gathering, for any non-locals reading this. Three days of revelry in the beautiful Annapolis valley. Five days if you're on the executive. What kind of crack was I smoking that made that seem like a good idea?

Just kidding.

Being on the exec was a great experience. My appreciation for the festival and the people who make it happen has increased ten fold. Don't wanna do it again, though. No matter who makes cow eyes at me or for how long. You know who you are.

I will go to work weekends and work like a demon. I will go early to set up and I will stay late to tear down. But I will never go to another marathon meeting. Nope.

So this is the gathering through the eyes of Coyote. Kitty and I and Boy got there late thursday night, since Boy and I both had to work thursday. (said Boy has informed me that at some point I will have to stop refering to him as "Boy", him being nineteen and six foot four.) The party was in full swing at The Condo, but we packed it in shortly after midnight because there was an obscene amount of work to be accomplished first thing in the morning.

And the fun begins.

I woke up around six thirty and went to make coffee. Now I didn't bring my coffee pot because Grizzly has a drip coffee maker that looks just like the one in your kitchen, only it works on a camp stove. My friends have ALL the shit. But lo, said coffee maker was nowhere to be found. I looked everywhere. I looked in Grizzly's van. The box for the coffee maker was in there, so I knew it was on the premises. But where? As I wandered around the campsite in a caffein deprivation induced psychotic state, I saw Loki coming up from the field. "What's wrong, Coyote?" she asked, all perfidious concern. I held up my empty coffee mug and whimpered. "Poor Coyote," said the mendacious Loki, "Can't you find the coffee maker?" I whimpered again, turning my cup upside down and shaking it.

It soon became apparent that Loki knew where the coffee maker was, but was disinclined to reveal its location. She gave me a few hints, but hints are not very helpful before coffee. Thinking before coffee is like trying to start the car before you put gas in it. The whimpering became whining. The whining got louder. People started to open their tents and look out. Tears welled up in my big brown eyes, and Loki heaved a sigh and relented. She went and retrieved the coffee maker, which she had hidden.

You see, Grizzly played a nasty trick on Loki at the last AEPG. And Loki has been plotting vengeance all year. And since the hamster in Grizzly's head also runs on coffee, she thought hiding his coffee maker would constitute satisfying revenge. But I foiled her plan by getting up first.

So. Having got my coffee, I went to work. Breakfast had to wait because there was too much to do and too little time to do it. In light of that, whenever I had to get from point A to point B, I ran. Which caused some raised eyebrows among my more sedate colleagues. "Coyote," I heard time and again, "Why are you running?" Because running is faster than walking. Duh. And when twelve o'clock comes and people start arriving, I don't want to be still working. I want to be finished. Therefore I run. And I don't make two trips if I can make one. I'll carry as much gear as I can load onto me and still stand erect. And then I'll run with it if I can.

Yup. I was in a hurry.

There was one point when a bag of mortar had to go down to the kitchen area at the end of the trail. Now if you ever have to carry a bag of mortar, I have this advice for you: get a wheel barrow. That shit is heavy. I was in the shed and I saw the bag of mortar on the floor. "Where's that going?" I asked. Gwen was there. "To the kitchen, but..." I picked the thing up. "This is kind of heavy," I said. "Yeah, that's almost seventy pounds," she said, "Maybe you should leave that." And she left. Now I think in metric. I taught science for nine years, and I just don't think in imperial units. So I have no picture in my head of what "seventy pounds" means. And I figured if I could just get it up onto my shoulder I'd be fine. So I managed to wrestle it up onto my shoulder, and off I went to the kitchen.

I didn't run.

At about eleven I was running out of juice. I had to eat. I went back up to our campsite where Kitty was in charge of the cooking. "I'm starving," I clamoured. "How about beans and weiners?" she asked. Beans and weiners. Yeah, yeah. That's quick. I went to do something, and went back in about ten minutes. No beans and wieners. I left and went back again. Still no beans and weiners. "What the fuck are you doing?" I demanded.

"I want to make it good." she said.

"As long as it's not sucking air it'll be good," I said. "I prefer it not be still squirming, but at this point I'm not hard assed about that."

"You'll see. It'll be worth the wait."

I saw that she was frying onions and peppers and all kinds of stuff and putting it in the beans. "Jesus Christ!" I bellowed. "It's gonna take me hours to pick all that shit out of there!"

And that sentiment will be immortalized in the mythology of my circle of friends. Right up there with "Listen, you twit." and "Oh, Coyote, you're just drunk."

Finally, set up was finished and people started arriving. At that point I was running just because I was to hyper to walk. I had no work left to do, so I resorted to stalking people to their cars in the parking area: "Hey, can I give you a hand? Do you have a lot of gear left? Let me carry something for you. Where are you camped? Yeah, I can lift that. No problem." Man, I was wired. But something nice came of it. I heard that later some folks went down to the parking lot and helped some people they didn't know with their gear. And they said that someone had come along and helped them the same way earlier, and they wanted to pass it on. That was one of the coolest things I heard all weekend.

The opening ritual was cool, as is always the case with Eros. They are one of the most theatrical groups around, and they always have great masks and props. I missed the women's ritual because it didn't happen until ten o'clock and by that time I had gone into viking mode: Drinking, swearing, and brawling. As Kitty pointed out, it's too bad I didn't bring someone back to my tent, because then I could have added whoring to the list.

Somehow, at some blurry point on Friday night, I became embroiled in a drinking contest with Hagar the Horrible. I just want to say for the record that I was the last man standing, and Hagar spent all day saturday nursing his head. I, on the other hand, woke up feeling great and was even more energetic than I was on Friday. Much to Loki's annoyance. See, I woke her up sometime in the wee hours of Saturday morning, and she came out and gave me an ass chewing that still smarts. And she really wanted me to be badly hung over. Sorry, Loki. Sorrysorrysorry.

The brawling part was quite entertaining. I'm not sure how it happened, but I found myself rolling on the ground with Grizzly. He started it. It was very frustrating for me, because the bastard is really strong. He pinned me again and again, and I just couldn't throw him off. The next day he was egging me on, trying to instigate a rematch. But I said, "I can't win, and I hate to lose. Therefore I won't play." Then he said, "I'll deny saying this, but you're a lot stronger than you think you are." No I'm not. I know how strong I am. But I also know when my ass has been kicked.

More later.

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