We’re rocking right along here, and so far everything has turned out just about as well as could be expected — or better!

The weather forecast was right on target, with nothing but sunshine all day, a good steady breeze, and high temps around 90.  Alex has a bunch of old meteorological equipment in his trailer and is reporting the “official Alumapalooza weather” twice daily on the walkie-talkies, complete with relative humidity, barometric pressure, and heat index.  Yesterday it felt like 100 degrees with the humidity, and we all sweated mightily while parking trailers, setting up gear, pounding stakes, and walking across the field repeatedly.  But it was a great day overall.

We are set up directly behind the main tent, along with Brett & Lisa, for quick access to the primary venue. Charon & Alex, sKY and slaDE, and Alice & Tim are our neighbors.  (Alex & Charon’s trailer is the one with the sign saying “DANGER CARNIES.”)

Lou & Larry are further off with some of their friends from the NOVA Unit.  We all parked first, at about 8:15 yesterday morning, and now the Airstreams have filled in around us, nearly 100 of them at this point.  That’s about half of what we expect by the end of the day Thursday.

Parking trailers was the major task of the day, and I have to say that our parking crew did an amazing job. They worked in the hot sun continuously from 9 a.m. until 6 p.m., took a break for dinner, and came back to park a few more trailers just before sunset.  Lesser folks would have faded out or burned out, but Lou & Larry (in particular) were indefatigable.

The same can be said for Alice & Tim, who quietly worked the electrical and water lines all day. They were so subtle I hardly knew they were there, but they managed to test every single electrical box and check every water connection for leaks — and fix quite a few unexpected problems.  We really don’t want even the tiniest drip from the water lines, since that would eventually cause a mudhole.  After our luck in getting the field to dry out, it would be a disaster to add water ourselves.

For those who were worried about the field being mud, you can see from the pictures that conditions are very good.  We had one or two cars get stuck on slippery spots in the morning, and Guy Lotz was there to pull them with his tractor.  Otherwise the parkers kept people out of the known trouble spots.  By late afternoon, even the spots that were slick in the morning had dried out.

Eleanor and Lisa got all 200 people registered yesterday, which took them only about 90 minutes.  Not long after they were done, we started Happy Hour and gave away about 20 door prizes (hats, shirts, poster, books, “Palooza Bucks” for use in the Airstream store, DVDs, yogaFlight gift certificates, etc.).  Bob Wheeler showed up and read a limerick he wrote about Brett & Lisa (which I may reproduce here later if I am given permission).

I was approached by several blog readers who told me that they enjoy “stalking” me, reading this blog while having coffee at work, etc., so thanks to all of you for reminding me that people really do read this.  I was also happy that people are interested in the books I brought (the Newbies Guide and the Byam books), and everyone has asked for an autographed copy, so that’s fun.

At 6 p.m. our first seminar started (John Irwin giving his “great ideas” tips), and I would have liked to have watched but by then all of us on the staff were feeling a desperate need to cool off in the shower, myself included.  Around sunset I ventured out again to get a sense of things and found everyone chilling out around their trailers, some grilling dinner, some just talking with friends, others wandering and taking pictures.  The scene looks good, and we are primed for an awesome day today.  We’re only expecting about 30 trailers to arrive today, so hopefully all of the staff will have a chance to enjoy the event too.