Festival Fun - Part 1

Speaking of summer let me share with you just how my summer is going.

For those that don't know, my work is heavily laced with an Irish theme. My family, my home and my life has always been strongly influenced by this place I have never been. It is among the few places overseas that I have a real interest in visiting someday. I am enchanted by the romantic nature of the castles, rocky cliffs and grassy fields you always see pictured.

Of course the people are just as intriguing, such pride for family and heritage. My work allows me to meet many of them and not a bad one in the bunch has there been. There are those who love their Guinness and those who would rather sip tea. What they all seem to like most though is having a good time and holding festivals.

This is where we return to the topic of this post. You see this summer I am attending quite a few of these events. Where St. Patrick’s day comes but once a year, these festivals…well they come just about every weekend.

Let me take you back a bit.

Last St. Patrick's day I had the pleasure of spending parade day and the holiday itself at the Albany AOH (Ancient Order of Hibernians). What a wonderful group of people we met there. And we were INSIDE, the importance of this you will come to appreciate in my next post.

Course at this same point in time we were also running a kiosk at Colonie Center, and a heat press booth in Saratoga. Oh did I mention our annual sampling to the NYS Assembly was looming as was our breakthrough trip to the wholesale show in Secausus, NJ. Times they were a wee bit hectic.

The wholesale market provided us with a whole new adventure in April. While it too was inside, we had to cart our wares three stories up in glass elevators and feature a display window. The hotel provided four floors on which Irish vendors and buyers, both local and international, had the chance to come together. While it didn't rain on us, many attendees were affected by the ash of the volcanic eruption across the pond.

By May it was time to hit the Festival Circuit. The first festival was electrifying. No really! We were under cover in a fairground pavilion but that didn't stop us from adding some excitement to the event. Plugging in our display lights we blew several bulbs before shorting out a surge protector and causing sparks to fly.

At the next show we were initially set up just outside of a picnic pavilion, at least for awhile. There is nothing like putting up the showcase in 90+ degree weather, then the next day “rearranging” (a.k.a. dismantling and reconstructing) in 90+ degree weather. Granted it moved our goods safely under cover but water was never really our enemy here. Rather our nemesis of this weekend turned out to be the bugs. There are any number of flying, buzzing little insects that are attracted to light and they often don’t survive the night once enclosed in a tent.

The next festival brought TV stardom, boiled cabbage olympics and the case of the missing jewelry. Why is it reporters have to find you when you look your worst and then ask really stupid questions? Where were they when the contestants were chugging Guinness, kicking a cabbage, bobbing for potatoes and throwing snakes in the big tent? Too bad their cameras weren’t rolling when there was a security breach in the vendors tent during the night and things went missing. Thankfully clothes don’t make for profitable pawning.

Let us not forget the late night return to the hotel after a long, hot breakdown to find the maid had stripped our beds but then forgot to make them. I’m not sure we made the wisest choice when we decided not to accept another room and instead drive straight home. We did however manage to miss the just overturned tractor trailer that took up two lanes of the highway at 2am.

That catches us up to last weekend. Oh and what a weekend it was!