From: Marion.Kee@a.nl.cs.cmu.EDU
Subject: Travel times, event fees, feasts, etc.  (long & pithy)
Organization: The Internet
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1992 01:35:00 GMT

Greeting unto the market-folk of the Rialto from Marian Greenleaf!

As I'm currently getting packed to head off on a 14-hour drive to an
event in Vermont (from Pittsburgh, PA), I thought this might be an
appropriate time to throw in my two cents on all these issues that
people tend to wonder about.  It's been a couple of years since I've
discussed this stuff in this forum, and I see that regional chauvinism
(uh, would anyone prefer that I called it provincialism?  I thought not)
is alive and well on these particular topics.

I freely admit to being atypically fond of travel, and I'm sure that
one of the benefits I enjoy a lot from being in the SCA (now that, in
these past 6 years, I have a car) is the opportunity to go just about
anywhere and be able to stay with fun people.  I give Master Bertram
and Mistress Eromene credit for getting me hooked on this before I even
had a car, actually--they kept carting me and my lord off to stay with
friends we didn't even know we had, and it took.  Then people come and
stay with YOU, which is equally fun.  I like this a lot.

So I'm probably not entirely representative, but it looks like I've
helped get a few more people here into traveling (Mistress Ellisif is
in fact the person who talked me into the Vermont trip; she had to lean
on me REAL hard--as long as it took me to get the word "yes" out of my
mouth.)  I go to Carolingia several times a year because I have tons of
friends there, mundane as well as SCAdian, and I frequently manage
to hit an event, practice or meeting.  That's an 11-hour drive if the
weather cooperates.  Driving 4 or 5 hours to events in Buffalo or southern 
West Virginia is a pretty common thing around here; lots of people do it.
Some of them think that's a long way, and some of them think it's
normal, and I guess there's some who fall in between.  Wherever you're
from, I think this individual variance in attitudes about travel times
is likely to show up, though obviously there is also a large
geographical factor involved, and various customs that have less-obvious
origins.  

One "custom" that a lot of people are now into up here in the
non-Sunbelt part of the U.S., is being unemployed.  I wish it weren't
so, but there it is, and it makes it a lot harder to get out to events.
So does being underemployed; when you have to watch every dollar that
goes out, the utter essentials have to get covered first.

Another weird custom is an evident reluctance to cross Kingdom
boundaries; I am susceptible to this myself.  It's only a 6-hour drive
from Pittsburgh to Caer Maer in Atlantia (Richmond, VA) but it's been
almost three years since I last attended an event there.  Similarly,
it's only two hours from here to Gwyntarian, in the Midrealm.  I have
yet to make it there, though there are muscians and dancers in
Gwyntarian and the Debateable Lands who get together fairly often to
play and dance.  I really ought to get out-Kingdom more often (I do
get to an event in the Detroit/Ann Arbor area every now and then.)

The Principality of AEthelmearc is a pretty big place; it takes me 9
hours to drive to Delftwood (Syracuse, NY) under good conditions, which
means it takes the people in southern West Virginia about 13 hours.
(That's not the longest possible drive in AEthelmearc, but it's one of
the longest TYPICAL ones.)  Those folks who can, still come anyway; and
people come from central New York State to Principality events in West
Viriginia, too.  We have regional rotation preferences written into
AEthelmearc Law for Principality events (just like many Kingdoms seem
to), so everyone ideally gets a shot at hosting Royalty, etc.  So far
(after about 3 years) it seems to be working pretty well; people are
willing enough to make these drives that most Principality events have
pretty good attendance levels.  That's not to say that there's no
complaining about the distances involved; there is (there seems to be
some notion that since we're just a Principality we shouldn't have these
distance issues coming up), but people come anyway.

We probably hold a few more camping events than other parts of the
East Kingdom, as AEthelmearc includes the southernmost portions of the
East.  The weather down there is just as unpredictable in spring and
fall as it is elsewhere in the East--we just had a camping event in
Huntington, WV, two weeks ago, and we got lucky.  It didn't go down
below 40 F at night.  (Or not much below.)  However, the following week
the nighttime lows were in the mid-20's.  You just can't tell in
advance, so camping season around here is only about 5 or 6 months
long--it's far shorter in the larger part of the East, which lies
farther north.

Aethelmearc's first Coronet Tourney was held in late September, 1989,
near Rochester, New York.  It was one of those camping events where you
get a 4-H camp that has cabins and bunk beds.  Of course the cabins
(and the bath houses) were unheated, and what should have been
board-and-batten walls were just board (which means lots of unprotected
cracks) but it was still September, so we thought it'd be OK.  Right.
The bunks were those narrow cold metal things with springs that poke you
when you turn over, and the mattresses were ancient, which is pretty
typical of "cabin camping" events.  Anyway, it turned out to be the
weekend when we were getting hit with what was left of Hurricane Hugo,
so the winds were fierce, and it snowed.  Right there in September.
Usually it doesn't start flurrying up there until October.  What did we
do?  We froze our butts off.  We slept in everything we had to put on.
Some of us slept in the feast hall, which had a big fireplace at one
end and was open 24 hours.  It wasn't quiet, but it was warmer.  While
this is a rather extreme example, unpredictable weather here is utterly
normal.  (Many of you know that from Pennsic.  You're pretty sure SOME
violent electrical storm will hit, maybe a couple of them, but you don't know
WHEN.)  Also, late May and early fall are tornado season around here on
the borders of the Midrealm, so that gets taken into account.  Cooper's
Lake is just south of a tornado pathway, but fortunately they don't hit
there in August. 

We don't get as much rain in most parts of the East as they do in An
Tir, but we get a fair amount, and once again it's often not evident
whether or not it will rain on any given day, or stop raining if it's
pouring the night before.  Packing up wet tents and gear is a total pain,
and waking up to find the campsite a morass of puddles is not fun
either.  We do a lot of tent camping events anyway; cabins aren't the
norm, but when cabins are available many people opt for them.  They are
simply much better at keeping the rain out.  We just had an unusual
Coronet Tourney site in West Virginia where the cabins were heated, so
we were able to use them in February.  I don't think anyone referred to
this as a "camping event"; the cabins were more like dorms and they
called them "on-site crash space."  I thought they were great and
freely admit to being a total wimp, myself, about real camping in February.

When there are no toilets or latrines on a camping event site, we rent
porta-johns.  I expect this is true in most Kingdoms, though if there
are folks out there digging your own latrines, actually I'd like to
hear about it.  I don't think most sites in the East would permit it.

Another cultural thing about the East is that camping events have
feasts.  I don't think I can recall being at one here that didn't.
Last year the Debateable Lands fed over 200 people a two-remove feast
at Cooper's Lake, out of a field kitchen constructed next to the Barn.
We're doing it again next month (at AEthelmearc War Practice.)
Personally I think doing this on a regular basis, while something that
I admire, would be for me an exercise in masochism.  One of these years
I'll probably autocrat a camping event where people are expected to
feed themselves the entire time.  (I'm not sure anyone would COME to
it, but it sounds reasonable to me--and much simpler than trying to
arrange for a feast.)

Speaking of feasts, I agree that many feast fees seem high these days.
I cook feasts every now and then, and I plan carefully, rarely spending
over $3.75 a head for two removes plus appetizers and dessert.  I
usually budget 75 cents to a dollar a head for lunches (depending
mostly on the seasonal availability and pricing of fruits, veggies and
cheese.)  Currently I'm autocratting an event here in June (Weapons
Proficiency as a fundraiser for "Pikestaff"--y'all come!) and my
kitchen autocrat really balked at $4.00 a head.  So I budgeted $5.00.
Cooks can have different styles.  There is no such thing in Debateable
Lands as too little food at an event.  Usually, there's too much (even
when I'm cooking, and I think I am a picky planner.)  I tend to be a little 
wary of events with cheap feast prices, usually packing some period-style
snacks in my basket just in case (I'm allergic to a couple of foods as
well, so sometimes I can't eat everything that's served.  I'd rather
handle this myself than make a fuss about it.)  But I don't mind doing
that, and many cheaper feasts come out just fine.  What I REALLY don't
like is an expensive feast that is inadequate.  It happens every now
and then; I'm not sure how, but poor planning and lack of experience are
probably at fault.

I guess that not having feasts as often is a trade-off that solves these
kinds of problems, but raises other issues.  I often eat off-board at
huge Kingdom events, or out-board and go to a restaurant (usually in
garb.)  I think that's just fine, but I wouldn't want to do it every
time I went to an event.  (Since I went back to grad school, off-board
has beat out restaurants just about every time; it's far less expensive.)

Let's see, have I covered everything I wanted to rant about?  Oh,
expensive sites.  Sometimes, especially in large urban areas, there's
just no way around big site fees, especially for larger events.  As the
number of expected attendees goes up, for an indoor site the site fee per 
head often goes UP, not DOWN--that's true here in Pittsburgh, and even more
true on the East Coast.  I don't know of any good solution for this one.
We can't very well discourage larger groups from running big
events--that makes very little sense.  So we mostly live with it.
While I agree that high site fees can be due to poor planning, in my
experience they are more often simply unavoidable, when they happen.
Bigger sites cost disproportionately more than smaller ones do, on a
per-capita scale.

Whether or not I think I'm done, it's obviously time I got back to
packing.  I appreciate the kind indulgence of those who have read thus
far, and crave pardon if I happened to offend anyone (which was not my
intent.)  Replies/comparisons/gruesome camping event stories most
welcome by me; send anything not of general Rialto interest to

kee@cs.cmu.edu    (INTERNET)

Acting like a typical Pelican,

--Mistress Marian Greenleaf  (still not in the proper weight class)