Time for a Nap

I'm back.

I seriously considered heading back up today (Sunday), but I was too tired to pull it off. I needed the sleep.

In both days, we hit the road up to Xenia early, because the club space in the flea market portion of the Hamvention was being set up at 7 AM. So... a one hour drive means we leave Cincinnati at 6 AM. Any prep beforehand means I'm getting up at 4 - 4:30 AM.

On Friday, I got up at 4:15 AM to get ready for the club president to pick me up at 6 AM. I'd prepped a lot of stuff the night before, but let's be realistic: I did NOT want to forget something important, like my ticket, so I built in an extra 15 minutes to get ready. I'm glad I did, because my first 15 minutes of wakefulness are more akin to the walking dead, so I didn't have to rush around like a nut just to be ready to roll.

By the time we arrived up at Xenia, the lines of cars stretched for what seemed like forever. Luckily, we had a flea market vendor pass, so we were able to get inside by taking an alternate entrance to the Fairgrounds. We pulled in, parked, and walked to our spot, where the setup was already under way. At 9 AM, we were ready to go, the morning sun was beautiful with wonderful, pleasant temperatures, and things looked bright. 

This pic was Saturday morning, but Friday's was
an exact duplicate.

Of course, this being the Dayton Hamvention, that didn't last. 

You know the old joke about the Midwest that if you don't like the weather, wait 20 minutes and it'll change? Replace "Midwest" with "Hamvention", and you get the idea.

By the time the club president and I had left a forum hosted by Walt Hudson, "Salty Walt" of the Coastal Waves and Wires YouTube channel, the sky had already darkened, and soon enough a wave of rain hit the Hamvention. This became a bit of a theme of the past two days, as things would start off fine to brilliantly beautiful, and then we'd have a round of rain (or three) and then things would have cleared up by mid-afternoon. 

A view of the central area, complete with food trucks.
This doesn't really do the place justice, as there were
a lot more food trucks ringing the area and giving
the place a "coney island" type of vibe. All that was missing
were games such as Skeeball and Ring Toss.

This was one of the most popular food
areas, complete with grilled chicken (left)
and pork chops (right). The deep
fried mac and cheese was toward the back.

I saw plenty of people in scooters and/or service animals, which I guess shouldn't have surprised me due to the aging of the overall amateur radio population, but I did wonder about the long term health of the hobby.

I'd never seen a rottweiler as a service dog
before, but here one was. Oh, and the skies were
about to open up again...

After that first day, I konked out at 8:30 PM (ish) and woke up at 4 AM on Saturday. This time I was picking up the club president at her house, and then we were going to carpool with another couple of club members. That meant I had to pick her up at 5:30 AM then get to his place by 6 AM in time to leave. We had one big problem, where a stretch of a major east-west connector in Cincinnati was closed right when we wanted to use it, so I had to navigate through the back roads to get back onto the highway. 

Still, we were only delayed by a few minutes (thanks to it being before 6 AM on a Saturday), and hit the road shortly after 6.

Passing by Kings Island amusement park around
6:20 AM.

The interior spaces were very crazy early on, and I took advantage of Saturday's early morning slow start to get a chance to take some photos inside some of the indoor booths...

One of the few times Gigaparts wasn't swamped.

On Friday the Yaesu booth was an absolute nuthouse,
so it was nice to actually get a chance to look around
on Saturday.

I couldn't even get over to the Icom area on Friday, and
this was the closest I dared on Saturday.

After we finished up for the day and packed up everything we hadn't sold from the flea market, we drove back home. I got back to my house sometime after 7:30, ate dinner, and basically vegetated before heading to bed at 10:30 ish. 

***

Was it fun?

Yes. Unlike prior years when I'd attended*, I felt like I truly belonged there. Having that license helped a lot, but the knowledge I'd gained over the past year meant that I could follow people's conversations more readily than I ever could before. Sure, there's a ton of things I didn't know, but at least I was able to follow along more than I had in the past.

Would I do it again?

Yes. As the club president said, getting up so early in the morning was a killer, and so I was getting awfully sleepy by mid-afternoon. On both Friday and Saturday, I was at a mid-afternoon forum presentation and both times I nearly dozed off. Still, except for that early morning rise-time, I was enjoying myself.

Did I feel like a drowned rat at times?

Absolutely yes. I sent a selfie to my wife, who told me that she was glad the rain jacket was working, and then another one to my Questing Buddy, who told me that it looked like fun and that she missed the rain (she lives in Las Vegas). Believe me, in the middle of the rain it certainly didn't feel like fun when we'd scrambled to protect all of the items we had for sale. 

I was happy that I wore shorts on Saturday, so I wasn't in sopping wet jeans during the worst of the downpours.

Okay, that's that for another year. Time to get back to bed for another nap.

*I last attended in 2006, and this was my fifth Hamvention.