June 6th, 2010 Art Fairs, Leaky Tents and "it could be worse"

so the Deerfield Art fair threw weather at us, mild but annoying weather for 3 straight days. We tried to do a "most of the effort" setup on Friday night, but due to the threatening winds and the fact that I have a "middle of the road" canopy rather than the really nice expensive one I chose to do a "the part that's hard with only one person" setup and stop there. Of course, the wind stopped and the night was beautiful...
Had a lovely day Saturday, with a few sprinkles - but those sprinkles pointed out that my previous attempts at re-waterproofing the canopy had not been successful - so as we tore down Saturday night it was time to rethink it again (sigh). The forecast was 70-100% chance of rain depending on which hour you looked at. Normally on Saturday we take down the merchandise but leave the pine displays intact for quick setup on Sunday. We are standing in a leaky tent, on a parking lot with a drain at the edge of my booth... pine displays will need protection so we wrapped everything in tarps and crossed our fingers.
Sunday morning found that the tent had not really stopped any of the rain from coming in, but the tarps were effective so setup went as planned and the day was great... until about teardown time. It started really raining right at 5:00. The proper reaction is to zip your walls shut, break down what you can and wait for the rain to let up to load things a vehicle. Of course when it is raining in your tent proper is not a factor. My wonderful husband showed up to help us load and Wendy and I broke down the booth as fast as we could and began loading up as fast as we could. The end result was an hour to break down and load (usually more like 45 minutes) with three people and two cars drenched through and through. And then an unload into my garage so everything could dry out.

Ultimately there was nothing we could do but laugh (once we'd dried off and warmed up)... it never rained on a customer inside of my tent... like the title says "it could be worse".
Note to self: New (or repaired) canopy before our next show!