346. Final Greening 2019, maybe

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Greening 2019

Dragon Boat Races 2019
Another year, another DBR. There are a couple reasons I enjoy this event: It’s the warm up for HSB; and it’s the last event I work with James each year. Also, while Lake Merritt isn’t as dramatic as the old Treasure island venue was, it is still pretty great. This year the weather was milder than normal -- not as hot. The crowds were supposed to be smaller though I couldn’t vouch for that. As always, I showed up each day about an hour before whoever was supposed to be crew chiefing, so James and I had everything under control before anyone else showed up. We were taken by surprise by the number of one day teams who closed down their camps Saturday night. I was expecting that to be an easy time and it was actually worse than Sunday. But as a result, I adapted the CBF approach to closing down vendors to the rowing camps which seemed to work quite well. Next year we can do a version of that on Saturday -- maybe.

The bad news was that my “new” (this season) picker was stolen (or at least I lost it) on Sunday. I’ve already bought a new one.

I’m writing this on the Thursday after, so the day before HSB starts. I’ve done about everything I can to prepare for the next three days, including hitting the gym twice. As usual, I don’t know what resources I’m going to find when I make it to Hellman Hollow tomorrow morning. There’s a critical need for strong compost containers, but these are usually in short supply. I’m promised 25 bag rolls of the standard bags used for landfill and recycling which I will believe when I have them in my hand. I’ve been working on getting those for at least two years. (All these things actually happened!)


Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival 2019
It went really well. Thanks to the 2nd amendment, this year there were new security restrictions that drastically reduced the glass bottles coming into the event. This was great for us. Hauling all those tons of glass was the single hardest thing about this event. This is an event where I ignore the big picture and focus on just my small part. I have no idea what goes on at the stables where the main dumpster array is located -- haven’t been there in years. I don’t go beyond the bounds of Hellman Hollow and the satellite dumpster array there. This is a philosophical decision... though, for once, not in the sense of “Philosophy” even though I did spend my odd free time working on an interesting idea about how Epicurean metaphysics (of all things) may have suggested an idea from quantum mechanics.

Instead I focus on the line of food vendors at the old Arrow Stage location and the backstage area for the tiny Bandstand Stage. This went so smoothly I didn’t even mind when they threw me off last night by loading out the vendors slower than they have in the past -- which meant we were stuck there until 9pm since I wanted to see the damn job completed. The other, less helpful, aspect of the security measures was that it was harder for me to get between the vendor area and the public field. Especially on Friday this was a problem, but they added a new gate on Saturday that I took advantage of on Sunday so I was able to do more of my usual contribution to maintaining the public as well as vendor areas. Which meant that I went through a satisfying number of compost bag rolls on Sunday.

The past two years, on Friday night, the paella stand was left with a huge amount of product they couldn’t sell and couldn’t keep. We had to dump 30-50 gallons of very heavy food. We’ve been struggling to come up with better ways of dealing with this problem for years up to last week. And then this year the problem just went away because they had a female crew that was really on top of things and didn’t make more than they could sell (or give away at the end of the day). I love it when other people solve your (actually their) problem for you. 

I didn’t bring my camera this year -- I was working from a smaller, clear plastic (children’s) backpack because of the security measures -- but my Sunday co-worker got a great shot of the sunset I’m trying to get a link to. 

Sunday was the hottest day for the Bay Area, but the west end of the park started getting clouds mid-afternoon which gave us some shade while also setting the stage for a lovely sunset. We so rarely get clouds during the dry season, that this was more of a delight than people in other climates might imagine. We are still a month or two away from seeing real weather.

It is now the Tuesday after HSB and I’m struck by how good I feel. I did do less roving sorting on Friday and Saturday, but still... My back is great. My shoulder is great. My feet are fine. It’s almost disappointing. Not bad for being sixty-seven. And my new (recycled) child’s clear backpack is so much more comfortable for resting higher on my back. Last year my backpack was overloaded and sitting too low and caused me the most discomfort. I’m becoming such a Pollyanna, but even mass shootings can have a personal silver lining. Maybe I should write a Seneca style letter to the parents of slain children -- not really.


La Cocina 2019
This event is a shadow of what it was in its prime, but it is still a mess at the end when all the food vendors bring out their hidden trash. But this year my boss screwed up the shift assignments so I wasn’t there to deal with all that. I left an hour early when everything was under control and caught an immediate train home -- where I got to deal with a strange new problem in the building.

While it wasn’t particularly hot on this Saturday, there was no shade and it also wasn’t cool. It seemed like I spent as much time hydrating as sorting. I was also able to do a fair amount of education, which is always a pleasant surprise. None of that on Sunday.


Fleet Week 2019
I only worked the last day of Fleet Week, which was also fine by me. The crowd is there to see an air show and they don’t care about waste diversion. I realized, after the fact, that for both these events I only brought by B game. After HSB I’m ready to call it a season -- in fact there were years when I immediately hopped a train for Seattle or Portland right after HSB. Now I would rather wait for November to head for Portland, but I’m still ready to be done. I’ve now added some notes about this so maybe I can improve next year and stay on top of the damn vendors to the end. At least I was really happy with the way I took care of and then shut down my area of the Marina Green where the public were. 

I don’t pay much attention to the air show. They’ve replaced the F22 with an F35 which was interesting. The F22 has features that are fun to see in an air show setting. With the F35, all the reasons it exists are things you can’t see at an air show. All they could do was run it most of the time on full afterburner so it was incredibly loud. That seems to have been the goal and it seems to have succeeded. I didn’t actually catch if it was an F35A or F35C, probably an A since this is usually the Air Force part of the show. It would make for a better show, and tie in better with Fleet Week, if they demonstrated the F35B instead. Maybe they could let the Air Force fly a bomber in instead.

Besides the planes, this is also a great opportunity to watch the formations of pelicans constantly circling the bay at this time of year. I don’t think they liked the planes, but it didn’t stop them from their mission.


Overall, it’s been a good event greening season. No injuries. All the parts still in working order. Several small improvements to my work gear -- new clear backpack, protective sleeves to replace my badly stained old protective shirt, shorter picker, and on Saturday I finally realized that it was my aluminum water bottle that was making my lips appear blue or black at times. I’ve gone back to plastic for my water bottle needs.