Truth to tell, I quite enjoyed Clash of the Ash, despite the best efforts of the weather to make it otherwise. We had been hoping that the rain would hold off until mid-evening. The weather reports indicated that it would start drizzling in mid-afternoon, and be raining quite seriously by mid-evening. In fact, it was spitting at us by the time we got to the event, and every time we would think, "Okay, that's enough -- we're due for a break now", it would start raining harder. It got more and more damp, until things were thoroughly sodden by evening. Making this more interesting was the fact that we weren't allowed to drive any stakes into the ground (due to the sprinkler system), so we couldn't bring the vast majority of our usual pavilions.
Still and all, it was fun. In the early afternoon, we got to crowd under the pop-up canopies and socialize with friends. Then the Hurley tournament started, and was actually pretty exciting. (If you've ever seen the Guinness ad about the guy playing hurley, that's pretty much what today looked like.) Settmour Swamp got two goals in the first half, and it was starting to look grim for Carolingia, but our side came back to tie the game in the second half, and that was how it ended. Everyone agreed that it was a satisfying outcome for a hard-fought (and thoroughly entertaining) match. We didn't even have too many injuries, despite folks sliding all over the place in the mud.
The feast was astonishingly ambitious for one prepared without a kitchen, with somewhere north of a dozen dishes, including yummy roast pork, grilled duck, four different salads and a hot onion soup that was like manna from heaven.
its_just_me basically claimed a corner of the field, set up an array of cute little grills for the ducks, and went to it. Fortunately, someone prevailed on the Tufts campus police to show us some mercy, and they let us into the field house next to the hurley field. This resulted in one of the most crowded feasts I've ever been in, but the food was excellent and plentiful, and the company good. I wound up heralding a joint Baronial court for Carolingia and Settmour, which was a fun diversion. And at the end, we helped tpau and company deal with cleanup, which turned out to have enough help that we made pretty short work of it.Overall, a good time. It's curious, but an event that has to succeed over adversity is often more fun than one where everything simply goes as planned. There's something about an environment that forces everyone to pull together and help out that just makes for a more satisfying day...
