Portland Retro Gaming Expo 2016
If you want worries, drive a car that didn’t get up to speed while going on the freeway. If you want fear, drive the same car on a roadtrip through all of Washington and into Oregon. My minivan had broken down, and finally given up the ghost a few weeks ago, and a new -to us- car was bought. It was a mini SUV with a lot more power to it, and some fun maneuvering. It was also used, and had quite a few problems. For example, when I do a tight turn, it makes a knocking sound.
The week before I tried to get onto the freeway on my way to the Central City Comic Con in Yakima. I wasn’t getting to the speed limit fast enough, and had to pull over to let traffic through. That was pretty scary because the first car was a semi truck flashing his brights at me. It doesn’t matter what the laws say about this, the truck won the law of gravity and momentum and I did the smart thing by not being punished by those laws.
It gets even weirder. The next day I found out I wasn’t scheduled for anything at the show. There was a quick email sent, and I was signed up for the show, but not scheduled. I didn’t understand why, but at least I knew I had a T Shirt waiting for me.
The same day we had a meeting for the Cub Scout leaders. This sounds really big, but it was really just four of us. The announcement was that they were ending our time as cub scout leaders. Several towns, and areas had difficulties getting enough scouts to have a pack, and also leaders to keep the pack going. We had a Webelos leader -me- and a Bears leader. The other two were over the board. We actually had to have volunteers show up during scout time because it wasn’t enough leaders. It was decided to let all of the packs join up the next year, and my time as a Webelos leader was likely at an end.
I sent out the email that night, and felt sort of sad about the entire thing. I have been a Webelos leader -10 year old Cub Scouts- for nearly 4 years, and had great success with my programs and ideas.
Monday I packed, prepared and left on my adventure. There were a few more items than usual this time. It included a blanket, and pillow for couch surfing, and a tripod with a home made dollie. Dolly? I can’t remember. I had been working on the dolly over the summer, and honestly really nervous about the entire thing because I hadn’t been able to get it to properly work.
When I got to my friends’ place I showed off the dolly, and told them the finishing touches needed. I needed to place the caps for the tripod feet, and make sure the pipe was the right length. It was zip ties, pvc pipe, and rollers in a special design. Also, there is an added part, but I won’t mention it till I am done. The entire point is to get 360 degree shows with a nice steady walk through the show floor.
That night I got to play the new Tom Clancy game. It’s a shooter open world RPG. I honestly got bored playing it, but there was stuff for others to enjoy. I will have a review of it on my games played article next.
Tuesday, I got a text from a buddy about getting an autograph for him. He had let me stay at his house several times, and had fixed my NES. In fact, he was holding onto it until I could drop by whenever. I told him I would be happy to, and added driving to his house to the itinerary that day. My breakfast was Burger King, and emails.
The first thing I did was pick up the hand trucks the North West Pinball and Arcade Show were letting me borrow. The folks holding onto them weren’t home that day, so I picked up up on my own. Arlington is north of Seattle and a nice place to see.
Bremerton was about two hours away, and I got a surprise. Not only did my buddy give me my NES, he let me chose out as many games as I wanted from a box full of extras he had. He told me it was payment for the autograph. He also gave me the book Ultimate Nintendo: Guide to the NES Library. It featured every single game made for the NES, with commentary and pictures of the games. It’s a nice book so you should check it out, I will be reviewing it in the games played section as well.
He also got a boxed edition of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the Angry Video Game Nerd to sign. This was only if I got the chance, because he knew the AVGN would be swamped.
I stopped at popeyes to get lunch. The last time I had eaten at a Popeyes I was in Detroit with a broken face, and stuck in a snowed in airport. This time was a lot more boring. The food was good though.
The drive to Beaverton was incredible. Fall had kicked in so there were yellows, reds, greens and bright blue skies along the entire way. This was really good because traffic was really slow. I drove through Olympia and saw the Washington state capitol building just above the tree line. I was in awe almost the entire way there. I actually figured out where to go based on signs all around me, so it was fairly simple to find my way to the next stop. All told, in the last two day I had driven 600 miles.
I was informed I had couch at the place I would be staying. This was great to me, because it meant a little more peace and quiet than the last time I was there. My friends chatted with me, and we told jokes. Then I realized who was sitting next to me on the other couch.
The big one is actually a girl based on the pelvis. The skull is named Bob. I was really impressed by how well this picture turned out, and wanted to make sure I posted it here.
Wednesday I was woken up by the sound of an electric coffee grinder. People were milling about, and I looked up in the sky and saw the moon. I thought maybe I had gone mad, but no, they were all getting ready for the day. So, I quickly got a shower, and drove to the train station.
My phone had frozen up, so my only option was to let it die, and then recharge it. This meant no pictures of the set up at all. Sorry about that. It was pretty amazing, because I arrived when the vendor area was completely empty. No tables, no chairs, no electric boxes all around. It was just a giant sized empty room.
The train ride was awkward because I strapped one of the hand trucks to the other and stood at the bike spot the entire trip. People gave me an odd look, and then went back to their business. I heard chatter all around me as folks waited for their stop. My favorite was a father, his mother, and preschool aged kids all riding the train. I realized that to them, this was the world. They didn’t know a world that didn’t involve the train.
It was actually too early for the arcade games to arrive, so I helped set up consoles. We first placed TVs, and then consoles. The Nintendo section was across from the Sega section, and the far end was the Turbo graphx, Atari, XBox area. We also had a multiplayer area for both the gamecube and xbox.
I also got to talk to someone doing design for the Void a really cool up and coming VR company. They make mazes in real life, and have you walking around with goggles on seeing things all around you. So you are sitting on a chair in the middle of a gray hallway, but the game makes it look like a chair in the middle of a study as ghosts and demons attack. That is more of what I want to do with VR and other stuff, so I was really impressed.
There was a breakfast break, and I grabbed a sandwich. It was kind of cool just sitting on beanbag chairs and talking. It seems my email was seen by most of the major staff. We were told the rest of the show would be catered.
I tested out games for the Turbo Grafx, and found myself getting hooked to a lot of the games. Some of them didn’t play, and I put them in a bag for not working games. I had to catch myself while playing because I would forget I was just testing, not playing for the heck of it. Even the SHMUPs were fun.
When the arcades did arrive, we didn’t place them. I just moved them onto the show floor. We would organize them the next day. It was fast work because we had the right equipment for the job. The handtrucks with kickback wheels moved things very quickly. The one that gave us the hardest time was a Taito machine. It is small and doesn’t look heavy, but the creators made it out of the heaviest hardest wood they could find. I tried sliding it and ended up hurting my back.
The rest were fairly easy. Any Pinball machine was placed, but we would not be the ones that assembled them. That was the job of our pinball tech. He has come every year, and been an amazing asset the entire time.
I was told to grab a volunteer for moving the large arcade cabinets, and saw a well built woman looking right at me. I motioned my head, and she began walking with me. We needed someone who could handle heavy loads, and she met that description. She is actually a wonderful woman with a husband and a kid, and all the worries those things give.
I went to lunch and enjoyed the rain as it fell on me. In Spokane, I am allergic to a lot of the trees, and the clouds pick up other stuff as they go through the badlands in Washington. I end up looking like the toxic avenger in a rainstorm. In fact, I have eye drops to help deal with the headaches caused by it just being wet outside. When I walked through the rain in Portland, there was no reaction, or bad feeling at all. I was really enjoying it. I had a sandwich, hot chocolate, and some milk at Denny’s.
After the meal we would wait for the next shipment, and then move them onto the floor near the walls. As my friend Chris says, there was a lot of hurry up and wait. We moved quickly, and it was fairly easy. At 8, we were done, and left.
Thursday I arrived, and found out someone had placed all of the arcades on his own. There was no rhyme or reason to it. Anthony, who was in charge of set up, was pretty annoyed. Luckily we could work around it pretty quickly. Red was given a list for the order of a single area, and we began to move cabs in the way out, and grab others to put in.
We started with the Pinball machines, because it was easy to move them. The biggest difficulty was figuring out which machine was which because they were all strapped together, and ready for movement. I mixed up a space mission with Rocket III because I was only guessing based on the art. We had a lot of space travel pins.
As we finished that up, I moved over to the break lounge to grab a snack. Before I had a chance, catering walked in with food. It was sandwiches, and sandwich wraps. In the last few days I had eaten only a few times, so I made sure to enjoy the meal.
Back to moving things around, we had a few more shipments coming in, and a full crew ready to go. Most of them were men with beards. The woman who helped me the day before was back, and giving advice based on her experience the day before. We also had a high school aged girl who likely weighs the same as one of my legs. I nicknamed her Pancake, and she responded to it the entire rest of the day.
Because we were volunteers, there were three people to every machine. This was because the machines were valuable, and someone’s pride and joy. It was also because most of the volunteers were new at moving machines around. I had multiple shows, and years worth of experience. Most of the others were learning how to move a cab that day. Any machine with a side art or special thing had a moving blanket placed on it, especially if I had to pick it up from the side. The handtruck had a small lip, which would miss the base of the cab at times, so a side lift was the only way to go.
Red would tell us where to place items, and move his team around. Every time we completed an area, we waited for Anthony to figure out the next order for an area. It was really easy. There was a lot of break time to do this, so I would tell them to go take breaks or grab a snack.
After a certain point, all of the volunteers had moved an arcade cab with the handtruck. I have to admit, when Pancake did it, I was amazed. Many of them didn’t have the size to counter weight the cabs to the side. Some of them were leaning as far out as they could, and kicking. Pancake figured out how to use momentum.
During breaks we would play any game plugged in. I may have owned at Crazy Taxi.
Soon it was finished enough, and someone else grabbed us to place banners around the show. It was sort of boring work. Especially after the technical and physical needs of moving arcade cabs. We were asked for four volunteers, but after a certain point it became 2. I had to move more machines.
I went back to the train at around 10, and enjoyed my trip back.
Friday I showed up at around 10. I had slept in because of all the work moving the arcade cabs had been. It turned out there was plenty of time before the show started, so I could try out some games and take pictures.
The wall was actually for Friday only. They charged $10 to get into this part of the show, without vendors. While the free play arcade and open console area was being used, other volunteers helped vendors move into their stalls.
My buddy Chris helped with moving vendors, while I was happily placed at a desk.
My job was to document any reported problem with a pinball or arcade game. Friday would end up being so long that we started to get into blank pages. This was expected because it was going to be the major test day. We had game owners on hand who would check on machines and fix what they could. Pinball machines turned out to fix themselves most of the time. They are designed to find a stuck ball and kick it out of the game. We had mostly pins, so it was a Fixed Itself list for the most part.
I was basically between the game owners, volunteers, and attendees. The pinball repair guy didn’t show up that day, so we were forced to turn some machines off. It was actually a pleasant view, and I got to know the owners pretty well.
There was catering again, with fruit and sandwiches. Also, after every four hours of work, I got a food voucher to one of the on site restaurants. I was well fed, but there were points that I was dehydrated, or just needed a break.
I lost all track of time while sitting there. It looked the same no matter what time it was, so I just worked with people, and hoped I wasn’t that tired. Eventually Misha came to save me. A cool thing about anthropology is the subject you study can become a good friend. She told me about her trip to Hawaii, and how she saw my hometown, but didn’t really think about it. She also said she didn’t have the chance to tour BYU Hawaii. To me, it was more important that she stopped at a 7/11. Seriously, if you want local food, 7/11 will have it. She was pretty amazed at the spam selection.
I let her run the front desk while I took a break. There was water in the lounge, and just walking around felt nice. Lacy chatted with me, and talked about how many hours of sleep she had. Also, her son was incredibly cute and well mannered.
After the break I felt a lot more awake and able to do things. Misha could run the show, so I would walk along the arcade.
During this same time, the mini bosses would work with the volunteers and hand out food vouchers. I hate saying it, but yes, I was working for food vouchers worth about $10. 13 hours for 2 vouchers means I was being paid something around a $1.50 an hour. I still really appreciated it.
The minibosses were Betony and Trevor. Trevor has been working with the arcade since I started three years ago, and has many of the same horror stories. Betony was used to the Console Freeplay area, but was competent if a little annoyed that I seemed to be giving her orders.
This actually became an interesting problem throughout the show, and I guess I should write about it now. What I was doing was done by either a trusted miniboss, or one of the senior volunteers. Trevor fit both, but Misha, Red, and myself did not. At one point there was a rule change, and the only person told was the miniboss. Another person saw it, but didn’t know about the rule change and went to me to talk about it. I had to call in the miniboss, find out what was going on, and then smooth things over with the other senior member.
The rule change was being caused by volunteers not showing up. So people walking through the arcade could not test games out anymore, because it looked bad. Testing machines or even playing something as part of a quick break is a perk for working at the arcade, so it had people concerned.
We had to borrow people from the console freeplay a few times to have enough volunteers in the arcade. So its not like I didn’t understand the new rule, I just didn’t know it was there. I am keeping things general to keep people from knowing who was who. I’m actually friends with everyone, and don’t want any added problems.
We have two tribes working on the arcade, and they don’t know each other. The first is the show volunteers. They are usually younger, and have extra time. The other is the arcade owners, who made time for the event. Honestly, I felt like i was in the way of the minibosses at times. They were in charge of volunteers, and did an excellent job at it. I was a volunteer, so they should be over me. However, I was also relaying information back and forth from the two tribes because I had earned that respect.
In the morning we had volunteers, and no miniboss, so I was acting as one. Then Trevor or Betony showed up for a different shift, and I had to step aside, and yet hold a position.
There were people making great inroads with the tribes. Trevor brought a friend, who was there all the time, and showed a willingness to do things. By the end of Friday I taught him how to find the power switch, and even had him go with an arcade owner to fix a stuck ball.
I would send Red or Misha to go check on a machine, and they would write down how they fixed it on our paperwork.
In fact, after Anthony spent two hours trying to fix one game, I sent him on break. His mind was out after the event.
Honestly, I worry that I was in the way, and that it annoyed the minibosses. It will be something I will be trying to figure out for next year.
We had some other communications errors. Sometimes I put an out of order sign on a machine, and the information wasn’t relayed well. It was decided by the arcade owners to do this, but specific ones did not know. It got weird when signs showed up, and machines were turned off and no one knew who was doing it. We had to make it a rule that it was reported, and placed on paper so then we knew who was doing what. Someone was still doing it, and we never found out who.
During a break, I checked out the new videogame museum.
It was supposed to be about the history of videogames, and how they worked. It was a first time this year, and foot traffic was not as much as expected. There were some fairly well known historians there, and they were ready to sign books. For me, the big thing to see was the console store displays, and Computer Space. We couldn’t touch them, but man I wanted to.
By the time I left, Misha was in charge and in desperate times. They were shutting down machines, and putting up out of order signs because no one knew what to do. She felt pretty awful about it.
We had a request for Garo Mark of the Wolves for the Neo Geo. I texted the owner of the arcade machine and he said it would be there on Saturday. I had the cell number because of the paperwork I was doing. I had to list the name of the machine, who owned it, and what was wrong. They would end up filling out everything again on a database to discuss.
By Saturday I was pretty worn out. I decided to leave early that day to help keep my stress levels down. There was another breakfast served, and I missed it. Still the arcade was looking great.
Garo was in the Neo Geo before I could comment, and the pinball guy showed up. With that, the machines starting working a lot faster. We knew the problems with the machines and how to fix them pretty easily. We also found out some of the problems were not something to be fixed while there. So NARC had a controller issue, but it was in the hardware, and needed a work table to be fixed. If someone asked, we said it was known and thank them.
We also found out the prize machine was set to work only with money. When we were setting the machine up we had questions on his sanity. There were some really cool toys in there, and everything was set free to play. He would lose money this way. When I saw that it was set for 50 cents, then we realized he was crazy and very smart. The machine always had use.
I began to let others be in charge. Red took the desk for a while, and I just wandered. My legs hurt, but I was awake. We alternated between desk leaders, and it was a lot easier on me. Just sitting there drove me nuts and actually took a lot of energy out of me. Walking around, and checking on machines really helped out.
I got the autograph from Pat and Ian. They had buttons for sale, and I decided to wait. They are just as awkward as you can imagine two guys who wrote a book on NES Games. It was kind of cool.
During a break I met a police officer in the break lounge. He was telling a story about a sniper taking out police forces, and one of them had to lean out and let himself get shot to get the guy. That was the conversation I walked into. Heck yeah. I told the story of how across the street back in Yakima the police would show up in force if they ever showed up. I tried to let him know I was thankful he was there, and that he was doing his job, because we didn’t get it a lot in Yakima.
There were so many people at the show, they ran out of badges. In fact, the convention building reached the legal capacity for people in the rooms. There were times where we had to send people into the arcade rows to clear up space. It was so packed people couldn’t get through.
The police were really needed, because there were thefts happening. I am really happy none of my stuff was stolen. The tripod was a difficult project and I didn’t want it broken up.
Actually, I brought a part that day that i had forgotten the day before. It is a long piece with a hole in it. I thought it was the worst Daredevil costume ever. I was wearing a red shirt, glasses, and held a piece of PVC pipe. The more I think about it, the funnier it gets.
The Angry Video Game Nerd showed up, and walked around the arcade. As staff we worked to make him seem like any other person at the arcade. This wasn’t hard, because he really does look like that. I had him pointed out a couple times, but never really noticed him otherwise. Apparently he was mobbed when he was at the autograph booth.
During set up the pinball guy showed me a new board for a game called Hee Haw. He had taken it over to show the novelty of such a rare game. Then it turned out there was a Hee Haw at the show. Then the HH broke down, and its board had problems. So, the pinball guy put in the ultra rare board in the machine. It was brand new, never been touched, and still in its package.
At one point the pinball guy said the machines were breaking down faster than he could fix them. He was right. He was going out to place one machine, only to come back with another. The pinball holder was in a never ending cycle.
AVGN had a line 2 hours long, and it kept getting longer as he signed. He really was a god among gamers. In fact, I never had the chance to get him to autograph my item. I knew where he was from time to time, but my job was to make sure he was left alone at the moment.
As I left, I let Trevor run the desk and headed out early. The train ride was fun. There was a guy from New Zealand trying to tell a Japanese what it was like to be a Japanese. Then another guy came in talking about robotics, and they chatted away. It was pretty nice.
Another night two guys talked about Jazz. One of them was constantly drumming, and the other had been a flag carrier, but knew how it worked. Also, he was a preacher, also, he had a grandson in MIT. After a point I was reminded of the Bill Cosby sketch about how the New York City subway kept you entertained, they put a nut in every car. Watching people in the train was a lot of fun, and I smiled a lot.
One guy was sitting next to some attractive girls, but he couldn’t impress them. He was bad at it, and they weren’t interested anyway. He was trying to be cool about it, but you could see him struggling to figure out how to respond. I felt bad for him, because I could have chatted with all the way to my stop.
I got a good nights rest, and was ready for Sunday.
Sunday, I arrived really early. I got a chance to play all of the games at the arcade again. Crazy Taxi was a must, but I also played Garo. I had forgotten how much I love SNK fighting games. Garo was top notch, and I was figuring out how to pull moves while battling it out against crazy characters. There were several moments where I laughed with joy at the game. Expect the review next week.
I also got to play some games for the Pig Squad. They are the Portland Independent Game Squad, and always have a cool show. The game I enjoyed the most was Mr. Frog, an old school single screen platform battle game. It’s only a dollar and a lot of fun.
I also wandered a bit around the expo. There was a lot for sale, and I nearly bought a copy of Black for my Xbox. It’s a single player FPS that is really well made. I didn’t get it, but I nearly did. There was also a Neo Geo for sale, and several other games.
My lunch was cheese lasagna, and I watched a street busser play some great songs with his violin. He had his hat out, and was accepting coins. It was a nice change of pace from the loud show floor.
I also went to a presentation being done by the Portland Arcade Collectors. The guy who owned the Neo Geo was doing the show. He talked about figuring out problems for your machine, and what is likely the problem with each piece.
The best part was on logic boards, and how they worked. He started answering questions, and I wanted to ask things like, “I have a Galaga that is only showing the color red?” “How do I fix a controller on a NARC machine?” Stuff like that. I would have asked too, but suddenly needed to go to the bathroom.
There was a lot to check out at the show, and i will review all the games I can next week. But for now, here is a picture of Pac Man from the Atari Age booth.
There was another presentation by the AVGN, but I was busy making sure things were working. It was near the end of the show anyway. By that time, some of the arcade owners began to drive off with their stuff.
When the show did end, we quickly moved the machines into areas based on where they were going. The broken Ground Kontrol machines had their own special area, while the normal Ground Kontrol ones had a huge line up. We left the Pins for later.
It was very quick work, and we even got a few trucks filled before we finished.
As I was heading out, the museum folks had some problems hauling their displays. I showed the hand trucks I was using, and got everything into their truck quickly. They asked to borrow it, and I said they could. They were long time members of the show, so I knew I could trust them. So long as it was back by 7AM, I wouldn’t even notice they were gone.
Monday, I arrived in time to start moving things into the loading docks. There were donuts, and people working on consoles and TV’s. The woman I volunteered from the set up showed up, and she joined with Chris to make a good team for moving things.
The first thing that had to happen was taking the Pinball machines down. Some of them were so old, they had logic boards, not computer chips. It was pretty amazing to open the back, and separate those. We didn’t need to remove the balls from the boards.
I got a bunch of quarters from people who thought the machine might work if they put money in it. We called it the Idiot Tax. I think I made about $5.
It went really fast. We were done by 2PM. We even went to lunch Red Robin -same parking space as Denny’s. While there, we talked about various thing. The coolest part was seeing the PacMan pictures on display.
We did everything we could, and piled up several tons of arcade games. We had to move so fast, we used the hand trucks without kick back wheels. I took anything heavy because I could find the pivot point and not feel strained. One guy did it without really noticing. Another guy said he wasn’t moving a fridge, so the kick back wheels were not needed.
By the time we were done, the entire place was empty. Also, one of my hand trucks was missing. It was discovered one of the trucks took it to help make their runs. I said it was ok, so long as I got it back soon. I chatted with Chris, and he didn’t get off at my stop as I expected. I think he expected me to go with him. Yeah, it was dumb, but it meant a quick goodbye to an old friend.
While waiting in my car, I took pictures of random things. The most interesting of which was a rainbow.
It was dark when I finally got the message that the guy with my hand truck was ready to deliver. He couldn’t make it to where I was until the next day. I told him I couldn’t do that. We discussed this over texts, and I found out he was near the Convention Center. So, I took the train back to the OCC, to pick up the item. Right when I did, the next train arrived. He was very apologetic, but by this point I just thought it was funny.
The ride back to my car was interesting, because I met guys who wanted to talk about games. They had questions, and I had answers. It was a lot of fun.
Luckily I had arranged for a place to stay. The buddy who wanted me to get the autograph let me stay at his place. Even then it was not a fun drive. I had to pull over to a random Burger King and buy a large Dr. Pepper to try to be awake enough to drive. It reminded me of the time three years before when I was in Vancouver BC and trying to drive back to Renton in time. I honestly don’t want to be in that position very often or at all. There were a couple times where I pulled over just to let the walking wake me up a little.
The next day I drove to Arlington. I thought I had missed the turn somewhere and pulled into a small town to check my phone for directions. I found a Burger King, and ordered a breakfast of a medium burger and fries. It turns out I was two turns away, or a different route would be faster. So I decided to take the different route.
On my way out, a guy in a wheelchair and another guy asked for some help getting food. I reached into my car, and pulled out the idiot tax money and gave it to them. I waved, and drove off.
The trip there was pretty easy. The alternate route was gorgeous, and pretty easy to figure out where to go and what to do. When I did get to the place, the only place to park was on the drive way. It was on a slant, so I had to open the door slowly. The hand trucks were already coming out on their own. Luckily Patty was there to help out.
Then I got some big news. She and her husband had to step aside as the leaders of the set and take down of the North West Pinball and Arcade show. He was in charge of placement and maintenance. She was in charge of load in and out. It was hard to hear, because they are so well organized. Literally the NWPAS is so well done, they skipped the last meeting because everything had been set up. I work with other groups to get them as organized as this one.
It was hard to hear, and I wished I could do something to help.
The drive back was mostly uneventful. I didn’t speed this year, so no ticket. Ellensburg was a lot easier to get around with a smaller vehicle. The new car turned out to accelerate very well, but eats gas when I do that.
I arrived at my house around 5, and took a shower, and got dressed for the final Pack meeting. We had a feeling it might be the last one, so I arranged a zombie crawl even though we would have done it on the next meeting. The scouts were told who was it, and if that person touched them, they were also a zombie. The smart scouts could make forts, and protect themselves with swords. Soon, the players figured out how to just kill the first zombie quickly.
I then had them set up chairs for the presentation. I gave my last awards, and sent one scout off to boy scouts. We were told to finish up what we had, and it would be done. So Tuesday was a sad day.
All in all, I think it was a good show. I hear there was a nice after party, but I didn’t go to it. They will have a party just for the volunteers, but that is a long drive for me. If I were there, I think I would hand out awards. I would call them the Golden Slippahs. It seems my shoes are making a lot of people talk about me.
So, I would give Pancake an award for her ability to keep up. Set up and take down would go to Inga for her willingness to do it. I think Trevor’s friend gets the Voluntold award because near the end he was being taught how to fix machines. Honestly, I thought the whole crew this year was awesome. Good job guys.
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