Preparing for the Festival Fringe in Edinburgh

Everything's different in the UK.

Things are measured in metric. Voltage is twice that of America's safe and friendly 110v. Plugs are different, fire regulations are different. Gaff tape is a ludicrously poor imitation.

A million differences, some small, some catastrophically large, all hinder my job of putting up this show in Edinburgh.

Not to mention the already-gargantuan task of installing a 2-year old site-specific piece of devised theater into an ex-church-turned-Fringe-venue. Without any drawings.

Even the truss is different over here.

I'm in Edinburgh in the last few weeks of July, getting ready for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August. It's the largest arts festival in the world. Every August, Edinburgh turns into the epicenter of all sorts of creative pursuits, from theater and dance to visual art to books to comedy.

I'm working for Barrow Street Theatre, an Off-Broadway producing company in New York, who has picked up Flesh and Blood & Fish and Fowl, which premiered in the Live Arts Festival in 2008. I'm the production manager, in charge of the trans-atlantic shift and successful mounting of this (aforementioned) site-specific-turned-touring piece of theater.

I had one week on the ground here to source and secure everything, from shop rentals for lighting and sound materials to lumber orders for our set to crew for staffing all the calls. After a week, the actors came in from Philadelphia, ready for setting up and rehearsal. A few days after that, the designers came, for the last-minute touches then a weekend of tech. Two weeks and two days after my arrival in this city, this show, in all its technical glory, will preview to an audience. The next day, it will open for its European Premiere.

Even the coffee is different here.

4 Time Zones in 10 days

As I squeeze in visits during my transition from one thing to the next, I've hit 4 zones in one week.

I started in Lander, Wyoming, on Mountain Time. During the long road trip down into California and the climb in Yosemite, I wasn't really on any sort of regular schedule, so I didn't fully convert to Pacific Time. But a trip to San Francisco for a brief visit with my brother fixed that. A couple days in San Fran put me squarely on Pacific Time, especially as I made up for my lack of sleep during the EMT course.

After the visit with my brother, I had to head back to the East Coast to get things squared away for Edinburgh. A cross-country flight to Philly, combined with the stiflingly hot weather, helped me change time zones again, to Eastern. A couple of days of driving, logistics, packing, emailing and more logistics ensued, as I still tried to make up sleep from the course.

All too soon, it was up to New York to fly out of JFK, and on to Scotland, for my fourth and final time zone (for the week, and the next month) was waiting.

From Friday in Lander to the next Sunday in Edinburgh, it was a different rate of travel than my normal thorough pace.

The ascent of Half Dome

It's one of America's most popular hikes. It's a life-lister. It's climbing for laypeople, hiking for the family, an accessible accomplishment for the American public.

And still a must-do hike for avid hikers. This route is no joke, stretching from the Yosemite Valley floor at around 4,000' up to the crown of the granite mound at 8,836' over an 8-mile trek. The trail is incredibly well-kept, with wide walkways and clear switchbacks. It's unblazed, but relatively easy to follow. The first part shoots straight up Yosemite Valley, past Vernal and Nevada falls, into Little Yosemite Valley. After two waterfalls, there's a bit of a flat section which allows for a breather, but then it's back to climbing. Half Dome itself towers above the trail for the rest of the hike. Switchbacks and hills and more climbing lead to the shoulder of Half Dome, then it's the sub-dome of exposed granite, and the fabled cables up onto Half Dome itself.


There is now a permit system in place for weekend ascents, and since it was a Sunday, we needed permits. They were completely booked, and probably had been for weeks. We tried to pick up any returns at the trailhead, but they were long out. We started up anyway. Would they really turn us back after 8 miles and 4,000' of elevation gain? Maybe we could sneak around the permit station.

Luckily, at Nevada Falls, we ran into a group of interns from NASA, descending after a midnight climb. They had 14 permits, and didn't use a single one of them, since they climbed Half Dome in time to see the sun rise. They happily handed over 4 to us, and we were in! We just had 6 miles more to go.


After a relentless uphill climb, one of the longest in duration I've ever experienced, we were at the sub-dome. We handed in our permits to the single ranger who sat by the trail, reading his book (in a surprisingly good place to stop anyone from sneaking around him...) and started up. The cables offered a nice respite on tired legs, since the cables allowed you to haul yourself up using your arms. We left our packs at the bottom.


And after a 1,360' climb up the prominence of Half Dome, we were at the top. Wow.


And that was only half way. We still had to descend, over a twisting 8-mile trail. Good thing it was only early afternoon.

Road Trip to Yosemite

After the EMT course, I wanted to head out to San Francisco to visit my brother. I didn't know how I was getting there, but I figured I could book a plane ticket once I figured out if anyone was going to be doing some hiking or backpacking. I had never been to Wyoming, so it would be nice to make it to Yellowstone.

But instead of heading to Jackson Hole or Yellowstone, I tagged along with a group of people going to Yosemite to hike up Half Dome. Close enough to San Francisco.

We left Lander, WY on Friday after taking the national registry test. We headed south to Salt Lake City (which is quite near Wyoming, look it up), where we ate dinner, crashed a wedding and saw the Mormon Temple. As we headed out, we saw a thunderstorm over the Great Salt Lake, which was pretty spectacular. Right outside of the city is the desert. We headed out into the flat landscape as darkness fell, and hit Nevada just as our endurance flagged. We pulled off onto a dirt side road, then pulled off that and made camp.

Daylight came early the next morning, since it was a wide-open desert. There was nothing to block the light. No shade for miles, except the nearest casino, which was kept in a disorienting neon-lit semi-darkness. We hopped in the car and headed across the whole state of Nevada.

Nevada's not flat. It's full of spectacular landscapes with dramatic mountains and views across miles-long plains. It also has two big cities, and we were traveling in the direction of neither. The largest town we passed through was Tonopah, "The nation's #1 stargazing destination." Yeah, no civilization to get in your way of the night sky. We had lunch, got gas, and moved on.

Once we hit California, the landscape became a bit more green. We were headed into the Sierras. We were checked for any citrus fruits (contraband!), then on our way past Mono Lake, toward Yosemite.

We got our passes at the visitor center at Mono Lake, then headed into Yosemite National Park from the east. The back entrance!

Our plan is to dispersion camp tonight, wake up early and hike Half Dome tomorrow. Then I'll bum a ride with a friend of a friend back to San Francisco for a brief visit with my brother. Then it's back to Philly to switch some luggage, pack some props, then Edinburgh for the Fringe Festival.

Learning to be a Wilderness EMT

I'm a fan of being useful, and my latest endeavor to become more so is a course in wilderness medicine. It's a month-long intensive course that covers urban EMT curriculum, combined with the outdoors' own medicine practices. I'm taking it through NOLS, with their Wilderness Medicine Institute.

The course is located in remote Lander, WY, at the base of the Wind Rivers mountain range. It's in an outpost of the Central Wyoming College, at Sinks Canyon Center. There's no cell phone reception on site, but if you hike up the nearest ridge, you can usually get a couple of bars. There are trails to neighboring BLM lands (but don't go to the neighboring buffalo farm, a 'shoot-first' trespassing policy is in effect). There's a climbing wall, a volleyball court and a fire pit. We make good use of all of these.

There are 30 students in the class, ranging from high school students through to veteran antarctic safety experts. Everyone is very active and interested in the outdoors. There's a contingent of climbers, some avid Ultimate frisbee players, some volleyball enthusiasts and a bunch of hikers. Everyone shares their skills and gets everyone else in on their sport. It's a pretty ideal community. The staff here say that we're unique in our cohesion, especially for the duration (4 weeks gets to be a long time).

We're here to take a 180+ hr course in 4 weeks. We spend every day in class, from 8am to 5pm, with two evening sessions per week. We learn concepts in class, then head right outside to put them to use. By the end of the course, we've 'treated' 'patients' with a wide range of ailments, from lighting strikes to heart attacks, from altitude sickness to obstructed airways, from broken femurs to seizures. And then there were the big scenarios.

Interspersed throughout the month, there were large-scaled scenarios where multiple people would be injured in a plausible backcountry way (swept away in a flood, fell on a climbing accident, etc). We as a group would respond, stabilize everyone, and transport the patients. We as a group had great growth from our first chaos-ridden scenario to our final scenario. It was very rewarding to see the skills of our group as a whole grow. We became a rescue machine. Too bad it was all fake.

We've mostly all made it through the course. We're now (very expensively) trained wilderness EMTs, qualified to work on ambulances or in hospitals in the urban setting, or act as field medics in the back country. Subjected to mounds of red tape and protocols, of course. But we're qualified medical professionals. If at the bottom of the ladder.

Nomadic travel via airplane

Today I pack up my life again, into my car in that familiar routine. Everything has its place in bags, boxes, suitcases, etc, and every bag, box, suitcase or etc has its place in my car. It all fits, with room for sleeping.

Except I'll go drive that car to my parents' house, and leave it there. I'm getting on a plane for Wyoming tomorrow morning, and not reuniting with my car until September 3rd, a couple continents later. That means a change in my usual routine. I'm currently packing, having to streamline my already pared-down belongings into one suitcase. Not too bad. Maybe I can get rid of everything I don't bring, and then only have one suitcase of belongings... Maybe.

I'm off to become a Wilderness EMT. I'll be taking a month-long course at the Wilderness Medical Institute in Lander, Wyoming, a branch of NOLS. I'll be a nationally certified EMT-Basic, with a wilderness extension, to cover incidents with delayed response from regular emergency services. So I'll be learning to stabilize fall victims for a multi-mile pack out to an ambulance, move accident victims to avoid flash floods, get spinal cord injuries under shelter for the night, stop bleeding with backcountry first aid kits. And so forth. Because isn't that useful knowledge?

As Heinlein says, "A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."

Then it's off to Scotland, for the largest arts festival in the world, to coordinate all the technical aspects for Flesh and Blood & Fish and Fowl.

Back to the known

After my wrist was declared fully healed (nothing like a farm for rest and recovery), I pursued the cruise contract that was retracted after my accident. Well, it turns out that they have no openings for the 'near future'.

Well, that throws a wrench in my plans for working on a cruise ship. Time for plan B.

I can go anywhere in the world and do a wide variety of things. I'm back where I was nearly a year ago. Ok, I'll make an opportunity out of it.

I can teach horseback riding lessons in New Zealand, Italy, Argentina or the UK. I can lead troubled youth through wilderness therapy in the American Southwest. I can work in theater.

But I'm done with the farm life. Over three months of being in one place really got to me. It was time to move on.

Three days after the news from Princess Cruises, I got a concrete job offer out of the blue. Someone from Philadelphia wanted me to production manage a show going to Edinburgh, Scotland in August. There were no guarantees that I'd come to Scotland, but they needed someone in two weeks to help get things in order.

Great.

Back to Philly, where I have plenty of people to stay with, where I know the value of housing in different neighborhoods of the city. Familiarity with a city leads to a million conveniences that one does not particularly appreciate until one moves. Or until one moves around every few months in a consistently uprooted lifestyle.

So I'm in Philadelphia, production managing a show, preparing it to go to the greatest art festival in the world. And trying to find my next adventure.