Day 1140: Cyc repeats

The screen is down and the cyc is up.  A whole month before the opening of the show!  It was easier than ever because of Jake and James.  Those two wonderful young men, so dependable, so helpful.  I did miss Anna.  Usually, she and I struggled to hoist a ton of fabric, move the outriggers, with Steve in the cage, shift the lift and do it again and again.  All across the stage.  We keep hoping the school will spring for a retractable screen.  It takes four to six people to remove it and hide it in the wings.

Brian and Steve finished building the set frames today.  Brian has a plan for sequencing the assembly.  In the morning an army of volunteers (draftees) are meeting at Tom's to load all the pieces on a couple trucks, transport them to school, unload, and then assemble the structures on stage.  All the concerts are done now until after the musical, so we don't have to take them apart at all!  Thank goodness.   Once the ship decks are assembled, they'll start on the cabins.  It also means that we have three weeks to do all the set finishing.

Tomorrow is also the first big sewing and fitting day.  I must admit, I'd rather stay home and write.  On top of all this work, another arctic blast is on the way.

I made an amazing discovery this morning!  I was hunting for the leader's manual that Lee made back in the early 1990s when I found a binder that had all of his records from 1989 to 1997.  It held all the rosters, budgets, itineraries, schedules.  The best piece was a booklet Lee had prepared as part of a presentation to the Board of Education in 1996.  It summarized all of his years in backpacking except for the last.  It pushed the dates for both Atlantis and Quest back even farther than we previously thought.  Now I know Atlantis was from 1972 to 1974 under Dave's leadership and then Quest part I was from 1975 to 1979 under Lee's leadership.

Plus, there was a letter written in 1974 to the parents of students participating in Atlantis.  That provided me with the cost, route and timeline.

I am so happy to have confirmation of the sequence of events.  Now I will correct all the errors in both chapters and finally feel confident in the accuracy of my text.  It seems that whenever I'm feeling smug and satisfied, something happens to smack me in the head.  I thought I could wrap up this chapter in two days.  Now, it will take much longer and then I have to rewrite the Atlantis chapter again.