behind the scenes

Behind the scenes at the Bozeman Ice Fest:

• They put up cameras to capture live footage of the guys building the ice breaker wall. But they mounted them to a fence and some moron put the port-a-potties in front of the cameras. So all the cameras captured were three days of the back of the port-a-potties.
• We didn't have an "official" score board for the speed comp so Liz (another volunteer) and I made one out of paper and cardboard, which we duct taped together and then propped up on the stage using rope and the aforementioned duct tape. All the news reporters were taking pictures of it because it was so ghetto. Then the duct tape started falling off and the score board almost blew away so I had to staple it with a lightweight stapler. No idea how it stayed together.
• I was given the job to man the booth where we were taking pictures of people at the ice fest last night with the ice breaker wall behind them (kind of like getting your picture in front of the great pyramid in egypt, but cooler). Anyone who knows me knows I am the WORST photographer EVER. Also, I had slipped and accidentally kicked the tripod so it was in the wrong position. So most of the pictures I took had only half the person (or couple) in them. Then a little kid started throwing a major tantrum in front of the camera so I took a bunch of pictures of him having his tantrum. The guys who upload the pics to facebook were laughing their asses off when they saw my pictures.
• Conrad and I took down all the banners as part of clean up last night. That was kind of surreal. I think he offered to help me because I was using his knife, which has a lot of sentimental value, and I almost stabbed myself in the face with it (YOU try cutting through frozen zip ties with numb fingers while hanging onto a chain link fence with the banner whipping around in the wind).
• Two nights ago in the theater Joe gave me some schwag to throw out to the crowd (gloves) and I pitched them so far I hit some guy in the back of the head with them (he was looking in the other direction because they were throwing stuff on that side too). Oh well, at least he got free gloves.
• A guy who was cooking at the festival last night set his grill up on a PLASTIC table. I was like "dude, that is NOT a good idea". He insisted he had done it before. So I went to the ice breaker wall and got the builders to give me some left over wood and gave it to the kitchen guy to put under his grill. Instead of putting the wood UNDER the grill he propped up the four corners of the grill. Needless to say the table was scorched and melted by the end of the night. Joe was like "I need someone to make that disappear NOW" so we didn't get in trouble with the people we borrowed the tables from. I suggested we keep it and give it out every year as an award.

There was more hilarious stuff but I have to run do some work. To be continued...