A few weeks ago, I sold my jewelry at Sand In The City, a fun event in the heart of downtown Iowa City. The first night went pretty well and the weather held up nicely. The next day, however, was a very different experience. We had just purchased a tent to protect us (and the jewelry pieces) from the elements. It came with weight bags but I didn't think much of them because the weather forecast didn't say much about wind, just potential rain. Well, the tent protected me and the goodies from the sprinkles, but when it came to the wind...not so much. Dennis was gone at a school event that day so I was manning the booth by myself. No big deal, right?..... until the wind picked up, and nearly picked both me and the tent up at the same time. I was literally hanging from the center of the inside of the tent, holding on to it while the wind blew the elements of my display over. The walls of the tent were up so I took them down in a panic in order to keep the amount of pressure blowing on the tent to a minimum. Winds picked up again. I held on. For dear life. At the time, I was flustered, frustrated, and fearful that my tent would literally blow away. While I was holding on, I happened to notice a girl down the way from me doing the same thing. We waved. I was trying to text Dennis to see if he could bring a rope or something so we could tie it down to the meter we were right next to. He didn't realize how bad of a situation I was in but by the time I could have texted him this, my phone blew off the table and stopped working altogether. So there I was, holding onto the center (not hanging anymore at least, as I had lowered the legs to the bottom level), unable to fix the display because I had to hold onto the tent. I held off the tears as long as I could. Once Dennis arrived, he grabbed hold of the tent while using the other arm to hug me and just let me vent. We decided that it was definitely time to pack up. With his help, we took the tent down, packed up the jewelry as fast as we could and got the heck out of there! It was probably 3:30 or 4:00 by this time and I had not had anything to eat. I went over to Coldstone and ordered myself some mint chocolate chip ice cream while Dennis loaded the stuff from the sidewalk to the car.
We'll use the weight bags next time.
We'll use the weight bags next time.