Rinse at Epcot’s International Food & Wine Festival in Epcot 2009

View Full Album

This certainly isn’t the first time you’ve heard it, and it definitely won’t be the last… Best Made Plans.  While my true intentions were to journal my way through the awesomeness that was the Food & Wine festival, I just couldn’t.

So instead of play-by-play action, here is the Sports Center version – Part I

I am such a very lucky person to have a fabulous artist, Heather A. French (HF), in my life.  She was instrumental during this whole wild ride and allowed me to hunker down at her house for the duration of the festival.  We arrived at her house the evening of Tuesday, September 22.  I was scheduled for set-up on both Wednesday & Thursday opening on Friday.  HF’s set-up was Wednesday with a soft opening on Thursday.  As any good house guest (and excited newbie) would I volunteered for a wild morning starting at 5:00 AM to help HF load into her space on the promenade.  With only 4 and a bit hours of sleep I rolled out of bed ready to help and take it all in.

We drove separate and I was given the instructions “pay attention to where we’re going because it can be confusing and you’ll need to be able to get there on your own.”  Not a lot of sleep, driving the big white pick-up truck in the dark, trying to follow someone who knows where they’re going, trying to remember where I’ve been… was not the best multi-tasking project for me to take on at the time.  Never the less I made it there.  As we crested the hill there it was… AREA 51.

Ok, so it wasn’t AREA 51, but you could have fooled me.  We approached a guard shed.  A bunch of red and yellow lights were spinning everywhere.  Two sets of gates and big yellow and black striped barricades blocked the entrance.  Following HF I was praying that she hadn’t led me a stray.  That all of my credentials were set-up and that they would allow me to pass through which they did.

As we headed to HF’s space, which was located between Japan & Morocco, she gave me the tour via cell phone.  We drove around the backside of the world showcase (you’re not missing much, it’s actually pretty drab.)  The Earth was lit and spinning, a boat was being repainted and FYI, you can’t make a complete circle in a car (Epcot’s big ball is in the way.)

The highlight of my 5:00 am wake-up call was that I got to drive on the promenade.  Yes it’s true.  It felt so weird.  I was paranoid that I was certainly going to run over something and get thrown out of the festival before I even had a chance to unload the big white truck.  After quickly unloading HF’s car and doing a U-Turn in Japan (there wasn’t a sign saying I couldn’t) I skirted off the forbidden road without doing any damage, thank goodness.

We tried to unload the big white truck, but there was no telling where in the world my space was going to be and no right minded person was there at the crack of dawn to tell us so back to HF’s we went to reload.

to be cont…