Work is all over!

So after a full month on tour traveling almost everyday and doing gigs all over the north island on this winery tour and then directly after that starting a 10 day build for a one day festival (Pacifika) it is all over. I had a really good time working with great people and making some good money. But, I had to get used to working insane amounts of hours and running on no sleep.

I have already blogged on the winery tour so I wont touch on that except to say that it was great to work with everyone and really feel like I accomplished something in building that stage and doing production load out (and setting up the lighting) for the bands. It was also really cool to get to know the bands and meet famous people. As for Pacifika that was a mad house! We started working 10 days before the festival started setting everything up. It was at a MASSIVE park called Western Springs Park next to the zoo here in Auckland (so I didn't have to travel far). It was a ton of work to get it all done, but on show day everything managed to come together :)

I was super busy running around everywhere (and driving on my golf cart feeling super important with my radio haha) but then it got to the point where there was really too many people there to drive around (it was a free festival with 200,000 people!) so I had to hoof it. In the morning before it started when the vendors were getting there setting up all their stalls it was pretty insane! It didn't help matters any that I had a name badge and orange hi vis on that said "God" on the back haha. (I nicked the hi vis from a bag but it turned out that it was my boss's boss, his hi vis haha. Basically he owns the company so apparently he is "God" but I got to wear it feeling all important haha. It just back fired on me because all the random people expected "God" to know EVERYTHING and I certainly did not! :P

But, after the vendors got all set up the festival was actually from 9am to 5pm. Once it got started it went smoothly. I had to deal with some really frantic mothers who had lost children. One woman couldn't even talk to me! I asked her what her son's name was and what he was wearing and all she could do is scream. It was frustrating because English was also not her first language but I am happy to report that by the end of the day all the lost kids were reunited with their parents.

About 5:05pm tear down started and we ended up working a 17+ hour day with just a break for brekkie lunch and dinner. Then we slept for 4 hours and woke up again to do more tear down. All in all it took us 3 days to take down everything we put up. It was alot of work just for a 1 day festival haha.

But, I had a really good time on this job and I will remember it fondly. in 22 days I will be in South America! yall take care,Tyler