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It’s taken me 4-5 days to get around to writing about the campout, which can only mean one thing: It was one hell of a party!
The graduate student campout is a shortened-down version of the “Krzyzewskiville” tradition, where Duke undergrads campout for ridiculous periods of time to ensure admission to specific basketball games (most notably the Duke-UNC game). The graduate student version is slimmed down quite a bit; for 2010, the campout started 7 p.m. Friday, October 1st and ended Sunday, October 3rd at 7 a.m. or so. In between…
Pre-campout: A long night leads to a late start
While the campout didn’t officially start until 7 p.m. Friday, the preparations began Thursday afternoon to setup tents, with another setup from 9 a.m. to Noon Friday. Given that the CCMBA class was tied up for quite some time Thursday evening and well into the early morning Friday (it was for charity after all!), I got a late start setting up my tent. It was clear when I arrived that many others did, in fact, have a large headstart; there was a whole “tent city” setup by the time we arrived, setup in grids with “street” names like “Singler St” and others named after Duke Men’s Basketball players.
Luckily, Mark B., Ray, Louie, and Laurent had already staked out a spot, so my wife and I set up camp about 30 feet from the lone port-o-potty up the hill. More on that later…
View from the tent, looking down on "Tent City" below
You can drive your car into the ‘Blue Zone’ with camping supplies…
…but with the insane GPSC woman barking at everyone, you’ll wish you didn’t!
After eating some serious barbecue, my wife and I drove up to the ‘Blue Zone’ to drop off our clothes, food, and some water when we encountered the GPSC traffic directors. Apparently, never having directed traffic, this woman went out of her way to make sure the four cars at a time that were present parked as close as possible to each other (to the point where in a parallel parking situation, a middle car would be parked in).
Being in a bit of a feisty mood, I wasn’t having any of that. See, that’s one of the great things of having a manual truck; in neutral, revving the engine does nothing, but scares everyone within 30 feet of the area! So we unpacked our stuff, leaving it at the curb, then I drove away and parked a mile or so away. By the time I got back, all of the materials made it to the campsite. Thanks Jenn!
Whoop, whoop, whoop…time for check-in!
Around 7 p.m. Friday, it was time to get the whole deal started! The stated number of registered campers was 2500, but it was clear once the festivities started that we were nowhere near that amount. (The true number was 1789, according to the number on my bracelet)
Name on the sign? Check!
For me, the whole thing I cared about was 1) make sure I sign in properly and 2) being the last last name in the group. I mean, with a name like “Zwitch”, let’s not kid ourselves…I’m going to be last more often than not!
Well…ask, and ye shall receive! I got over to the registration tent, and sure enough I was the last name at the whole graduate campout. Little did I know during my first registration, having my name be dead last would be a HUGE advantage for the next 36 hours…
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