I don't know if it was the weather (95 degrees plus on Saturday), the new site (admitted a gorgeous new 'Cultural Celebration Center' in West Valley City) or the new staff that took over midway through preparations for the Highland Games and never quite publicized things right, but this weekend's festival trip to Salt Lake City was just a fortunate hair shy of a disaster. At least I made back the inventory and travel expenses that took me there, but just barely. Actually, in the final analysis I surely lost some money.

I did have a lovely weekend, and the drive was at times breathtakingly beautiful (especially the 'back road' I took to get across the mountains that took me over a 10,000-foot pass). And I still have enough money to get to San Diego next weekend (sure to be slightly more successful at least). So in the end it's not all bad. But it was kind of sad, since I usually sell about double what I did this weekend, and I had much more new and interesting inventory this time than I have the last couple of years. As an indication, for people who know about such things, I didn't sell a single Old Blind Dogs CD. Mind you, I just about sold out of Gordon Duncan CDs, so it was clearly a bagpipe crowd.

Unless I do a brisk business in San Diego, I may well fall short of my $2000 goal in aggregate for the two festivals. We'll see.