Firetending:
5 days
Day one: Arrive on site. Not a lot to do. Smallish fire to entertain the early arrivals.
Day two: Still not a lot to do, since its stupidly hot. I end up going down to a nearbye stream and building a 3 foot x 7 foot rock wall out of 40-80lbs rocks.
Chop wood for 30 minutes in the Sun. Bad idea.
Day three: Build: The bonfire for this night was a 6 or so foot tall chimney log w/ minimal bracing. The thing was nice and heavy. Lots of log flipping, rolling, carrying, etc. About 1 hour of solid work. Tended a bit that night. Met a guy is the wrestling coach for his HS. He gave me some good pointers on wrist control, back mount escapes, and how to break a guy's nose during any takedown he attempts. We rolled for a bit. Tough little fucker. Got the TD and sidemount every time. He got really funny when he got drunk. His impression of a BJJ practicioner was to lay on the ground spread eagle, and with a shit eating grin yell "I'm winning!"
Day four: Holy shit, Batman! We stood up a 13 foot chimney, but just had no way at all to brace it for the size of pit we were dealing with (which is too bad). So, we brace it as best we can, but it starts to lean. The crew jumps into action. Me and another guy grab 8 foot long steel poles and catch this monster on the points the rest of the crew does the "Nascar pit stop" and pulls the bracing out, giving us all the weight, and loads larger pieces they cut to fit on the spot. 6-7 minutes of constantly increasing weight. Brutal. Round two: Trimming the chimney. Since it was too large and in terrible danger of crushing one of the many nubile gypsy nymphettes that would be celebrating around it without her clothing later in the evening, we reluctantly had to trim it. I again got pole duty, and braced the top while another guy stood on the upper row of the support logs and cut 2 feet from it.
Later,
I was chosen to lead a parade around the festival grounds carrying an 8 foot long torch over my head as other people drummed and stuff behind me. 15 minute walk. That really sucked after having hold the chimney up.
Day 5
Totally dead by this time. Help a bit on clean up, but other than that, I threw one log on and headed home. Total, I averaged 3-4 hours sleep a night since arriving, with only 1 1/2 hours between Friday and Saturday.