Hamfest

Today I went to the Berryville Hamfest. What's a hamfest? It has nothing to do with pork. It's an amateur "ham" radio flea market. The one in Berryville, VA is one of my favorite to go to and I've gone to it about 12 out of the last 15 years. It's a really pleasant drive, it's a nice place to walk around for a couple of hours, and it's fun. Now, my version of "fun" is looking at old radios, cables, connectors and other bits of technology. But the best part is Hill High Orchard in Round Hill, VA; but that's another story.
Amateur radio is a fun hobby and also provides communications in time of emergency. But there are three types of people who go to hamfests; fat guys with beards (me), old guys with baseball hats, and "others" (kids, women, non-geeks). The number of "others" are getting less and less every year, while the other groups seem to be getting larger and larger. Soon the two groups will merge into "old fat guys with beards and baseball hats". I hope that soon we'll have a bigger group of well adjusted young people who'll feel that listening and talking to people around the world by attaching a wire thrown up into a tree to a box is kind of magical.
I hope that my sons think it's as cool as I do.
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