Just got back from Glen Echo. Much fun, though way too far to drive to a dance regularly. The athletics department is so nice; we asked for a van for Saturday, they gave us the keys on Friday, and then when the Pterodactyl Hunt was moved from Friday to Saturday they said they were fine with us taking the van out both days. The student van coordinator would have fined us $25 for a late reservation and then not given us a van. Or something of the sort.

Glen Echo then. The general format of the dance was about the same as most dances I've been to; contra for an hour and a half, a waltz, the break, a hambo at the end of the break, another hour of contra, an ending waltz. The main structural difference was that the break consisted of a large number of short waltzes played by a piano player who was not in the band. This meant that there was more room to waltz and people who liked waltzing could keep doing so. Seems like a good idea.

The hall itself was vary large, perhaps the size of the NEFFA main hall, though not nearly as full. This meant there was lots of room to spread out, and also lots of room for lines to wiggle all over the place. There was also a gap in the center of the room most of the time where there would have been a center set, with three lines on either side. Perhaps an attempt to avoid center set syndrome?

The dance style was overall pretty similar to most other places. The promenade style was western/shoulder and they always used hands on right and left throughs. On petronella walkthroughs there was almost no clapping, though during the dance there was some. Maybe half the people clapping? Like in the Boston area, the better dancers tended not to clap and to do something else instead, generally some sort of in place wiggle. There was not much footnoisyness; both long lines and balances were pretty quiet.

The band was the Nettles, and while they were great to listen to and most of the time worked very well for dancing they seemed not to have much practice with playing for dances. They would do some things that really didn't fit what the dancers were doing, playing syncopated stuff or going quiet when people needed to be all together for something. They also tried to end one dance by fading out, which didn't work very well, partly because by the time it was clear they weren't going to get louder again we were into the A2 with new neighbors.

Laurie was nice and let us crash at her house. And we drove back the next morning. Quite fun overall.

Costs

tolls	$18
gas	$52.47
milage	$126.4

But these include some of the costs of driving Laurie to guitar and some of the elverson costs. Gas we got at 7/8 full, drove down to 1/4, filled up to 9/8 (yes, the meter shows that). Bringing it back from 9/8 to 7/8 was the work of the Elverson trip. So we used 5/8 but put in 7/8. So only $37.14 was used going to Glen Echo.

Now we need to factor in dropping off Laurie. That took us 28.2 miles off the route, there and back, for 56.4 total. That brings the mileage charge due to the Glen Echo trip down to $103.84. And assuming that 22% of the trip used 22% of the gas the Glen Echo gas was only $28.97. So we now have revised costs:

costs	Glen Echo	Dropping off Laurie
tolls	$18	$0
gas	$28.97	$8.17
mileage	$103.84	$22.56
totals	$144.81	$30.73

Reasonably expensive. If you have 10 people, though, it's only $15 each.

Fuel Efficiency

I was also wondering how efficient the van was. We travelled 316 miles before filling up, and then put 23.539 gallons in. Only 16.814 gallons were used on the trip, though, giving 18.78 mpg. Which is quite good for a big van.