Ideas Come From Someplace.







I think it was in the summer of 2000 that my wife and I went to the Bristol Renaissance Faire, located near the city of Kenosha, Wisconsin to spend the day at the renaissance faire. We had been to one in Michigan years ago and having since moved to Wisconsin we thought a day spent at the faire would be fun. It was.





Prior to going to Bristol I had ideas of starting a small business to help bring in additional money. I assume that is why most people start a small business... make some money. My first ideas had drifted around thoughts of making items for sale to reenactors of the colonial time period here in the Midwest. Reenactors get called living historians by some. These are those dedicated men and women who research a particular time period and gather together the clothing, accessories and equipment necessary to recreate a persona from that time period. I had done some reenacting and knew what these people wanted and thought I could manage a business that catered to them.





Once I had visited Bristol and saw the crowds of people they drew and took in the wonderful English village atmosphere of the place I figured I had found a new direction to take. On the drive back home I turned over in my mind what I could do as a merchant at this renaissance faire that would be both interesting for me and a money maker on the side.





I thought about this on and off over the next several months. I did some reading and research, part about the renaissance and in part about the Bristol Renaissance Faire (BRF). I have to say that I believe that the subconscious mind plays a big part in working out our problems and giving us solutions. Ideas come bubbling up from someplace and it had to be the subconscious at work. I had been a big fan of the movie Sea Hawks, made in 1938 I believe. Sea Dogs, the Spanish Armada and Queen Elizabeth I had not escaped my attention. Putting these things together drew me to the idea of pirates. What if I sold or did something pirate related? Sea Dogs were pirates and really good ones too!





So by the fall of 2000 I had the first glimmers of some sort of pirate attraction at BRF. I had no experience in running a business, renaissance faires, Elizabethan time period, being a pirate nor did I have a firm idea of exactly what I wanted to do. But I thought I could smell a chance to start something great and make money while doing it. I was itching to get started.




You may want to check out the Ebay auction for the Dreadnought found at :
http://cgi.ebay.com/Pirate-Ship-Structure-at-Auction-Think-Big-Live-a-Dream_W0QQitemZ300302051541QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item300302051541&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=72%3A1205%7C66%3A2%7C65%3A12%7C39%3A1%7C240%3A1318%7C301%3A0%7C293%3A1%7C294%3A50