Me taka train Monday, to greater downtown Husum. Wind Trade Fair event of the year. Big business deal, finest parties, everyone there. what's weird, it's a small town. So when 25,000 attendees crash into a place with 800 hotel rooms within 20 km, all hell breaks loose. People stay in vacation houses and rooms within a 100 km radius. Hundreds of cabbies, if not more, are imported from over north 'Schland. Folk stay in cities 150 km away.

The mayor invites everyone to the Rathaus for drinks, a thousand or two come, and there's fireworks over the wind turbine in the harbor. Some are already staggering from the Vestas party the night before.

I get to invite colleagues for whisky at Cafe Einstein on Wednesday. Ormonde offshore park will be inaugerated by Vattenfall. Nordex and REpower will fight to throw the best cocktail party, sometimes every evening.

(You see, it's not like other conferences. Since the attendees, except the top managers, have no place to go, so the Messe rocks on into the night. WAB ((Windenergie Agentur Bremen/Bremerhaven)) rocks the house, and dozens of firms bring live music into the halls.)

the business transacted is equally astounding.

On Friday evening is the traditional Wind Wanderers party, where restaurants and bars in town have live music and many thousands wander between venues, soaking up the local uh, alcohol. i've seen top execs being forced against a wall by their minions, to help them stay upright, where they would have melted into the pavement otherwise. Wrong enhancement for the masses.

Pretty heavy to be on your toes 4 straight days, around every corner is someone truly important for you to connect.

Plus all the latest tech is there, even this year helicopters giving demos of rescue at sea.

Unlike the past years' glorious weather, it will rain and be muddy as hell, harking back to the early days where the hundreds of pioneers of this industry gathered in barns.

Sadly, some of my top colleagues won't be there this year, having passed on, or were on the wrong motorcycle.

I love most the secrets unearthed.

And i didn't have a place to stay until two days ago, when another pioneer said i could stay at his wonderful country house, as at the last Husum celebration.

Given that when i began in the US, our first conferences had 40 people in a motel, and my first visit to Denmark introduced me to the other eighty working in the field, this is a huge passage to grok.

one week from tomorrow, the Saturday train home, is usually done with champagne, since the Wind Wanderers was the night before. As i begin to try and process the hundreds of key moments.

You can see how excited i am. We'll see how the Fair responds to the enormous pressure and negative projections for the industry, as the dinosaurs fight with their last breaths.

ONWARD!

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin