fail

I was very sorry to cancel a cherry u-pic event tonight, less than 10 hours before our schedule departuring time.

It's my first attemp and it's a failure now. I feel very sorry to those participants. One of the reason is that they set their weekend schedule to this event but now they can't make it fulfilled, another reason is that I had to inform them at a very late time. There's still two persons whom I couldn't get connected now.

I started to organize this event from two weeks ago. There're several orchards at Leona Valley planned to open from June 4th. Since some of my friends will leave LA next week and I have meeting with professors on Saturday, I pick the date as June 5th, the 2nd day of openning. As being in my thought, there should be plenty of cherry to choose when we arrive there. I sent serveral emails to some owners of the orchards but only got one reply from WRC. They told me that it's good to go on June 5th.

Then I sent invitations to many friends, including some friends from ucla and some from bbs. One friend also sent invitations to her friends. We invited about 50 people and finally got positive reply from about 20 people. I was so happy and proud to read the increasing of participants list.

But three days ago when I checked the update info from WRC, I was surprised to see that they postpone the opening date to next weekend. Their reason is due to the unexpected cold weather, which makes the cherry ripe slower than before. I got another reply from them and they inform me about the postpone. I called some other orchards, all of the reply I got are the same as WRC with the same reason. I was frustrated.

Then I got the email address of Ambers from google (thanks god there's something called google) (on the website of Ambers they only provide a form for contact and I submitted my query there but got no reply at all). I sent email to Ambers and got their reply that we can come up at Sunday June 5th (as I asked). Ambers is a big (and young, since 1997) orchard in Leona Valley. Amber is the name of the cute daughter in the owner's family. I changed the event and set the destination to Ambers instead of WRC.

Today(Saturday) I bought some snack and candy, juice for the trip. And then I called two friends whom I planed to pick up tomorrow. After printing the maps I reminded myself to call the auto answering phone of Ambers. It's a pity, bad news. I heard that Ambers has sold out all ripe cherry on June 4th and the next opening date would possibly be next weekend. What a bad news. I just couldn't believe it. Since it's answering machine and nobody was there to pick up the phone, I can't judge by myself whether my previour inquiry about Sunday u-pic is still valid or not. Although there're about 30 orchards in Leona Valley, I wonder whether we can find a good place to enter and pick up the cherry by ourselves.

After talking with some friends, I decided to cancel this event. The feeling is so bad. It's somehow like you have to give up something you like. I like to have an outdoor activity with friends. But this time I cant make it fulfilled. And I am so sorry to let my friends change their schedule in a late time which is close to the set schedule.

Anyway, it's failed and cant be reversed. I wish that next time I can organize a better one.