Well, not Sucked, exactly, but the Festival didn't have that certain je ne sais quoi I usually get from going. Part of it, quite frankly folks, is this body is getting old and worn. The last two times I've tried to use the exercycle, five minutes in, the center of my chest says, "No mas!" And yesterday's once minor exertions put me down today with "absolutely nothing in the tank". Both will be spoken to at my next Dr visit coming up in just over two weeks. But that wasn't the only problem.
In festivals past, there has been, well, more from the festival itself. For instance, it never was a challenge before to run into the Bagpipe group or the fife and drum group and follow them around a while. In three hours, I saw the bagpipes once (and heard them one other time), and heard once but never saw the f&d boys. The trappers encampment, which used to be mainly Native Americans, seemed all but bereft of them, their places taken by Anglos hawking the same stuff they were at the other end of the park. Now the food was still great, and it is the one time of year that I wish I was Dan Blocker so I could eat something of everything.
| "Not sure I appreciate that remark... but let's eat!" |
And there were the other problems I took in. First, I foolishly decided on long pants, a decision I REALLY regretted by the end of the story. Second, I became obsessed with distance walked. You see, I have one of those pedometers, but it only works half-assed. (For example, it gave me "one mile" from front door to start of festival grounds, and a more-accurate mile and a half the same path back. And by my own estimations, it lost 30%-40% in the thick of the crowds.) Thus, while it claimed "4.31 miles" for the whole day, I guessed it at more like 5 1/2. Third, Laurie took Sunday shift off because she felt "like someone beat me up" and was home in bed.
However, I wandered off with joy in my heart and tried to make the best of things.
| Wasn't sure it was a frog or a clump, so far into the swamp |
| Crossing the St Joe bridge |
| I hadn't seen this firing range chart for the cannons before |
| That's not the camera's fault. Their glass was that messed up. |
| "Close quarters, march!" |
| This dude was really good. He built the act as a young man by talking to old boys who had run real medicine shows. |
| The bluegrass band was good- but about the only ones I found. And they got about half-pissed when the bagpipes came by. |
| And not just because I abandoned them to go listen to the pipes. |
| This stuff always amazes me. How did man even come up with this? |
| Be neat if there were more than just the alpacas, but I guess they are really not equipped for gorillas. |
| Usually I sit and listen to Lincoln, but I was just too pooped. |
I did hit my main goal- a couple of Buffalo Burgers and a cup of cold cider- though I nearly had to share both with a pair of intelligence-impaired bees. And I did score a prize at the antiques row-
-a Champagne Velvet cork cap from the fifties! CV was a brewery from Terre Haute IN. The background that you see there is our fantasy football scoreboard, on which Scrappy set a record this week by scoring 70+ for a second straight week...
Anyway, back to the story. By the time I got done with my feast, the cloggers were clogging disco, the pipes and fifes were in hiding somewhere, and the folk stage was doing a "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too" for the history-impaired, so I decided to get one of those big refillable bottles of ice-cold sarsaparilla and call it a day. And of course, I picked a line that immediately went into slow mode- the line to my left was going half-again as fast, and the one on the right was at least twice as fast. Additionally, I had a group of teens in front of me teaching me far more than I ever wanted to know (especially while sweating to death) about Pokemon Go. It quickly became apparent that the right line was moving so fast because it had two people working together, helping two people at a time, while the one I was in had two workers for whom every order seemed to be confusing. Two people away from the front, a guy came up with, no kidding, two shopping bags worth of bottles to refill. At this point, the other line had mercy on us and invited us over. A drink never tasted so good! However, I was so wiped at this point I abandoned my thoughts of hanging out for another cannon firing and came home.
I straggled in some 4 hours after I left, more dead than alive, shared a maple candy with Scrappy, and hit the showers. I did learn some valuable lessons:
- I may have to bite the bullet and start parking at the Coliseum lot. Not that I'm the only cheapskate- the entire south side of the greenway trail (clearly posted "No Motorized Vehicles"), as well as most of California Road past it, were filled in. But because the 1.5 mile there-and-back MIGHT be getting too much.
-Shorts, not jeans.
-Dark tees that don't show off buffalo sauce so well.
- NO figuring distances.
_ Thank God once again for Stick, without which I would have fell in the plentiful mud more than once.
