"I Couldn't"

I couldn’t in the morning: I couldn’t in the night. I couldn’t on the sun-dappled lake or among the empty rows of theater seats or on the Fourth of July when the bright, distant explosions would have deadened my voice. I couldn’t at your family’s cabin among the redwood trees you had played among, the trees you had played among with your brothers as a child, or in the moonlight of my great aunt’s crumbling courtyard, which smelled of gardenias and jasmine she cut in the autumn for my grandmother Colette’s aromatherapy shoppe. I couldn’t in your father’s den, where his trophies glowed in the fireplace light like tiny golden sentries with stern, vigilant gazes.

In the final days of our favorite meeting place – a moss-blanketed hollow now lost to real estate developers – where I imagined the charms of the natural world were ours to keep; above the diving and dipping streets around the Seattle Space Needle, where you first enchanted me with the poetry of Longfellow and Emerson and your eyes, bright against your deep tan, were the epitome of enthusiasm; in stillness of the cemetery, as I wiped salty tears from my pale cheeks and smeared them over your casket and I whispered, “I should have told you the truth,” I couldn’t.

[Note: This is a creative writing imitation exercise I did for my craft and theory class. The original text is an excerpt from a short story by Stuart Dybek entitled "We Didn't." The story appeared in The Best American Short Stories of 1994 and thoroughly details the *ahem* unconsummated attraction of a young man to a young woman. I obviously took my excerpt in a different and much more melancholy direction. As for what it is that the narrator "couldn't" do... I have some ideas, but I'll leave that to the reader's imagination. Also, the awkward repetition of the word "among" in the first paragraph was a result of my attempting to emulate Dybek's use of repetition in the original excerpt.]

I Could Have Died in Colorado

     Some of you may have read my disjointed, incomplete, and poorly written blog about my experience in Colorado.  I wrote it in a fit of recollection, and with a need to get some things off my chest and out into the Interwebs.  Its conception was spurred by two things: the anniversary of the day a giant mechanical bird had carried me back to the safety of home after that unbearable summer was over, and a proliferation of nightmares wherein I had somehow chosen to return and thus found myself face-to-face with 16 weeks of fresh torture.

     There was, however, one very vital thing that I left out of that blog, for whatever reason, when I wrote it more than three years ago.  This incident happened on June 30, 2011, on a Thursday, at about 5pm, in the middle of a thunderstorm.  I came closer to dying that evening than I ever have before or since.  Had things gone differently – by as little as an inch – I would likely either not be here typing right now, or at least the last four years of my life would have gone very differently.

     I had a page and a half of a paper left to write for Dr. Swartz, and the deadline for her to turn in the grades for my Independent Study on Sherlock Holmes was fast approaching.  In fact, it was the very next day (although she informed me later, mercifully, that she had recalled the paperwork incorrectly and that I actually had an additional two weeks to complete my paper.)  Bad storms had started in the early afternoon – I almost had to dismount my 1 o'clock ride and tie up the horses so we could wait out a lightning storm – with hail and sleet and rain.  As a second storm front was approaching, Hannah was next on the roster to take out the last ride of the day, but somehow she had managed to talk the managers into making me take it instead.  Knowing that I was in desperate need of finishing my psychological profile on Sherlock Holmes, I was forced to approach her in the barn and plead with her to take her own ride out, which she grudgingly agreed to (though she didn’t actually tell me this – I discovered it when I walked out into the corral and saw her preparing her guide horse.) 

     Three of her five riders were mounted, one was preparing to mount, and one did not yet have a horse.  Whiskey, the gelding that had been assigned to the last rider, was standing by the barn, his lead rope tied to the hitching rail that ran along the barn’s long side, about three feet from the wall.  I rushed into the beginnings of a hail storm to tighten his cinch and bridle him (rides go out rain or shine as long as the clients consent.)  As I got the bit into his mouth, an extraordinary lightning strike lit up the entire corral with two rapid-fire flares of light.  I had only enough time to imagine what the accompanying thunderclap would be like when it exploded overhead in the kind of deafening roar I had only read about in novels.

     To this day I have no idea how any of the other horses in the corral reacted to this sudden assault on the senses, because my entire world was suddenly consumed by the creature I was touching in that moment.  Whiskey spooked, rather predictably under the circumstances, as I was stretched upward with both of my hands between his ears, attempting to fix his headstall in place.  He reared up in primal terror and jerked back from the hitching rail, naturally dragging me with him, my hand still gripping his unsecured browband.  He then of course discovered that he couldn't run away because his head was tied, which terrified him even more. His jerky, prancing steps churning up the corral sludge under him, he pivoted his back end toward me and I heard one of the other wranglers shout, "Get away now!"  I started to scramble backward, but I either slipped and fell or Whiskey knocked me over, because suddenly I was landing hard on my back in the cold mud.  My first thought was, "Roll under the hitching rail so he can't step on you.  He won’t be able to get you if you roll under the hitching rail."  A moment later, however, I realized the fall had disoriented me; I had no clue where the hitching rail was or which way to roll to get myself to safety.

     Then I felt the impact of his hooves landing heavily in the mud on either side of me.  He had backed up over top of me after I fell, and all I could think then was, "He is going to crush you."  I expected to feel blinding pain at any moment, but it didn't happen, and to this day I don’t know how he could have missed me.  I flipped myself over, crawled away and was on my feet in what must have been just a few seconds.  I had aimed for the hitching rail but when I opened my eyes I discovered that I was actually crawling away from Whiskey, and away from the hitching rail by about 50 degrees.  Another wrangler shouted to me to get into the barn, then handed me two still-saddled horses while the rest of the crew hustled to get the tacked horses either untacked or into the barn so their leather saddles wouldn’t be ruined in the downpour.  I stood there holding Happy and Sawyer, trembling and taking stock of the mud I was carrying on my shirt and jeans.  Looking past the tie stalls, I noticed in a fleeting moment that Whiskey was not where I had left him, and imagined him running across the corral while his lead rope dangled from the hitching rail with a broken snap.  What actually happened, I don’t really know.

     I remember sitting on the bench in the barn after someone took the horses from me, and I remember Jen asking if I was okay and me replying with something about being more freaked out than anything.  The adrenaline was still proliferating; the pain in my arms and hip was dull and numb, but my palms had started to burn where the mud had scoured them. The thought "I am going to die" had not entered my mind until I was on my feet and walking away, and did not enter it again until later than evening.

     I was denied leave to clean myself up, nor was I excused from barn duty that night.  I put away saddles and filled grain cans and raked stalls and picked manure with everyone else, unaware of the broken skin under the mud on my palms and forearms.  I was also not excused from kitchen-cleaning duty, or entitled to any special treatment the next day at work.  This affected me not only because of the visible limp caused by my severely right bruised hip and ankle, but because of the emotional toll that a near-death experience can have on a person.  I do not recall any of the managers asked me how I was, but I do remember, quite vividly, being yelled at for not moving fast enough.

     When I had finally climbed into the shower that evening, the pressure of the homesickness, the pain, the stress, the shock, and the dread of going to the barn’s sister stable that Saturday pressed in on my chest and I had an emotional breakdown, sobbing alone in the bathroom.  After my customary Thursday night of Ryan-thinks-he’s-a-good-cook-and-I-should-just-clean-up-after-him-on-the-night-we-share-kitchen-responsibilities, I pulled out my laptop with the hope of finding Jennie on AIM or Skype.  I broke down again while telling her what had happened, and making her promise not to say anything about it to Mom or Cindy.  I knew that Mom would freak out in a world-bending way, and that Cindy could probably not be trusted to keep it to herself, under the circumstances.  (My original plan was to not tell any of my family members what had happened until I was home safe, yet on my first day off after it happened, I called my dad – as I always did – and the first words out of my mouth were, “I almost died on Thursday.”)

     I have never thought about it before writing this blog, but I wonder if the person who was supposed to ride Whiskey that evening remembers this.  I wonder what he or she was thinking, and if he or she ever relates the story to friends and family or wonders whatever happened to the girl who almost got trampled by the young chestnut in a thunderstorm.

     I learned later, from my bunkmate Caroline, that Whiskey had bad knees despite his young age and wasn’t expected to return to Colorado the next summer.  In fact, her determination as a horseman was that he was not fit to be ridden every day over rough terrain as it was, and that from the looks of things, the company (which shall remain nameless throughout this blog for obvious reasons) was likely going to continue pushing him through the trails until his knees gave out entirely.  I cannot attest to this as fact, given the crumbling nature of my memory and the second-hand nature of the information, but to be honest it doesn’t seem unlikely given my own experience with these same managers.  While I was never quite comfortable bridling Whiskey after he almost killed me, I couldn’t help but feel sympathy for his circumstances.  I had myself been thoroughly used and often treated less like a person and more like an instrument of profit, much like a shovel or a wheelbarrow – necessary for the functioning of the business, but not deserving of much regard.

     But this facet of my experience is for another time.  My managers had organized sight-seeing trips for us throughout the summer and taken us out to dinner two or three times, and if you have read my Colorado Nightmare blog, you’ll know that two of my managers especially deserve recognition for seeing their employees as humans and not strictly assets for profit.  I should probably keep these few bright spots in mind while writing about how terrible the business was to work for, but gestures of kindness mean significantly less when one’s everyday behavior is so callous and inhuman.

Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire

Part 2: Inside the Faire

Me and Claire!!

     Holy cow, that whole experience is already over, and I’m back at work and on my way to having a near-normal schedule between the two jobs.  It’s astounding how much it cost us just to drive to and from the festival.  I had anticipated using one full tank of gas (about $25, for Zoë) per trip.  This ended up being perfectly accurate (see yesterday’s anecdote about my empty gas tank) but the toll roads ended up costing more than twice as much as the gasoline.  Even though we bought no souvenirs, this was an expensive trip!

     The faire itself was quite fun, although I was thoroughly disappointed with the jousting demonstration; of the 30-45 minutes we spent watching, perhaps a minute or two consisted of actual jousting.  The rest was all over-the-top theatrics, knights trash-talking each other, and constant bids for cheers from the audience.  I wanted to see some horses running at each other, dammit!

 

     What else?  Past experience with blogging demands that I mention everything that I can remember, because I’ll likely regret it deeply if I don’t.  It took a lot of effort for me to not buy anything, because there were dresses and corsets and leather and journals and dragons and swords (I legitimately almost bought a sword) and these beautiful shiny necklaces with matching earrings (which I came very, very close to buying) and a lovely velvet cloak of forest green and brown that was exactly what I was looking for around Halloween last year.  I have already looked up the vendors for these last two items (The Fairie Tailor out of Massachusetts and Princessories) and have found their websites, although one of each would run me well over $100, hence my reticence to purchase them at the faire.  I must control myself, because Dad.  Dad and Scotland.  Maybe I should stick a picture of Dad to the back of my debit card.  Self-control, ENGAGE!

     While I did not seriously consider purchasing a drabbit at the faire, it was impossible not to notice the woman shouting in repetitive monotone in the middle of the street that led to the jousting field.  Every time we passed The Imaginarium Gallery, we could hear her calling for takers for the nightly drawing, where you could pick up a raffle ticket (“COMPLETELY, TOTALLY, ABSOLUTELY, 100%  FREE!!!”) and possibly win  your very own drabbit.  What is a drabbit, you ask?  A drabbit is, of course, a cross between a dragon and a rabbit.  It is a small dragon-like creature with a fluffy, feathery mane and tail that spends its time, once you have shelled out the money, sitting on your shoulder looking adorable.  Or terrifying.  Or sad.  In fact, drabbits can be found in almost any combination of shape, color, and personality, and were indeed found on the shoulders of at least half of the faire’s child visitors (I can only imagine how many cumulative hours’ worth of whining our fairegoing parents withstand each weekend at the hands of this particular vendor.) The one feature that the creatures all share is a long stick that is stuck down the back of its wearer, under his or her clothing.  In addition to stabilizing the drabbit (I assume,) the end of the stick contains a small medallion that can be secretly twisted to move the drabbit’s head from side to side.  Not quite life-like, but rather ingenious nonetheless.

Miniature Chicken Little seems very
out of place

     The clear popularity of this particular product makes it worthy of mention here, but there was something else the Imaginarium Gallery boasted that enticed me more than their extensive collection of drabbits.  Within the shed that houses the store is a hallway loaded with a glass-enclosed assortment of iconic creatures of literary and filmic fame.  The faces of E.T., Gollum, the Cryptkeeper, Master Yogurt, Medusa, Admiral Ackbar, and the Terror Dogs (of Ghostbusters fame.)  I was unsure if we were allowed to take pictures in the gallery, but I could not resist taking one of the stunningly realistic, life-sized figure of Mohawk, the spiked-gremlin-turned-oversized-spider and one of the primary antagonists of Gremlins 2: The New Batch.

Jason tries on a helmet in the
Pirate's Treasure Ship

     Claire made sure that she got us onto the Pirate’s Treasure Ship (take a hard right after the castle gates,) where I experienced the aforementioned urge to purchase a sword.  They had a special wherein if you bought a film replica sword (Sting, for example, or Andúril, of Lord of the Rings fame,) you could get a dagger-sized replica for free (mix and match, if I’m not mistaken.)  There was also a $20 raffle ticket for sale with an impressive blade as a prize at the other end, but it seemed even more financially irresponsible than just buying a sword outright.  Moreover, Claire declared her resolution to not purchase a sword herself, citing financial responsibility, and I was forced to grudgingly assent that I did not need one either.
 

     One of the first things we saw upon entering the faire was the Historical Glassworks demonstration.  Jason was enthralled by this, and we stopped to watch the master glassblower work his magic.  We didn't get to see much of the demonstration, but the way he and his assistant stretched the glass thirty feet or so before it cooled, then broke the long, thin tube cleanly into short segments, was pretty astounding.  Jason mentioned offhand that he thought it would be a cool thing to learn how to do, and suggested that we try it as a couple's activity (although later I learned that he is more interested in the demonstration than in the learning – and there went a great Christmas gift idea.)
 

     I feel like we didn’t look at a lot of the food vendors (it almost seems as though there was an entire street of food that we didn’t get to see.)  Jason got some pulled pork with sauerkraut and something that was supposed to be a potato pancake but was actually a hash brown, mostly because he was hungry when we got to the pavilion where Tartanic was playing and the German vendor was the only one nearby.  He was set on having a turkey leg from the beginning, and on Sunday Claire knew exactly where to go to get them.  I had planned to just nibble a bit on Jason’s, as I was understandably nervous about getting one for myself and leaving a large portion uneaten after coming up against fat and tendons and gristly bits.  However, an odd thing happened when Jason ordered his leg.  He asked for one, and paid for one, then the cashier shouted, “Two!” down the counter, and suddenly Jason had two turkey legs in his hands instead of one.  Unsure of the protocol when one is handed a spare turkey limb, and quickly becoming crowded out by other fairegoers looking to gnaw on the classic drumstick, he determined that a misunderstanding had taken place somewhere down the line that could not be easily rectified, and handed me the spare leg.  It was a fortunate circumstance not only because we technically got our legs for half price, but because my particular leg was fantastic, and I was able to eat nearly all of it without encountering any significant amount of unappealing squooshy bits.  (I’m realizing as I write this how many photo-ops I missed out on during this weekend.  I might need to start tearing pages out of Cindy’s book and snapping pictures any time half an opportunity presents itself, because a picture of Claire and Jason working through their turkey legs would have been priceless.)
 

     On Sunday, before the Human Chess Match, Jason bugged me into getting an overpriced (and frankly subpar) lemonade, and an similarly overpriced (and frankly delicious) chocolate-dipped banana on a stick.  And… that’s about it for our food-related experiences.  We stopped at a place called the Queen’s Confections, which sold desserts, and a place called the Swashbuckler Public House that sold Scotch eggs, but the prices at these places stopped me from wanting to get anything.

     Show-wise, we saw/heard the last three songs of a Tartanic set, as I mentioned, which was pretty awesome, and Jason surprised the crap out of me by saying that he actually liked their sound and casually suggesting that he should get one of their CDs.  We caught a teeny bit of the Royal Falconer’s act, and teeny snippets of a few others, on Saturday.  The only show we saw from start to finish was the “Ultimate Joust” at the end of the day.  As I have said, this was a jousting event that contained very little jousting and a considerable amount of scripted back-and-forth quibbling between four men in armor.  Jason and I happened to sit on the left side of the audience, which was by tradition, we learned, conscripted to cheer for the “bad guy” knights, Tristian and Robert, who fought not for chivalry and honor, but for blood and glory.  When Tristian came out speaking with a brogue, and the vaguely Orlando Bloom-esque Robert appeared shortly after, I was content that we had chosen a good side.  Their fervently declared thirst for murder and their flagrant male chauvinism toward the queen, however, I could have done without.

King Henry addresses the audience and the mounted knights.

Don't blink, or you'll miss the actual jousting!

     Before too long it became awfully difficult to take any of the knights very seriously.  Their clearly enunciated, clearly scripted shouting, designed for the sole purpose of activating the audience, reminded me very much of the wrestlers I watched when I worked with Al at Mega Championship Wrestling years ago.  Then, after the few hot seconds of actual jousting we got to see, there was a relatively epic battle between the king’s players and the street ruffians that supported Robert and Tristian (also reminiscent of MCW.)
 

Looney Lucy and Ploppy

     Claire offered to guide us through the list of performers at the Sunday faire.  We caught the first half of “Whose Jest is it Anyway?”, an improve show (obviously) that I would have liked to have seen more of, with six players and a host, before scooting off to the Boars Head for a brawl.  The story involved a chest of gold that was being guarded for a lord by one very stoic Captain of the Guard and one slightly goofy yeoman (think Pinky and the Brain,) and the hijinx of the various parties trying to get their hands on it.  The young and inexperienced yeoman was one of my favorite characters at the faire.  Later in the day we saw “Looney Lucy and Ploppy’s Rated X Smut Show,” which was awkwardly entertaining.  This was especially true for the poor audience member they plucked from the front row, unshirted, and subjected to a serious of poetic and, um, very aggressive affections.  Aside from a constant recycling of vagina-based slapstick, it was a pretty good time. 
 

     Ploppy reappeared later in the day with the Mud Squad for a messy reimagining of William Shakespeare’s classic tale of murder and madness in a royal Danish family.  Ploppy took on the role of narrator (and king and queen, as needed,) Ozzie played the plausibly insane Hamlet, and young Snarfy had to make do with racing back into their burlap-screened shack every several moments to change personas in order to perform as every other character in the play.  *note: during most of this show I was working through my delectable aforementioned turkey leg, and as such was slightly less engaged than I might have been*

Captain Bertram Powell takes on... someone?
(I'm not entirely sure who that is. Apologies.)

A young fairegoer is chosen to square off against at least
four adversaries in a game of tug-of-war.

     The Human Chess Match was another very campy sort of scripted and choreographed mix of skill and brawn.  The king and queen sat in their thrones, presiding over a massive chess board filled with players, including the jousting knights and many of the characters we had seen that day.  Henry and Catherine called out directions to their living chess pieces, and when two came into the same square they would face off in combat with swords, pikes, axes, bare hands, etc. The loser would exit the board as it was reset for the next move.  

 

I was torn at one point when the bearish Scotsman Finlay Muir (FREE SCOTLAND!!!) stood up to his English dictator… by insulting not only the queen, but all of womankind.  I suppose that’s something I would have to get used to if I actually want to submerge myself in the Dark Ages.

     In the end the queen won the chess match, but not before the knights, who had been stationed in the four corners of the chess board, had exchanged a few more insults and the king established the rules for the evening’s Ultimate Joust Which Will Contain Very Little Actual Jousting.  This, of course, we did not stay for, having seen the show on the previous night and having not been terribly impressed with it.

 

      However it disappointed me overall, the joust did succeed in one aspect exactly as I had anticipated – it made me dreamily revisit my graduation-era desire to work with jousting horses. The entire experience at the faire, especially the players interacting with visitors throughout the day, made me wish that I had succeeded in that pursuit.  In a roundabout way it also helped to re-concentrate me on my weight loss and body strengthening goals; although I have lost a significant amount of weight since graduation, I’m still not nearly as strong as I would need to be for that line of work.  Balin’s great riding (which Claire also noted on Sunday) stirred an oft-suppressed desire that I am now two decades familiar with.  I want to be in a saddle again.

     Maybe I’ll ask Jason for some strength training advice, if he’s not too annoyed with my too-casual workout philosophy to want to give it a go.  Or, maybe this is all foolish and I should stick with the much more academic pursuits that seem to be currently engulfing my life.  Or maybe I should simply put it on the back burner until after I get my master’s degree, or at least until I find if any of my chosen colleges would be willing to admit me into a master’s program.  Then I’ll try to get back in touch with Shane Adams.  And in the meantime I’ll continue improving myself as much as I can.
 

     Anyway, Jason and I seem to agree on our overall impression of the faire.  I had not been to one since the summer before I left for college, and the Geneva Renaissance Festival seems quite small in comparison to this one, with a ticket cost that grows every year.  Assuming that the cost and other logistics do not get in the way, I would definitely choose to go back next year.  Perhaps I would also expand my Renaissance Festival circle and give tries to a few other festivals that I’ve never been to (that would probably mean getting my research done a lot sooner in the year so as to get things planned accordingly.)

 

     Or… perhaps I will not have to pay for a ticket the next time I go to a festival.  If I can find my way into the traveling barn of a jousting troupe, that is.  A far-fetched dream, perhaps, but one I have not yet had the strength to let go of.

Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire gates,
Mt Hope Estate & Winery, Manhein, PA

Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire

Part 1:  Outside the Faire

Excerpt from my real-time journal:

≈3:40 pm                                                                                     9/5/15

     Wow, this car ride feels even longer than I expected it to.  At least my ears have started to feel sort of normal again.  Jason’s been driving since the last rest stop, because my head was starting to hurt and I felt like I needed to be able to stretch my neck a bit.  My range of motion is limited as long as I need to keep my eyes on the road.

     Google Maps says we still have an hour to go before we get to Manheim (Jason just grabbed hold of the emergency brake again – it’s a habit he has when he’s driving) and I’m wondering if we should skip the festival tonight and go straight to the B&B.  If we don’t get there until 5pm or later, it probably won’t be worth the price of the tickets, even at half off.

     I should mention that Jason has stopped me from eating ice cream three times so far today.  He’s a good boy.

Several days after the faire, I begin recording the experience…

Picture from the home page of their website.

     The B&B Jason found turned out to be about half an hour from the faire grounds, which is not a bad drive, but it was in the middle of a very Amish-esque landscape, which meant that there was NOTHING around it but wide rolling hills and houses.  We got there before 9pm on Saturday, and the welcome letter Jason had been promised was lying on the desk with directions to our room and information about the breakfast schedule.  Our room had a very tall four-post bed that I had to climb into; I had hoped for/expected a canopy based on what I saw through the first-floor windows as we passed by outside, but the third-floor rooms did not have them.  This was probably due to the rather odd shape of the ceiling.  How to describe this ceiling?  Probably because we had a corner room, and owing to the house’s period-appropriate proliferation of gables, a huge portion of our ceiling in the corner across from the door was, well, in our room instead of above it.  The sloping of the roof outside took away a sizeable chunk of the room’s volume.  

(The picture to the left is the only picture I took of the room, because for some reason taking pictures of the room didn’t seem important until after we left.  You can see, in the top right, the odd way in which the ceiling invades the open space of the room.  You can also see Jason on the bed, probably saying something like, “Come cuddle on me!”)

     There were two broad mirrors, one above the sink and its counter near the door, and one above the wide dresser that sat by the bathroom door.  On the far side of the bed were a small writing desk and an overstuffed chair.  The one quite puzzling feature of the room was the extra door that faced the foot of the bed.  Exploring the room upon arrival, and having already found the bathroom, we were surprised not only to find that this door opened for us, but that it opened to another bathroom… with another bedroom beyond it.  Considering the apparent age of the buildings and its furnishings, it is not so surprising that one room should open into another.  However, in view of its current use as a bed and breakfast, I would expect the door to be permanently locked as long as there are unrelated guests in one or both rooms.  There were two standard locks on the door, so we locked the one on our side and sort of hoped that the room keys we had received were not also inter-room keys.  This oddity also served to inform us of the very close proximity of our neighbors.  So that we didn’t, you know… talk too loud or something.

     After an unsuccessful search for ice to fill our complimentary ice bucket (“bucket” doesn’t sound right, but even after a 5-minute Internet search I don’t know if there’s a better term,) I took a shower while Jason left to investigate the dining situation.  By the time I got out of the shower he had procured not only ice but two bowls of soup as well.  It looked like a creamy chicken-based soup, but was much thinner than it appeared and had an unexpected spiciness to it.  We added the provided crackers, but it would have been better served by a dumpling or two.

     As always, I found it difficult to sleep in an unfamiliar bed, so although I did sleep, it’s impossible to say how much.  In the morning, after I managed to drag Jason out of the morning cuddle, we went to the sun room for breakfast.  It wasn’t a “grab what you want” affair like a typical continental breakfast; we sat down to a three-item menu – apple pancakes, granola yogurt, or breakfast quiche – and all-you-can-drink coffee, water, and juice.  I ordered the pancakes and Jason settled on the yogurt.  His had a thin layer of caramelized sugar on top, and mine had orange zest mixed in with the batter (tasted fine, but I had not expected the zest to be in the pancakes and felt that it competed too heartily with the apple flavor.)  Both plates came with a bit of fresh fruit, a piece of candied bacon (delicious, but a pit over-peppered and thus too bitey for me,) and some form of breakfast potato.  Jason’s potato item had a conspicuously crispy crust, and mine looked like bread pudding, which naturally resulted in a great deal of confusion on the part of my palate when I took a bite.  Given my generally high level of finickiness with regard to breakfast potatoes, it is almost astonishing that I really liked them, even the parts that touched my syrup.

     The fruit portion of the meal consisted of a slice of orange, a wee bunch of grapes, and a thin slice of kiwi with the skin still on it, which Jason thought was unacceptable but which I ate completely.

     We learned after breakfast that checkout was at 10:30 rather than 11 (don’t most hotels have an 11am checkout time?) so when we got back to our room we were in a bit of a rush to get our things together.  I wanted to put on my gypsy outfit before we left, but realized as soon as I had it on that it might be awkward to walk through the halls of a bed and breakfast with my entire midriff bared for all staff and visitors to see.  I put on the only thing we had handy – Jason’s oversized raincoat that didn’t look AT ALL suspicious – before we gathered our things to leave.  We made it to the desk about 8 minutes late, and checkout ended up taking several minutes while the manager attempted to look up a receipt so she could overcharge us properly for the previous night’s soup.  While awaiting a response from the kitchen staff, we learned that Jason has a doppelgänger living in the farmhouse behind the B&B’s property.  And his name… is Jordan. *Twilight Zone music*

     Zoë’s gas light came on as soon as Jason started her up.  He had agreed to drive to the festival so that I could focus on completing my outfit with the requisite accessories, but instead I ended up navigating and fretting about gasoline.  The route that Google found for us was not the one that Siri had found the night before.  I must have accidentally selected the search filter “Most Remotely Rural Route In Existence That Will Still Take Us More Or Less Directly There,” because it took us through the most winding, snakey, deserted, Amish Country-esque roads possible, with sprawling farm properties that may or may not have even discovered gasoline yet.  Hilly terrain is not ideal for a very low gas tank, so I was uneasy and silently coaching Zoë for the whole drive, plus navigating for Jason, so I didn’t actually have time to accessorize.  We ended up making it to a gas station just past the faire, so all my fretting was for naught.

     I realized well into typing up my account of the weekend’s experience that the entire thing was taking up quite a bit of space and that it may be pertinent to break it into two separate posts.  My next post, therefore, will cover the actual events of the faire, with Saturday’s and Sunday’s events being related concurrently, partly because the two days ran into each other in my memory even as we were driving back to Ohio, and partly because I want to group our activities in a logical way, which meant talking about all of the food in one paragraph, the merchants in another, etc.  The next one, I assure you, will contain many more pictures.  Read on and enjoy!

♥

SM

Great Big Chicago

Part III... THE SHOW!!!

     As is my custom, I will present the notables of the show in bulleted format:

~  The show carried characteristic energy from band and audience, though the onstage banter was somewhat stunted.  Séan seemed to me to be a bit out of sorts – more than once I noticed him staring off into space, and his customary cheeky grins were few and far between.

~  Alan’s first comment concerned the awesome history of the House of Blues Chicago.  His mention of the Blues Brothers sent Séan into blues mode, and he offered us minute renditions of “Flip Flop & Fly” and “Soul Man” before Alan introduced the next song.  He began by pointing out that, “In Newfoundland, our horses are dead before the song even starts… and I’m just now realizing this!”  Séan responded with, “Flip flop fly… I think my horse just died…”

~  Just before sending us into intermission with “Lukey,” Alan boasted that the show up to this point had been nothing more than an opener.  “How was that for an opening act?” he asked us.   “How was that for an appetizer?  How was that for foreplay?”

~  Alan let us know a few songs into the second set that his application for popedom had been rejected.  Since Brit handed him his electric guitar, I assumed this was a precursor to some song that might explain why he was rejected, for example because he’d sold his soul to the devil in exchange for a lifetime of rock ‘n’ roll. Rather, it appeared he was interested in the Pope’s position more for the power than the religion, because he assured us that the world will sing when he is king. 

~  Alan, Bob, and Séan were all wearing black, but Kris and Murray had not received the memo and were both looking slightly less stylish in red/orange plaid shirts.

~  I didn’t get to see much of Chicago due to my short stay, and even less due to the booger-freezingly cold weather, so I did not know that “the best thing about Chicago is that the pubs stay open all night.”

~  Séan thanked the United States for their enthusiastic embrace of St. Patrick’s Day, suggesting that it would have been relegated to a minor holiday by now if the Americans had not insisted on being such passionate celebrants.  He then thanked the United States for American girls, whom he likes so much that he married one.

~  It seems that Bob was not actually at the show but was joining us via hologram.  He was in fact relaxing on a deck chair in Palm Beach or something, sipping a fancy tropical drink.  Fine by me; after my dream the previous night, I was just glad he was still alive.

~  Speaking of Bob, he seemed less than thrilled with my panty-flinging shenanigans.  I actually was as well; I ought to have practiced a bit more in the hotel room, and I may have learned that the flinging release that had worked so well with the last thong I used would not be as efficient for the less-than-aerodynamic-yet-magnificently-colored briefs I had chosen this time around.  They did, however, remain onstage until the last encore, at which point a stealthy stagehand snatched them up in the process of gathering up Bob’s menagerie of instruments.  Even though I was paying attention this time, I still did not actually see it happen. Sneaky stagehands.

~  I have the beginnings an idea for the next show, having met so many audience members this time around that would surely have helped me out.  The idea is as follows: Purchase perhaps six or seven pairs of panties, find cohorts in the audience willing to throw them, and have a small, unexpected shower of panties rain upon Bob.  He would be EXCESSIVELY unamused.

~  “Whataya At?” from the band’s debut CD, was apparently used in a commercial for some manner of toll-free phone service in Newfoundland in 1993 or 4, and we had the pleasure of watching said commercial on the screen behind the band before the b’ys launched into the song.  Alan said he loved the commercial despite its cheesiness because it had suggested to people that they were globe-trotting superstars when in fact the globe that they were trotting at the time consisted of almost the entire southeastern coast of Newfoundland.

~  Disappointingly, Alan informed us that all Great Big Sea shows are actually lip-synched, and proved it to us by pointing out that, “Nobody could bust these wicked dance moves and still have breath to sing.”

~   The band’s first time playing at the HOB Chicago was either 18 years ago or 75 years ago, and they were the first of three opening acts for an artist whose name I do not recall. However, this artist didn’t actually know they were opening for him.  In fact, no one did – apparently they snuck in, set their gear up onstage and were such an opening opening act that they literally played before the doors opened and as folks were coming in.

Marley and Tosh are not the only two dogs in the McCann household.  According to Alan’s introduction to Sean during “The Old Black Rum,” he actually owns “about a thousand Beagles.”

During Bob’s spotlight, Alan introduced him by saying that he “plays the everything.”

Set list!

Ordinary Day

Captain Kidd

Billy Peddle

Heart of Hearts

Jack Hinks

England

Flip Flop Fly Diamond and Soul Man (Sean)

Charlie Horse

Whataya At?

River Driver

Ferryland Sealer

When I’m Up

Yankee Sailor

Come and I Will Sing You

Lukey

INTERMISSION

Let My Love Open the Door

Love me Tonight

The Night Pat Murphy Died

When I am King

General Taylor

The Scolding Wife

Sea of No Cares

Good People

Helmethead (har har)

Consequence Free

Mari Mac

Run Runaway

Live This Life

Old Black Rum

Wave Over Wave

     And now for the post-show excitement, which is the reason the actual show had to exist in its own separate blog.

     Kim stopped on our way out of the House of Blues proper to chat with GBS’s sound guy (she knows freakin’ EVERYBODY,) then we parted ways so she could head back to the Foundation Room and I could find the swag table.  The Chicago’s House is much more complicated than Cleveland’s, with several floors and balconies and hallway thingies, and the merch table was situated next to coat check in what may have been the front of the venue but felt like the back.  A random guy stopped to high-five me, presumably because of my shirt, and we had an odd exchange that I can’t remember the details of.  But I’m pretty sure his drunk girlfriend thought I was into her or something, because she was quite tall and her Sisters were right as my nose height as I shoved through the crowd and I heard her make a slurry and suggestive noise as I passed.

     I got a pin (in case you didn’t know, I have found myself to be a pin collector, and this one now has a position of prestige on the front of my bodhrán case,) a keychain (because I don’t have enough, I guess,) and a signed poster (which, upon boarding the bus home, I discovered I had left in the hotel room – Kim assures me that “this is easily fixed,” so I am not FREAKING OUT TOO MUCH, I SWEAR.)  The swag guy over-charged me by $5, a realization that sunk in about 15 minutes later but at the time only glanced off my brain through the predictable post-concert fog.  I suppose that I can’t complain, having been ever-so-graciously hosted by Kim during my stay and knowing that the money goes to a worthy cause – the cause of letting Alan buy an extra round at the Boulder shows.

     Back in the Foundation Room I immediately ordered myself an ice water, grateful to have a bar so close and convenient after an evening of screaming and standing and dancing.  I sat for what must have been around half an hour, occasionally engaging in conversation but generally getting sleepy and feeling uncomfortable in a crowd that was significantly larger than it had been earlier in the day.  I kept wondering what on earth I was doing there, since I always feel so very out of place in crowds and in this case felt the need to cling to Kim or, in her absence, my bar stool.

     I also spent some time in front of the fireplace, having gotten chilly but not yet resigning myself to cover up my I♥BOB shirt with my White & Nerdy hoodie (and it was in fact a very romantic-ish fireplace.)  At some point after that period of waiting and being sleepy and wondering if I should turn in, I noticed that the crowd had become slightly more jovial, and when I turned around I was not exactly surprised to see Alan floating around in a sea of people.

    I was slightly embarrassed (well, maybe embarrassed is the wrong word) when I heard Kim say to Alan, “Could you turn around and say hello to my friend Sarah?”  My first thought was, “Ha, Dad!  Alan Doyle shook MY hand!” and my second was, “He was right, Alan does have big hands.”  My third was something about how socially awkward I am that Kim had to get Alan’s attention for me, and how in the heat of the moment I had no idea whatsoever what to say to Alan Doyle once I was face-to-face with him.

     Alan wandered around meeting and greeting, as is his spotlight-loving custom, and perhaps 10 minutes later (time almost has no meaning, in the Foundation Room) I noticed him posing for pictures.  Naturally I followed my instinct, fetching my camera and inching closer until such a time as I could catch his eye.  This involved waiting patiently while two or three deeply inebriated individuals staggered up to him to tell how much they loved him and ask for an autograph.

     “Hi,” I said as casually as was possible under the circumstances, “I was wondering if I could get a picture.”

     He gave me his best charming game face and replied, “Sure, but you have to be in it too.” (As if that wasn’t the idea already.)  Kim was nearby and more than willing to manhandle my camera for me.  She snapped two pictures while I stood for twenty or so blissful seconds with my arm around Alan’s waist.  This picture shall of course become my Twitter avatar, and possibly my phone wallpaper, as soon as it becomes feasible.

     Alan did not comment on my shirt, nor did he mention my panty-flinging shenanigans.  I wanted to ask him what Bob really thought of them, but part of me was certain that if he were to be honest with me, I might not like the answer.  Instead I told him how much I enjoyed reading his journal entries on greatbigsea.com about the time he spent in England training for and filming Robin Hood with Russell Crowe, remembering the jealousy and wonder with which I read of his experiences being trained in theatrical swordfighting, archery, horseback riding, and such.  I had been wondering if the barn I had seen a dream-job posting for, located in Warwickshire, England, was the same barn that had provided the horses and the training for the actors in the movie (they list Robin Hood among their movie credits, but do not specify which incarnation of the story they were involved with.

(NOTE Dad later made the following comment: “You have two songs about horses and you don’t know anything about them?  It’s a wonder you ever got Kit out of Tickle Cove Pond!”  Hahaha.  You so funny, Daddy.)

     I found myself noticing that despite the very close proximity and excessive talking (and the fact that he had a beer in his hand and the very logical assumption that it was not his first of the night) I detected no alcohol on his breath.  In fact, I noticed no untoward scent at all, which I found fascinating.  A bizarre thought flashed across my mind and disappeared as quickly – if Alan Doyle does not become King of the World, he at least has a very real shot at some kind of dental hygiene award.

     I think what excited me the most about this encounter was that for what could have been ten minutes of my life, I had Alan’s undivided attention.  There were dozens of people in that room with us, and he made his rounds as a generous star does, but for those minutes I was a fan, and he was a musician, and he was choosing to talk to me when he could have been with any number of other people.  And not once did he make me feel like I was taking up his time or badgering him unnecessarily (I’m looking at you, Steve Twigger.)  Plus, you know, he hugged me.  J

     Sometime after this moment of Awesome I noticed that Kris had wandered into the Foundation Room.  Brit had parted ways with Kim several minutes earlier, citing bus pull (when the bus is supposed to leave the venue for either the hotel or the next city,) which was supposed to be at 1am.  It was ten minutes past when Kris appeared, apparently having been sent to fetch Alan, who went on cheerily disregarding the face that they were supposed to have left already and was still hob-nobbing with the fans.  Even after my close encounter with sweetheart Alan, I found I had little to no power of social interaction with regard to anyone else, and so Kris went ungreeted by me.  People were filtering out, and I was getting quite sleepy, so I told Kim I was turning in and found my way out of the venue with an absolute minimum amount of getting lost.    

     There is nothing exciting to report from here on out.  I got dressed for bed and snuggled myself under the plush hotel comforter with the customary after-concert bedfellows – a stale headache, ringing ears, a jumping heart, and an overactive mind.  Kim came in just a few minutes after I lay down.  When I heard her cross to her suitcase I rolled over in bed.

“Alan hugged me,” I told her.

She laughed.

♥

SM

Great Big Chicago
Part II - Days 1 and 2
"Gettin' Ready for da Show..."

     I think my body didn’t mind getting out of bed this morning at 6:30 because it was under the impression that it was actually 7:30.  My body is always surprised by time zone changes and is a little slow at catching up.  I wasn’t about to remind it of the one-hour time change, however, because I went into work with Kim this morning and due to rush hour traffic we had to leave by quarter til 7.

     Getting to sleep had been surprisingly easy, given my body’s customary resistance to sleeping in unusual places, but waking up this morning was actually a blessing.  Waking up saved me from playing out a dream that was not entirely pleasant.  I dreamed that I was in Chicago with Kim and we were going to a Great Big Sea concert… but that Bob wouldn’t be attending inasmuch as he was dead.  He’d died in a car accident several months ago (I wonder if this is some remnant of The Lathe of Heaven working on my psyche,) and for some reason I either didn’t know this or was in denial.  I think that I was confused because Dream Sarah and Real Sarah had conflicting memories of Bob’s whereabouts for the past several months, and I was positive that Bob had been with the band just the other day, according to his Twitter feed. 

     Not cool, psyche. Not cool.

     Much of the time I spent in Kim’s office was devoted to finishing up yesterday’s blog post and figuring out bus times for the Cleveland RTA system for when I get back to Ohio tomorrow.  The latter involved unsuccessfully trying to reassure my mother, who clearly feels that I cannot function on my own because I tend to figure things out as I go and never plan far enough ahead for her liking.  Yes, I probably should have worked out a rock-solid plan for getting home upon my return to Cleveland BEFORE today, but I also have resources at my disposal to make sure it gets done.  I don’t always do things the way she wants me to, and I haven’t killed myself through planning-related negligence yet.  In fact, if I DID do everything the way she would, I would never have been to a concert in Cleveland or studied abroad or met Michael or driven to Maryland by myself, and I certainly would not have accepted Kim’s offer to give me the coolest birthday celebration EVER.  I know you’re not reading this, but Mom: Not everything on the other side of our front door is plotting to kill me, and I wouldn’t have survived to 26 if you and Dad had not instilled some common sense in me.  You might be worrying because you care, but from this side it really looks like you’re worrying because you don’t trust me to do anything without you.

     *deep breath*

     Kim took a route along Lake Michigan to show me Chicago’s most posh beach and its skyline from a great photo-taking vantage before we headed to the hotel.  It was at this point that I made the comment that it was “booger-freezing cold” outside, which Kim thought was funny enough to immediately put on Twitter.

     The Hotel Sax is quite literally within spitting distance of the House of Blues.  The front doors were so close together that you could hold your breath, walk out the Sax’s front door, and not even need to inhale when you got into the HOB.  Rising astoundingly over the HOB are the Marina Towers, which somewhat obscured the view out our hotel window.  The famed House of Blues Chicago itself is actually not much to look at.  It’s a sort of squat, grey, nondescript, saddle-shaped thing wedged between the Marina Towers and the Hotel Sax.  The interior, of course, is generously and elegantly architected, and is beautiful and complex and labyrinthine for the uninitiated first-time visitor, but looking at it from the outside, you would never know it.  Dave Barry might call it a turd of a building.

     I relished a shower, having skipped the day before, and went for a short jaunt to the Subway on the other side of the HOB (an EXTREMELY convenient one, from my perspective – there have been many times I’ve wished there was a Subway near the HOB Cleveland, and there’s one right frickin’ next to the HOB Chicago) to get something small to tide me over til dinner.  I then thought I’d go for a brief walk to explore the area, but I got as far as the Chicago Riverwalk before the cold drove me back to the hotel.  I learned later that there is a Dick’s Last Resort like, right underneath of the Marina Towers, right underneath of the Subway I walked into, and below that is a place to park your boat, if you are a river-going boat owner.  The Chicago River, by the way, was still very green, Kim tells me, from the St. Patrick’s Day festivities that took place just a few days ago.  I also took a picture from the foot of one of the Marina Towers looking up.  Basically it looks like a huge scalloped concrete thing, and if you look close at my picture you can see a railing on each and every scallop.

     Kim had not succeeded in napping, so when I returned to the hotel she got dressed and we met Murray (and by Murray I of course mean Murray Foster) at the House of Blues so she could deliver her Irish Car Bomb cupcakes to him.  I was again astounded by her relatively intimate association with the band, as I stood there awkwardly but buzzing with excitement while she chatted with Murray.  I got a handshake and a friendly hello, and he introduced himself to me as if I didn’t already know who he was.  He’s shorter in person.

      We then returned to the hotel, where I ate my allotted cupcake.  In case you are curious, it was a legit tastegasm explosion.  My sister might say it’s what “sex with a cupcake” would be like.  Our less tasty reason for returning to the hotel was to wait for Kim’s friends Jen and Kevin, who arrived not long after.  Jen was in the throes of a sinus infection, which put only a slight damper on her mood.  She was, after all, preparing to attend a Great Big Sea concert at the iconic House of Blues Chicago with pretty much the coolest people in town.  Kim also got a call from her sister (also named Jenny – it just about made me wish I could have brought my own Jennie with me to Chicago) to update her on her progress through the traffic-choked Chicago streets.

     The plan was to eat at the House of Blues restaurant before the show and do Pass the Line to get into the venue first, but when we got to the venue we were informed that the restaurant had been booked for a private party and would not be available tonight.  Kim was something south of livid, until they also informed us – after ten or fifteen minutes of sitting around the House of Blues lobby trying to decide where to eat and what to do or who to talk to that could rectify the situation – that Foundation Room access also came with Pass the Line privileges.  In light of this new information, and assured that we could get from the Foundation Room (which did not open until 5pm) to the House of Blues Proper before the lame people who would be waiting outside, we went around the corner to Bar Louie instead.

     I ordered the Trio Dips & Chips, but ended up mostly eating the guacamole dip.  The salsa was okay, but the queso dip was entirely too spicy and nacho cheesy for my tastes.  Kim told a story about how she learned that Bailey’s Irish Cream needed to be refrigerated, which I thought was hilarious, since it’s a milk-based beverage.  I did, however, relate my experience with it in Scotland, when I bought a bottle but kept it in the cabinet of my desk because I didn’t trust my flatmate and her friends to not drink it.  I did not refrigerate it, and it didn’t go bad, but then, it wasn’t sitting in there for months.  Then there was some adventure of which I did not get the details and on which Kim later refused to elaborate.  In my notes the only thing I have written is, “That’s when Kathy came up and shoved her tongue…”

     Not long after we ordered, a man walked in the door that made my dining companions quite excited.  Kim hugged him and he sat down with us, and I gleaned from their conversation that he was intimately associated with the band.  In fact, I learned, his name is Brit and he’s the head of their road crew.  He stuck around for at least 10 minutes just chatting with Kim like they were old friends.

     The Foundation Room was pretty awesome.  Like, really really awesome.  There were little nook everywhere to sit in, and a long bar that faced a fireplace.  The lighting was low, as is the custom at the House of Blues, and decorated with warm wood tones and vintage patterned rugs.  Off to the left immediately upon entering, there is a tiny room separated from the rest of the place by a curtain that really just invites you to peek through.  If you do, you will see a very intimate lounge lined on both sides by couches separated by a long coffee table, and at the end a gold statue of Buddha sits in an alcove contemplating inner peace.  There was no one in this lounge, which meant that either the crowds had not yet filtered in, or it was by reservation only.

     We found an empty table that required some squishing to fit most of us in, and passed the time talking of the band and our related exploits (Kim has been to roughly 100 Great Big Sea concerts, Kevin roughly 83.)  I related my panty-throwing expertise (or lack thereof) and the time at my first show when I lost my wallet at the Southern Theater in Columbus.  We also discussed the inside jokes of the OKP (the Online Kitchen Party, Great Big Sea’s official message board) and its primary drama-causing agents, something I stay away from on the OKP as avidly as I do in life.  At one point we were approached by a woman, much to the chagrin of Kim and Jen, who shall remain nameless but who is known around the OKP for being one of those monster-rabid superfans who routinely go way too far in their desire to interact with their idols.  She is of the “Well, in my defense, you made it really easy to figure out where you live” persuasion, just south of “permanent restraining order from the band.”  She was already somewhat inebriated by the time she got to us, and I wondered just how much she would be able to enjoy the music and the band by the time the show finally started.  She tried to talk to me, affecting an intimate interest in my life and goings-on, which is weird coming from a person that you only know about through an online community and don’t really talk to even then.  It did, however, make me feel like I was at least somewhat infamous around the OKP, which was kind of cool.

     I kept looking at the time, getting anxious with each passing minute about being first in line to get to the stage once they started letting us in.  When it was finally time, I was annoyed to discover that they had started letting people in from outside before we had been informed that we were cleared to enter the venue.  I still managed to get a sort-of-second-row spot after wedging myself in between a despondent-looking teenage boy and a middle-aged blonde woman with a braying laugh.  And then, as it always happens at the House of Blues regardless of city, the waiting began.  Behind me were two girls who struck up a conversation when they noticed my Weird Al Yankovic hoodie.  I chatted with them for most of the time that we waited (they were thoroughly entertained by my promise to throw underwear at Bob whenever he happened to do a solo.  They introduced themselves as Nathaniel and Supa-fly (allusions to the Weird Al song “Albuquerque”) and one took to showing me her tattoos.  When I asked her the names of the koi fish and the dragon, she said that she had never thought to name them (can you imagine?) and then came up with the names Kelly, Bob, Sheela, and Priscilla for the four figures on her arms.

     Kim, Jen, Jenny, etc. were not as interested in being squished as close to the stage as possible, and left me to my own devices as they hung back and opted for a spot on the floor that offered more elbow room.  So when the show started, we were somewhat separated.  I do regret it some, that I experienced the show more or less on my own rather than in the company of those I had come with, but I still had a rollicking good time.

♥

SM