Chance meetings

Well, I wandered downtown this afternoon, planning to stop off at the Walrus and Carpenter to sell some of my old books and possibly purchase some new ones. As I entered the underpass, I saw the encouraging sign: Road Closed Ahead. My first thought was construction, but actually they had the streets blocked off for a classic car event (The Great Race, I think it was called). So I meandered through and parked on a side street near the W&C. Well, no go. The proprietor was out enjoying the festivities. However, I was out there anyway, so I just wandered around for a while.

I'm not particularly into old cars, though there were some very nice ones. I was more interested in a mini Native American festival two streets over from where I'd parked. They were drumming and chanting and dancing. The costumes were beautiful. There was one girl in blue with red trim, and many feather accessories. Another was in white... it looked like it might have been buckskin. For her sake, I hope it wasn't. It was hot out there. Two males had beaded vests and large feather tails. I think they were supposed to represent turkey tails, but I don't know for sure.

As if it wasn't strange enough to wander into a fascinating event with no prior knowledge of it, I also came across Kim, Spence, David, and Kim's mom (Belle, I think her name is). Kim and I were both more into the Native American dances, while Spencer seemed to be more interested in the cars. David was too tired to care much about any of it (he's not quite two). After they left (Kim: "I want to see this, and then we can go!" Me: "You've said that several times already, haven't you?" Kim: "Uh, yeah..."), there was a brief sampling of Native American flute. These looked to be high school age kids, and all had made their own flutes. None of them played anything very long, but it was quite nice to listen to what they did play.

I wandered a bit more, and found a really cool building with incredibly boring businesses inside...then I decided I was thirsty and didn't feel like paying two bucks for a tiny bottle of dihydrogen monoxide. So I wandered back to my car. All in all, it was an interesting excursion.