The Parade

first things first
To Arthur
Sept 24 was the 250th Anniversary of Arthur Guinness signing the 9000 year lease on the st James gate brewery to brew his famous porter stout.

and second things second.
It sure is damn hard to find help these days. For the last month or so I had been posting and pleading with the face book friends (all 138 of them) for a couple walkers to help distribute candy for my entry in the Ovid carriage days parade. I got a couple Maybes but in the end I had one person pull through for me. I ended up entrusting the duties to two great kids, Tristan's son Alec, and My oldest boy Alex. Joe and Sophia handled the kid herding duties. kept them from getting run over, and put frequent stops to the major league pitching of the tootsie rolls from the center of the road. seems the whole point of having candy tossers is to keep the side liner kids from flailing out into traffic and having a collision with a 7 foot tall bicycle....

Of the riders. Initially I had thought that Nathans dad would be the most dangerous to be around. I guess that somehow in my head I had imagined that unicyclists were quite a bit less maneuverable than a bicycle. Maybe maneuverable isn't the word, less predictable would be better suited i think. I was definitely wrong, that little bugger was zipping in and out leaning and arcing like some sort of choreographed dance routine. I only wish that from my aerial perch I could have gotten to witness it more.

Tristan and Alan did quite well, our riding mostly consisted of loops, waving at the people, honking horns and ringing bells. I think overall it was a success. somewhere near the end we ran out of tootsie rolls, and our camera equipment had a malfunction so sadly we got no footage. and an even bigger shame is i secured permission from AJ downing and the Buick6 to use a song in the video provided credit was given, but alas no footage=no video. Maybe we'll have to get together again and tear it up. I thought about going all survivorman style and shooting the video sans help....I dunno, we'll see. I really like Alan's sweeping camera work on the farthing video, downhill speed passes and stuff. with any luck we'll get some press coverage again. it won't be in the Ovid paper till next weekend though. I have been invited to the Holly parade, and if i can round up a couple more brave souls in the next year or so curwood carnie fest is always a possibility.

and odd as it seems, a solution to part of the farthing project came to me in a dream. very weird.....