Now that I've nearly recovered enough, I'll blog about my marathon day this past Saturday. It began when the alarm rang at 5am, and I actually got up. At 6:45am a bleary-eyed John came to the door to pick me up for our trek to Brunswick, the site of the Maine Highland Games, where he was to take many lovely photos of the athletics competition. The Highland Games is rather a fascinating thing; the first step for those not already initiated is to get used to seeing a whole lot of men (and women) wandering around in kilts. Once one gets past this element, amazement sets in at what these men and women in kilts are doing. We witnessed extremely heavy stones and weights being hurled for height and distance, heavy sheaves being tossed backward over a bar with a pitchfork, and the most popular event of all, the caber toss. In this competition, the participants lift and balance a giant log (one was 19 feet and 134 pounds), then run forward to raise momentum and attempt to throw the log hard enough to perfectly overturn it. The level of strength, balance and skill that these athletes possess is difficult to comprehend. Especially since the temperature outside was nearing 90 degrees. I personally sat in the shade of the tent for most of the day; poor John apparently brought home a vicious sunburn as a souvenir. Thanks go out to Leroy and Cindy McDonough for running an excellent games, and for providing me with a free ticket so that I could tag along with the photographer!
Food was next on the agenda, as not much was consumed during the day due to the heat. My recommendation to all you readers: if you should ever find yourself suddenly ravenously hungry after a long day in the sun and need sustenance to continue, Friendly's loaded waffle fries are a good bet. I'm not sure how long it took to clean the plate between the two of us, but we may have set some sort of record. Having filled our bellies, we felt well enough to proceed to the LL Bean flagship store in Freeport for the free Wallflowers concert.
I'll sum up the basics quickly:
Wild Light - opening band. I'm trying to think of a way to be tactful, but I just can't. Picture the worst elements from all the emo bands you can think of, mix them all together, and this is the mess you get. I think our reaction alternated amongst shock, horror, and hysterics.
Trippy old-school cartoons - played on the monitor between acts. Without sound. It was rather entertaining to try to fill in the blanks ourselves, and began the recovery process from the trauma of the opening act.
The Wallflowers - simple, excellent performance. There's not much else to say. Highly enjoyable. Now we just need to speak to them about their choice of opening acts...
For more detail, photos, audio clip, and a wonderful exercise in live micro-blogging, you need to visit John's review on his site, theFiver: http://thefiver.net/?p=612
Although I was nearly delirious after being returned home around 11pm, I was contented after a long, interesting, and all in all really good day.
She's not kidding about the sunburn. It still hurts like a sumbitch! But, like Cube said, "I gotta say it wuz a good day." And I gotta say that's an excellent description of all adventures ensued. Thank you got getting me the gig in the first place – what a cool thing to be paid to do! So glad you came.
ReplyDeleteI'm just bummed that you didn't meet Jamie Fraser. Of course, it would have been extremely disconcerting to meet a fictitious Highlander--who dies sometime in the 1700s. Ah well ;)
ReplyDelete