|
Saturday, June 14, 2003 Random Adventure The clock tower was open today for climbing, but I couldn't just march up the stairs. I had to wait behind a long line of alumni who had also brought their kids to see the sights. A young boy in near the front of the line clutched his mother's hand and voiced his concerns about falling over the handrail or slipping through the spaces between the stairs. The man in front of me was an alumni of '78 who had gone to Berkeley for graduate work in engineering. He spent the time waiting musing about the clock mechanism and questioning the skinny undergrad of '05 directing the tours when the mechanical was replaced with the electrical. The undergrad shrugged, not knowing the answer. Climbing up and down the almost vertical stairs took a bit of panache to accomplish. Getting outside on the narrow balcony above the clock face was also a bit unnerving. At the top of the stairs was a small windowed room and a tiny square door led to the balcony. And the balcony was so narrow that if you pushed your way past someone already on the balcony, one of you would definitely be pushed over the railing. But it was worth the splutter of nerves to get up there and to have a panoramic view of the campus and miles beyond. Can you see the stadium with its lights? Can you see the medical center? Oh please, don't make me look straight down! The voices of the alumni and their families warbled with awe and not too little trepidation. Later, a friend and I took off to see the Quechee Balloon Festival in Vermont. Neither of us had ever gone to one before so we weren't sure what to expect. Ballooning was the main draw, but most of the festival consisted of a multitude of local vendors selling everything from pottery and jewelry to kites and even essence of emu to cure unsightly skin blemishes. The food was all grease and sauce and sugar. And lots and lots of salt. The frying created a pungent smell in the air, not unlike bushes of dying lilac flowers. I watched an all white African dance troupe. I listened to a local band playing Van Morrison tunes. The audience for the band mostly consisted of old biddies in colorful windbreakers. The old biddies sat riveted to the head singer, a not unattractive fifty-something-year-old man with a deep voice. And whenever the singer gyrated his hips suggestively, the women shifted in their seats, excited. Children ran amok, hitting each other with blow-up toys and whining for shiny rings and necklaces. I heard a young boy voicing a preference for a pretty necklace and his mother told him, "No, we'll find you something more for a boy." An announcer babbled constantly about buying a ten dollar raffle ticket to get a balloon ride. A tethered balloon ride, I later found out, not the rides where you drift off into the nether reaches of the clouds. When the time came for balloon lift off, I wandered into the field to finally take pictures in earnest. Overturned baskets, colorful cloth, trucks--strewn all over the grass. I felt the heat as balloonists fired up their gas burners. The sound of powerful fans rattled in my ears as I stepped closer to take pictures of a balloon's interior. And as they took off, I craned my neck to watch the balloons follow each other in a column of color. And once all the balloons were up over the trees, it began to rain. Umbrellas opened up, people scattered to the edges of the field and the covered stalls. The balloons began descending haphazardly. Some landed on the field. Others landed in a children's playground. Yet others landed in the midst of spectators. I eventually found my friend taking pictures of the descending balloons with her last roll of film. We bought cotton candy which began to melt in the rain. And while we were driving back and stopped at a red light eating our treat, a car turned and a woman leaned out of her window to take a picture of us. Perhaps it might end up on the web somewhere, two girls (a driver and a passenger) sitting in a car in the rain, chatting and eating cotton candy. Note: I took about five rolls of film. Photos (the good ones) of today's sensory overload will probably be up at the end of this month or the beginning of next month. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 5:59 PM : ]
Comments:
Post a Comment
Links to this post: |
