… and still silly.
By 9am on Judgment Day I hadn’t seen anything dire except gray skies and a bit of drizzle. I watched Turner Classic Movies and drank coffee. Buddy saved Buck Rogers from the clutches of Killer Kane, and then Tarzan and Boy met a chorus girl on her way to warn a sheik about Nazis. I got called in to shoot x-rays at 10:30, and I was needed all day. A bunch of people came to town for the Rhododendron Festival and fell down. So I didn’t get to see the parade, but that’s okay. We close in an hour and I’m not dead AND I still have the Leo Kottke concert tonight. Life is good.
I adore absurd traditions. I’m glad they have so many where I live. Yesterday I attended a sporting event featuring teams racing up and down the street pushing “beds” with wheels stuck on them. There were no causes, nor prizes of great worth. They competed for bragging rights, and to entertain us. It’s one of the sillier parts of the Rhododendron Festival.
Emma King (right) and the Rhody Queens were there to provide the proper pomp. Ahh, high school babes in jeans, with tiaras. It doesn’t get any better.
A suitably strange police presence was on hand, and sometimes on bikes.
The K-Kops kept the krowd under kontrol, as the beds gathered for the race.
Some vehicles were fancy. This one had working lights and a siren.
Others were simpler. These guys dressed up piratey, and went “ARRR!” a lot.
In heat after heat, they sped down the street, eliminating the slower teams.
Ultimately only two teams were left, the buffest of the bed racers.
The winners were the track & field squad from the high school. They will retain the coveted trophy, a chrome-plated bed pan, until next year. Can you see how proud their pilot was? “That’s right. We won, uh-HUH, uh-HUH!”
Happy Judgment Day, Everybody!
Now THAT’S a way to spend judgement day! That looked totally mad. What great larks in your neck of the woods. Same time next year?
It appears to be an annual bizarre happening. I can hardly wait for the Kinetic Sculpture Festival.
Kinetic sculpture? Cooool. If it’s what I think it is, you’re going to love it. A friend of mine had a piece in an exhibition in Spitalfields, London a few years ago. It’s very entertaining.
Here it means you make any kind of art that moves, that you can sit in or on, and they line the works up and race them – like with the beds, but weirder. Bikes with elliptical, decorated wheels, combos of trikes and wading pools, and other imaginative inventions. I think your creation has to go both on land and into the bay. I’ll write about it when it happens.
Mikey—looks perfect for a watcher…I’m not doing it…but I would love to watch
Jaye
Or you could be one of the bed “pilots”. Most of them didn’t even steer. They just rode. I’m thinking about odd sports to join in once I retire. I’m glad you enjoyed having a little look. I did too.
Mikey—if I can sit down and not sweat–I’m interested.
Jaye
Sounds like just the job for you.
If your team wins, you get to hug the bed pan trophy!
Thanks for keeping the gods happy, by the way. I’m off to the concert.
What fun. I love the quirky little things that cities/neighborhoods embrace. We have a little St. Patrick’s Day parade in our neighborhood every year. Nothing so exciting as bed racing or as sexy as jeans and tiaras, but lots of kids on decorated trikes and Irish wolfhounds and dogs impersonating Irish wolfhounds. Shamrocks abound. Spectators and paraders exchange places along the way. Great photos. Glad we’re all still here to enjoy your post.
Trike races sound fabulous! They had them here, but it was in the morning when the clinic is always busy. I like Irish/Scottish/Celtic gatherings of any kind, and Renaissance Faires too. I’m sure I would enjoy your town’s event.
Glad you liked the photos, Galen. Shooting pictures with a phone is kind of hard, but it’s the only camera I own and it does all right if I’m close enough. When I had other cameras I preferred wide-angle lenses. Telephoto looks too Sports Illustrated. Wide angle looks more like art to me.
Hey guess what? I’m still alive too! Funny post. I enjoy the pics. I love cheesy stuff like this. It reminds of that line from “The Breakfast Club” – “It’s social, demented and sad, but social.”
Funny how small towns seem to have more of these nonsensical commemorative events. Thirty miles West where my Mom lives, their big annual wingding celebrates the coming of irrigation to the area, though no one appears to remember when that was. She doesn’t like the big influx of tourists, so she refers to it as the “Irritation Festival”.
We have “The Bedlam Races” here in Savannah. I can’t for the life of me remember for what occasion, but we have them. It’s crazy how much effort people put into them.
Sounds fun! You know, craziness, bedlam – I get it.
A lively day was enjoyed by all I see! Looks like you all had a lot of fun.
More fun is in my general agenda.
I’m still smiling at your line “a bunch of people came to town for the Rhododendron Festival and fell down”. I imagine them falling as a bunch, at one moment. I dunno, that made me smile. It sounds like something that might happen exactly that way at an event like this.
It seems like it to me too. One day at the clinic I will have a whole run of chest x-rays. The next day it will be all smashed fingers and toes. This day it was all ankles, knees and feet – from slip & falls. They must have planned it.
I thought only my wife’s small hometown did bed-racing. She’ll be devastated to hear her town isn’t unique.
You have my permission to tell her that her town thought of it first, and we ripped them off.
HA! Please, I want to live where you do. The most exciting event we have is Maple Syrup/Celine Dion day.
Celine and syrup do go together naturally. Even her vibrato is waffley. I will accept the compliment on behalf of all the overpriced, unsold homes, of which there are many. (What kind of nut would pay 800k for a 1900 sq ft house with one bathroom, built in 1890? Besides expat Californians, that is.)
your blog s nice.. I like the pictures…
what is judgement day?
Well, Anya —
Judgment Day was used in this article to refer to a news story circulated in mass media here in which a (possibly insane) pastor declared that the Rapture (a cataclysmic cycle beginning with the disappearance of “true believers” and the return of Jesus for final judgment) – would take place May 21st. Don’t worry if you didn’t hear about it. It wasn’t important. I’m glad you liked the pictures.
(From the syntax on her blog, I’m guessing yogini / Anya is from somewhere way East. She writes poetry and contemplative essays, and seems to be service-oriented.
http://nestofhopes.wordpress.com/)
I wish bed races got trendy on the east coast. Looks fun!
It was sure fun to watch. It must be even more fun to do.
Your festival looks like great fun! Ours was an Azalea Festival, which are related to rhododendrons. They have a rhododendron fest up in the mtns though
I’m going to write about another festival in the next post. This is tourist season. There’s one of some sort every week through October.