29 July 2007
Day Twenty-six at Bristol
Another weekend is over. Although the weather is good and the crowds are fairly large, the sales still disappoint. I am hoping that this is simply a year when the “new” festival ownership is advertising to a new crowd, and that the next couple of years will show a growth curve. In the meantime, we just do our best to keep our spirits up and serve our customers as well as we know how.
Our little group of friends had dinner tonight at the local Applebee’s. I rode with Kat to the restaurant, and she chose a route that was far less familiar to me than our usual paths. We drove up Highway H into Kenosha, which took us through farmland and such. At one point, I spied a huge contraption working in a field and was quite interested in it. It was surely some sort of harvesting equipment—it had two long, hinged and articulated arms, made of some sort of metal framework. The ends of the arms were moving completely independently of the rest of the machine and of each other. A few yards down the road, after talking about it for a moment, and wondering what it really was, I mentioned to Kat that had I been by myself, I’d have probably turned around and pulled over to get a better look. In fact, I told her, I’d take a photo of it. At which point, she asked me if I wanted her to turn around. I thought about it for a moment, and decided “yes, I did!” So, turn around she did, and we drove back to where we’d seen this thing . . . and we drove . . . finally, we knew we’d driven too far, turned around again, and then, ultimately had to admit—the thing was gone! How the heck it disappeared so quickly, I cannot even fathom! But, gone it was, and along with it, the opportunity for that photo.
Fortunately, not far down the road was this sweet little cemetary, so Kat, not wanting me to miss another opportunity, pulled over for me to take photos. This one, is the first that I took! The flash fired, and I took another half a dozen shots with no flash, expecting them to all be better than the first one. Not so much! This one shows the mood of the hour, and the contrast and clarity is much better. The others are more washed out, and a little blurry and grainy from the low light. So, go figure!
~MB
