April, May and June
went to see the Dragon Boat Races.
They are held each year in September.
This year they took place at Treasure Island.
Not ON Treasure Island but in the lagoon NEAR Treasure Island.
Adventurous April drove, (not all that willingly) being the best driver of the bunch, even decelerating from 70 m.p.h. on the Bay Bridge to a mere 15 m.p.h. onto the ridiculously tight turn on the exit. Everyone had their seatbelts on.
May and June sat on the bleachers, feet in the mud of the embankment.
April sat IN the mud ON the embankment.
All 3 sat near the gigantic speaker spewing forth dramatic instrumental music which was, no doubt, NOT up for an Academy Award for original score.
May and June had to listen to loud, looping, classical thundering, building up to a crescendo that never came. Nonstop expectancy irritated the audio sensory endings of May's and June's ear nerves. April had a little more distance and wasn't as seriously affected.
Someone (using a bullhorn?) loudly announced that
"This music sucks! Play some ABBA!"
at which the MC announces loudly (using the loudspeaker?) that he will now play some ABBA.
Thundering pop music took over where middling classical score left off.
Neither classicists nor pop stars would win awards that day.
April, with her camera, clicked away at the dragon boats, paddled by members of athletic teams, nurses associations and more.
Identical dragon boats rushed by to the tune of "Dancing Queen".
May was very patient.
June had memories of Suzanne Somers jumping around in electric-print elastic exercise outfits with leg warmers and 1980's headbands .
May and June and April wondered what any of this music had to do with the "paddlahs". (translated from the paddlers' dialect, meaning paddlers)
Suddenly the 3 noticed that each dragon boat was identical!
Boats pulled into the dock, paddlahs exited making room for new teams of paddlahs. This must have leveled the playing field or , in this case, the playing lagoon.
Paddlahs first paddled from the dock to the starting buoys way far away, then paddled like all get-out to the finish buoys.
Someone always won, obviously, but, except for the one race in which damp, towel wrapped, flip-flopped ladies looking like paddlas themselves, cheered on the Hospital Team and jumped with excitement at the finish, April, May and June knew not which teams triumphed.
April, May and June ate Hawaiian plate lunches with watery coffee while sitting at sticky tables with napkins flying.
After the meal, all 3 found good seats in front of the stage to see the Chinese Contortionist (he was shockingly AGILE!) and the 27 groups of Chinese dancers. (or minority dancers as announced by the Mistress of the dance)
Windblown, sated and entertained, April, May and June found their way back to the car, puttered onto the extremely short merge lane into Bay Bridge Sunday afternoon traffic, accelerating to 80 m.p.h. from 20 in under 10 seconds and then puttered home!
P.S.
Does anyone know how to format blog entries?
Please respondevous on the comment form.
No comments:
Post a Comment