Rainy Ren Fest
Well, as I mentioned yesterday, I went out to the Sterling Renaissance Festival with my sister on Sunday despite the threat of rain we were under.
I must say though, that it ended up being a fairly nice (although pretty humid) day. And what’s better, the threat of rain kept the crowd size down so we could actually move around easily and didn’t have to wait in line for very long which was good.
On the drive out there I had a bit of a “man, I’m getting old…” moment. My sister just got a new job and we spent a decent amount of time talking about health insurance coverage and, from her perspective as somebody who’s working in the health care industry, the differences between the various companies and how good they are about authorizing care.
The festival was a lot of fun this year. We did a little more wandering around and browsing shops than we usually do because a lot of the shows we had seen a number of times in the past and they don’t really change all that much over the years. But we hit a couple of newer shows which were quite good.
The first show we went to after the opening ceremony was Zilch the Torrysteller which is a guy who tells classic fairy tales but with letters reversed in certain words (see “Torrysteller”) which can create some unintended words and add whole new shades of meaning to the story. It sounds a little stupid, but first of all, it’s impressive how he can keep everything straight in his head and he pulls it off really well and keeps the audience involved. Especially funny were the tangents he got on.
After that we headed over to one of my favorite shows, the DaVinci Brothers. The premise of this one is the DaVinci Brothers had another brother (Bob) and he stages comedy operas. The twist is that audience members get pulled out to be the actors in the opera. It can be hit or miss, but if you get a good group of people, it’s simply awesome. And this time out we got the best group of people I had ever seen. These folks had no shame and they even had the guy running the show doubled over laughing at certain points.
After this we had a couple hours of downtime before the next show we wanted to see so we did some wandering. I went out and did the whole wine tasting thing and found an apple wine that I really liked (I bought a bottle on the way out so I think I will enjoy a glass of that this evening). I almost bought a bottle of cranberry mead too, but I ended up passing because I was trying to be a little frugal with my money spending.
We also did some wandering and I found a gigantic dragon statue/fountain that I always said I wanted to own…and this year we found a price on it. $14,000. I think that’s reasonable. Should be able to fit in the living room… Now I just need to take out a loan. There’s a picture of it, but it’s currently on my phone and I can’t get it off here…so if I remember to do it I’ll throw it up here.
This is where the rain hit us though. After threatening all day, it started to sprinkle while we were browsing some shops early afternoon and quickly turned into an all out downpour. Thankfully we brought umbrellas just in case (I finally got to use the $25 umbrella I purchased on one of my trips down to Washington DC) and it stopped pretty quickly. We heard a couple rumbles of thunder, but nothing too severe.
Every year that my sister and I go, we have a little competition at the archery game they have there. We assign point values to the various rings on the target and keep score. This year we were both kinda crap archers but I ended up winning two of the times we went and losing the third one horribly. In my defense though, the third one was after I had some mead and did the wine tasting…
Before we wandered back up the hill for the final shows I grabbed a couple of items that my friends had requested I bring back. Got a couple of bags of the roasted nuts that they sell which are awesome. The other item was a bit more difficult to grab and required some prior planning. Wassy wanted me to bring her back a turkey leg, slathered in BBQ sauce. Of course, this isn’t exactly portable, but I ended up bringing a big piece of aluminum foil and wrapping it up to go. Got a few strange looks when I was doing that…
After that we made our way up hill to see Danny, Lord of Mischief which is basically a silent comedy show. Kinda like a mime on steroids with various props and a lot of audience participation. It was kinda hit or miss and the best parts of the show were usually when he was accosting various audience members who either arrived late or were getting up to leave for various reasons. It was a solid 40 minute show though.
After that we got our viewing of Don Juan and Miguel which are pretty much the marquee performers at the festival. This year we went to one of their actual shows instead of the weird show at the end since we wanted something a little different. They didn’t disappoint and a couple of times were having so much fun they broke down laughing too.
Good festival this year, and looking forward to going back again next year to see what new stuff they add in the meantime. Getting sold to a new owner has been one of the best things to ever happened to the festival, I think. It really saved them from fading out of existence. The mood is revitalized and all the performers are having so much fun. If you ever get a chance to check it out, you really should.
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