yes, this IS my first rodeo, thank you!

26 Mar 2012 Leave a Comment

by Aeri Rose in Advice, Local Events

Arizona. You were a blur.  I arrived thinking “I have two whole months to take in your arid beauty. Your dusty desert hikes, your blooming cactus, your choya, your locals and your snowbirds.” And then suddenly I have one week left and I’ve barely gone hiking, I haven’t gotten my night desert pictures, and I won’t have time to go to the canyon lakes.  Argh.

But the months weren’t without entertainment.

There were the full moon drum jams and the weekly music circles.  There was the rodeo.  There was that cowboy.  And there were a couple trash bag tutus.

Have you ever heard a melancholy middle eastern song played on a violin, accompanied by a wash tub base? I have!

The campfires filled with music, stories, and jokes are part of what make this world so wonderful.   Like a group of old cowboys sharing warmth and light, rennies from all walks come together around a fire to share their talents and energy. Sometimes the fires are right in the campground, in a special pit that has been built by fellow travelers over time.  A slowly hollowed out circle of stone seats with a fire pit in it’s center.  Sometimes the fires are out in the desert, preceded by a long hike through moonlit washes and around spindly desert trees full of slumbering birds who chirp sleepily as we pass.  The walks, the music, the community- it’s all there and it’s all great.  I can even work on my own drumming skills, knowing that if I’m being listened to at all, it is to offer constructive advice rather than criticism.  In honor of my return to Arizona, I’d like to quote myself here, pulling the following from a post I wrote about my first drum jam last year  in a discontinued blog :

“…With this drum, I took it and started hitting it. I started hitting just the base note, one hit each measure. Practicing getting the nice dong sound to come from the drum. Then I added other beats as I felt able to do. Sometimes I messed up, and sometimes I lost the beat, and I’d go back to just keeping time for the other drummers. But I could hear my drum mixing in with all those others. And then, later, after I’d warmed up or gotten comfortable or what have you, I started hearing my drum on top of the others instead of below them. Were they following me? Was my beat steady enough for the other drummers to build off of its base and settle into my rhythm? Could I actually be good at this drumming thing? This is amazing! This is great! This is so much fun! I didn’t want to stop and I couldn’t wait for the next time.

I like this concept of learning in the presence of others. In a community of people who have been there, and can remember what it was like to start.

So here’s to doing more than dancing to the beat of your own drum, here’s to sharing that beat with others.”

Its just great energy out there.  The rodeo, however, was great energy of an entirely different sort.  It was indeed my first rodeo.  It was lively. The horses were beautiful.  I wore my cowboy boots and I drank bud light.  I yeehawed at the bull riders and barrel racers.  And then I went to the after party to mingle with the cowboys, and ended up meeting a country boy instead.

Giddeup lil'horsie!

Now let me specify, as defined by this Country Boy, a country boy “can do everything a cowboy can do, maybe better”, but he’s more modest about it.  He’s a good ol’boy with a heart of gold beneath that tanned and toned chest of his.  So we’re supposed to think, at least. Well anyway, this Country Boy was nice enough, and after a chat in the bar about his horses and his tour business, we agreed to meet that next week for a ride through the desert.

So a few days later Mindy and I found ourselves atop Tequila and Smoke, two frisky mustangs ready to ride out. We rode through the desert, the horses daintily picking their way around cacti, until we came upon a ghost town.  Parking the horses out front, we went in for a few more cold buds.

Horse Parking

On the ride home the horses wanted to run, and we let them.  Cantering through the sandy wash, barely maintaining my seat and loving every moment of it, I thought again about how important it is to meet the locals when you travel.  What might be a crazy once in a life time experience for you, is just the daily grind for them.  They might just love to share the experience with you.  After all, seeing what you take for granted through the fresh excited eyes of a stranger can refresh your energy and make you grateful for the life you live.  I know that’s how it works for me!

If Aeri the Faerie is in a Trash Bag TuTu, does that make her a Litter Bug?

One evening out we went to a male burlesque show.  The costumes were amazing, the dancers were adorable, and I fell in love with a trash bag dress.  It had a bustle and a train, it was flowing and couture and completely 100% plastic.  I knew I had to make one.  So, for the rennie dance, the “funky formal” as it’s called, I knew it was time to be inspired.  So above, you can see my disgustingly adorable trash bag tutu that resulted.  It has a hot pink and leopard print duct tape waist band. I had to be taped into it that night, and cut it off of me when I was done.  It was hot and sticky while I danced, but the awesome swishing fluffy-ness of it outweighed any discomfort.  Litterbugs Unite! The trash bag tutu has some serious potential.

And that about sums up my stay in Arizona.  Of course there was work, but who wants to hear about that anyway?

Up next, a 17 hr drive down to Waxahachie, Texas, for the Scarborough Renaissance Festival.  What new adventures are in store?  I’ll find out soon!

 

Much Love,

 

Aeri

 

 

stories from a road warrior

01 Mar 2012 Leave a Comment

by Aeri Rose in Trips

3,500 miles. 7 days. 10 tanks of gas. Five old friends and three new ones. Some highway. Some weather. Some music.

There, I’ve told you about the road trip.

Oh you wanted more? Well then.

Like I said, I left Annapolis with a half filled Jeep on January 28th.  I drove up to Philadelphia that first night. Not a long trip, only two hours, but an important one. There was someone I needed to say good bye to before this wild journey.

The next morning I headed up to Nazareth, PA. Again, a short two hour drive for the day. But stopping meant spending time with my best friend and her son, my god son, Liam.  Here he is being a super hero.

Despite jokes about my poor sense of direction, on the 31st I continued heading north up to Hamlin, NY to pick up my traveling buddy, Mindy.  We spent one day helping her pack and praying we could fit everything we needed into or onto Alice the Jeep.  After many games of Tetris we were amazingly able to fit everything inside the car.  A couple of folding chairs had to be abandoned, and I’ve never seen a car riding lower on her rear shocks, but we did it!

It started snowing that night and we hoped it wouldn’t delay our departure in the morning.  But luckily February 1st dawned and both the sky and the roads were blessedly clear.  Now the real hour devouring driving  could begin.  That first day we drove from Hamlin, NY to Lexington, KY- a 7.5 hour drive through New York and Ohio.

In Lexington we had plans to stay with a friendly couch surfer named Travis.  We all got along great, and spent laughter filled evening swapping travel stories, discussing the renaissance and the air force, and even meandering into a conversation on religion for a spell.  Travis and his pilot friend took us out to show us the town and a few of their favorite bars.  We were his first couch surfers, so I hope we left a lasting positive impression! I think we did.

Despite the fun we had with our new friends, Mindy and I knew it was travelling time. So after breakfast the next morning we hit the road again.  That day’s goal was Memphis, TN new home of my childhood friend and her fiancée.  Living  apart, we don’t get the chance to see each other very often, so whenever my path can feasibly cross hers, I make an effort to do so . And this time was no different. We arrived in the afternoon, timing it so she got home from class around the same time we arrived.  Big hugs all around, followed by some extremely important wedding dress shopping and an amazing Memphis BBQ dinner.  I’d show you all the dress she picked, if I didn’t think I’d really get killed for posting it this time! You’ll just have to wait and tune back in after the big day.

Let me tell you- there is nothing to make you simultaneously feel all grown up and precisely like a child than putting on wedding dresses and strutting around the shop to test for wear and maneuverability. I don’t know how many times we played out that exact scenario with the discarded bridesmaids dresses of our parents and some flowers we guiltily picked from the neighbors garden.  I mean there still wasn’t a groom around, dress shopping being strictly off limits.  We’ve come a long way from the days of fighting over Barbies every afternoon, and slumber parties every other night- despite the fact that we only lived two doors down from each other.  I’m glad we’ve made it this far together.  But enough of this practice toast writing.

We had plans to stay in Memphis for a few days, but sadly my friend’s hectic pre-med schedule wouldn’t allow it. So the next morning back into the car we went, without any more solid  evening plans.  All we knew was that we had another 1500 miles and 3 days to accomplish it.  We debated taking a leisurely drive along I-40, but opted for a petal to the metal race west instead.

That day we took turns driving and made it 16 miles before stopping at a motel for the night.  Along the way, somewhere in the middle of Texas, we crossed paths with a violent thunder storm.  Though we passed through the rain quickly enough, it had a long train of grumbling storm clouds behind it.  The lightning show was so stunning that we had to pull over to enjoy it.  Tucked under an overpass (just in case there was a tornado hiding in those clouds) we blasted some techno house music and rocked out with the clouds to the best light show I’ve ever seen.  Ever.  I tried to record some of it, which you can check out here, but the quality just doesn’t do justice to the epicness of our sights. And it can’t trap the electric scent in the air, or the charged energy we could just feel.   Eventually the storm had moved off one way and we continued our journey the other way.

The next morning found us in the home stretch.  We would be in Apache Junction by 7:00 pm that night.  Unfortunately the Renaissance Festival office was only open until 4:00 pm.  So a few extremely polite phone calls later and our names were put on a gate list, so that we could get on site that night and check-in in the morning.

Now perhaps this deserves some explaining.  All festivals are different. Like all big things, they have varying levels of security, bureaucracy, etc.  The Arizona Renaissance Festival is a large and sprawling site with a campground and trailer rows behind it.  All workers get ID cards from the office upon arrival, and there is a gate house to pass through each time entering the grounds.  Since we were arriving after the office closed, the gate guard had to be warned that we would be arriving and we were good peeps.

Some traveling Rennies camp, some stay in trailers, and some stay in little apartments above the booths.  Mindy would be camping. I would be staying above the booth.  For that first night, because we arrived after dark, we both planned on crashing in the booth.  So our awesome planning strategy of packing Mindy’s stuff in last so it would be first out…well in “The Art of War” didn’t Sun Tzu  warn that no plans ever last past the first engagement?

Anyway, we didn’t care. We had arrived. Poor Alice carried us across the country on smooshed shocks.  In the morning we would better check out the place and get settled in, but for the night we were content with unpacking the blankets and tucking in with some pitas and a movie.

The End.