Push it, push it real good!

What the weather lacked yesterday it made up for today, in spades. Sun, and lots of it. Despite waking up a bit worse for wear we hit the wine-tasting tent shortly after noon. Nothing like a little hair of the dog, eh?
After two days of pouring, the people volunteering/working the tent were quite quick on the draw so within 20 minutes we had tasted all we wanted. Onwards to the Parade!
As usual there were scary clowns, drumbands that did their routines slightly out of our sight and hearing, mascots for fast-food places and lots of shriners in silly little carts or ginormous motorcycles. And, a tradition that is still quaint to me: the throwing of candy from the parade at the kids.
I guess you can't start too early with handling competition, and why not start with tootsie rolls?

After the parade I scored a honeysuckle and a fragrant sumac for a tenner. Hurray!
We had to drop them off at the car, decided to take them home (my need for a bathroom may have had something to do with that) and found a broken (telephone) cable in our front yard. Took care of that, went back to the festivities for: The Grape Stomp.

Two teams, two minutes of crushing grapes and pushing the juice/mess towards the spigot underneath the barrel, all to the sound of Salt 'n Pepa. Today were the finals after preliminary rounds friday and yesterday. The cream of the crop of Stompers, if you will. After each stomp more grapes get put in the barrels while the stompers hose themselves off.

There is something very satisfying about seeing people get mucked up in grape gunk while laying about in the grass as evidenced by the gathered masses.

The team in barrel 2 are the First Community All-stars (I think) who won the whole thing (for charity) and managed a grand total of 66something (US) lbs. That's 30 kilos, or 4 stone and 10 pounds.

And then it was done for another year.
I guess this is where the city-girl in me emerges: I LOVE the village all hustlin' and bustlin' with people. I love walking around, or sitting someplace and just looking at everyone. So, I was a bit sad. Then I realised I don't really like people anyway, so I was good :)

While going through my photos (all 328) a wave of nausea came over me and I had to go lay down.
Surely it can't have been the late night cold half-pizza, the taters and eggs, the sangria, the riesling, the pinot grigio, the Michigan champagne, the freezy-pop, the (thrown at me) Twizzlers, the vegetable pita with an entire bottle of ranch on top, or the deep-fried elephant ear?
Crazy.


If you've made it this far: I'd bow but I don't think my stomach could handle the motion.