beige_alert | Great Circus Bastille Days

Weekend report: Saturday seemed like a nice day to go to the beach, so I rode the bicycle up to Harrington Beach, north of Port Washington, WI, which is probably my favorite overall spot on Lake Michigan, and it's a very pleasant 60km or so trip. I make the trip often enough that it's nice familiar route with no map-reading-head-scratching moments. Not too many people at the beach for such a nice day, though Harrington isn't usually crowded any time. The wind was fairly light and blowing out toward the lake, so the lake was very calm, possibly about the calmest I've ever seen it. The big lake is big, and quite often builds up some significant waves, but it was looking more like one of the little lakes, just slight waves.

Sunday I headed into the city in my car, for Bastille Days, and found to my surprise that there were people everywhere, cars parked everywhere, streets closed all around downtown. I was headed to a special event, but clearly there was some other, even more special event on, because Bastille Days is not nearly that big. It turns out the Great Circus Parade was Sunday. I had no idea....

The Circus Parade, which apparently was run annually for decades back in the day, last ran six years ago. It's not the sort of thing I thought I had any particular interest in, but since I was around, I did wander down a few times during the parade to have a look. Now, lots of things billed as "Great" would be more honestly characterized at "pathetic" but this is a big event. I didn't even see most of it and I saw a heck of a lot (and took a few hundred photos that will get sorted through and posted in the fullness of time).

Bastille Days was nice, too. Four stages of mostly music most of the time, the crazy guys juggling torches while riding unicycles, the belly dancers were back, and of course, food onna stick. Some of the better restaurants participate, so you can actually get some pretty darn good meat onna stick. Plus we have a miniature Eiffel Tower. They do actually have some people singing in French, but lots of other music. I did enjoy the over-caffeinated Irish band. You know the type, the 'you think your fiddler can play fast, wait until you hear ours' sort, and these guys played that concept for all it's worth. I bought a few CDs from Fox and Branch, a very enjoyable local folk duo.

And Joyce arrived safely back Sunday night, so I had my chance to look around the used bookstore in the airport while waiting for her arrival.