So with my money all spent by someone else, Holly and I only had enough money for one ticket to Oahu for the Scottish Festival. Since I was the one dancing in the demo, I was the one who ended up with the ticket.
Thursday night, I hopped on my motorcycle, fingers crossed, to ride up to the airport. My luck was fantastic. There was no rain the whole way, thought the roads were damp from mist. I made it to the airport as fast as I could have expected. Unfortunately, when I walked up to the gate, I was able to wave to the pilot as he taxied to the runway. That’s what I get for taking the extra minute to put a cover on my motorcycle.
I called Mary right away since she was supposed to pick me up, but the phone rang and rang. No answer. I called again. No answer. I called again. No answer. The one time that Mary leaves her phone at home, I miss my flight. She eventually figured it out and drove back home. She picked me up again 2 hours later.
Friday was simple. I got some work done and replaced the passenger seat on Mary’s motorcycle while she was out to the doctor and lunch with a friend. Friday night was the ceilidh. As thanks for doing work on the HSA website, I was given two free tickets. Sweet. These gave me access to a night full of dancers, bagpipers, live bands, scottish bangers, fish and chips, American “Haggis” (aka meatloaf), Guinness, Scotch, and of course friends.
During the evening, Mary’s sister showed up in a fantastic mood. She’s been pretty excited at the notion of being husbandless for a bit. She was all dressed up pretty-like and came with a lady friend. She had one or two drinks and seemed to have a wonderful time. It was nice to see her relaxed and having fun.
Saturday was fairly simple as well. We arrived at Kapiolani Park later than we had planned. I don’t feel so bad about it because there wasn’t a lack of things to help with. Before I knew it, it was time to go up and dance. I was not as prepared as I wanted to be and was very nervous. It seemed I wasn’t the only one, because all the other dancers seemed to all be on edge a bit. For one reason or another, it was impossible to get everyone together to walk through our dances before we had to go up on stage. We only got through three or four dances. It didn’t help that during the first dance walk-through, Mary’s dance shoe completely fell apart. The base of the shoe completely peeled apart from the rest of the shoe so that only the top part of shoe was left. Fortunately, the sound crew had gaffer’s tape.
The performance went as I thought it would. I missed a few formations and got a little lost. My partners were awesome and totally helped me through a few parts. Overall, not our best, not our worst. As usual, we all agreed we’d dance better the next day.
Dancing made us very hungry. Mary and I quickly changed and went to find the food vendors. I was snagged before I could get there though. I was handed the RSCDS banner and shooed off to march in the opening ceremony parade. I’m proud to hold that banner.
While I marched, Mary did us the favor of ordering our food. They have been know to have a 15-30 minute wait for some of the plates. After the opening ceremony, there was an order of scotch eggs for me to eat. That was not enough though. We went back and grabbed a plate of scottish stew and fish and chips to fill us up. Now that we had danced and stuffed ourselves, we spent the remainder of our time there working the tea tent selling hot tea, scones, whiskey cake, and haggis.
At two o’clock, Mary told me it was time to go. She was supposed to take her eye drops at this time, but left them at home. So we left early.
It was only 3pm when we got home and we had the whole evening to kill. I needed to find a way to get money for various things; like a plane ticket home. Mary was kind enough to lend me some money, so we drove off to Long’s to buy cat food and get cash back. We walked out with cat food, popcorn, individual packages of mint marshmallow candy things, extra money, and a bottle of 1800 tequila. The plan was to go home, watch District 9 (which was awesome), eat popcorn, and drink margaritas. Other than setting two bags of microwavable popcorn on fire, we were quite successful. We ended the night with a night cap.
Sunday was fairly similar to Saturday. We drove off to Kapiolani park for the Scottish festival around 7:30, helped set up and run the tea tent, dance our dances on the main stage at 11 (much better than the previous day), ate delicious scottish type food, and helped more with the tea tent. Where the day differs is the part where I had to go to the airport. Mary drove me over at 3:30. Because I had just helped to short demonstration on the smaller stage, I didn’t quite have time to change out of my kilt and other fancy-like attire.
I arrived at the airport with plenty of time to check in and pass security. I said my goodbyes to Mary and headed for the check-in counter with my two backpacks and motorcycle jacket. Why were people staring at me?
I sent my backpacks, jacket, sporran, boots, and wallet through the x-ray machine. I knew the alarm would go off as I stepped through the metal detecter because of the built in buckles on my kilt. The TSA lady asked me about my belt. Doh! I removed that and walked through again with the same results. She had me step aside and called another TSA person to come pat me down. I explained about my buckles. What I forgot was that I was also wearing my flashes, which also have metal buckles, and a safety pin. I was searched up and down with his little handheld blinky device. He patted all places where it lit up and made noise. “You’ve done this before, right?”, he asked me. I guess I seemed like I knew what I was doing as he scooted his blinky toy between my legs. After he cleared me he told me that I was the first real life person in a kilt he’d ever seen. Good. My work was done then.
The rest of the trip went by without a hitch. I changed while waiting for my plane. I listened to headphones. Sat at the back of the plane all by myself while the chipper flight attendent cracked her jokes and laughed at the tourists in the front of the plane. If I hadn’t had to ride my motorcycle home, I would have taken advantage of their $2 happy hour drinks.
I arrived home after my rainless 2 hour ride home. It was dark, Gavin was on the couch watching tv, and Holly was laying in bed with Leif putting him to sleep. Gavin gave me a warm welcome which included a hug and kiss. Leif looked at me, smiled, then pushed me away deliberately so he could focus on important things. Nursing and sleep. Smart child.
P.S. If I see Weird Al around town, I’m supposed to tell him to write a song about the Kapiolani Park hose.
Also, I was invited to a red-head contest by someone who may or may not have been up to no good. I didn’t see any red-head contest on the festival itinerary.