Entry 24: Concerts, Festivals, and Enduros

This turned out to be an action-packed weekend. On Saturday evening, S and I went to see the Robertson Brothers with a few others. If you don’t know who the Robertson Brothers are then you are probably not alone, so I’ll fill you in. They’re an Australian, 70s-style rock group. They do a lot of covers of bands like America, CCR, and The Doobie Brothers. They aren’t bad. The lead singer has a cool, twangy, nasally voice, that works for him, and the other musicians are good, as well. I wasn’t super into the show, however, because they played a lot of slow, sad songs, and didn’t really let it fly. They also have a guy in the band who does nothing but sing backup vocals. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that before. No instrument, no dancing, no nothing. (He must be the Daniel Baldwin of the Robertson Brothers.) He just sits in the back on a stool looking like Corey from Pawn Stars and every now and again he’ll chime in with some harmony. Oh, he also points to the other members of the band when they’re doing their solos.

Sunday morning we are attempting to sleep in after a relatively late night, and at about 7am I start hearing what sounds like metal poles clanking together. It keeps me up for a while, but eventually I fall back asleep, only to be reawakened about an hour and a half later to somebody doing what sounds like a mike check (one-two, one-two, one-two-three, one-two-three). At this point, despite my sleepy daze, I do the math (metal poles = tents, tents + mike check = street festival = loud noises). I know what’s going on, but I pretend like I don’t and try to go back to sleep. All I’m asking for is another hour and a half, but it is not to be. I lie in bed for a while, but my hyper-vigilance has kicked in, so I can’t sleep. Eventually, I get out of bed and take a peek outside. Yep, it’s a street fair alright.

[Scene from our balcony Sunday morning.]

It looked sorta fun, but it ended up being more of a nuisance than anything else. The sidewalks of our street are hard enough to navigate already. With this bigass festival going on, they became almost unusable. The street itself, which was shutdown to cars, was even slower-moving. I wouldn’t have cared, but we had places to go and things to do. And by places I mean H’s house. And by things I mean eating and drinking and watching cars go around in circles.

[Dancers getting down to Gloria Estefan.]

H hosted a BBQ at his place for the Island Enduro. An enduro is a very long motorsports race, and for as big as a sports fan as I am, I have to say car racing is bor-ing. This particular race started at 10:30am and ended at 5:30pm – 7 hours! Then, after it was over, H put on a Formula 1 race (slightly different looking cars going around in circles). Despite the racing, it was a great time – lots of good company and good eating and drinking. And I made sure to only overeat by a normal ridiculous amount. I didn’t overeat by a ridiculously ridiculous amount, so this time I didn’t have to spend a large portion of the night in a potato-bug position on the bathroom floor.