County Fair!

After all these years I remain in awe of the fact that I have the ability to wiggle my fingers and make music. And it's even cooler when I play in a group setting with musicians who are all in tune with each other's playing - there's a flow to it that's pretty amazing. I would say it tops the positive feeling of any drug (well, at least more so than  the drugs I take every day, as statins, baby aspirin, and the like don't produce much of a "high").

I was invited to sit in with Zac Quintana and the Sages at the Prince William County Fair. Zac actually invited me to sit in on any of the Sages gigs this summer, but unfortunately most of the dates didn't work for me. But I could make this one! I knew that getting out to the PW Fairgrounds at rush hour was going to be a beast of a drive. Fortunately, I have a lot of flexibility on Fridays and so my plan was to head out to Prince William early Friday afternoon, ride my bike for the afternoon, then head to the fairgrounds for the evening show. It kinda sorta worked out.

I had figured on leaving at 1 PM, but I got delayed - but by a good thing! Ted has become a  good baker. This is a skill he didn't get from us - it's cool to see your children develop these sorts of abilities. We've been asking him to show us how to bake bread, and as it happened, Thursday night and Friday is when it finally worked out for him to show us. We did a starter Thursday night, made the dough Friday morning, and wouldn't you know, the dough was ready to be shaped into loaves right when I thought I was going to be leaving. Instead, at 1 PM I found myself in my bike clothes making loaves of bread in the kitchen, and didn't get on the road until 1:45. Unfortunately, on Friday afternoon every minute counts and by the time I got on the road traffic was already starting to build. Still, it was still better than it would have been later in the afternoon.

I decided to bike at Prince William Forest Park. I'd never been to this park before, but it seemed to have a nice paved main loop for biking plus a lot of gravel side trails to explore. The park is a good 30 minutes from the fairgrounds, but going there early would get me outside of the Friday afternoon wall of traffic and promised prettier riding than anything I could figure out in the proximity of the fairgrounds. I got there, parked near the entrance to the loop, and started riding. It was indeed a pretty setting, and I was enjoying my second side trail when I heard thunder. Mind you there was no rain in the forecast, but I pulled out my phone and sure enough a pop-up storm was headed our way. I sprinted back to the car and made it just as the rain was really starting to come down in buckets. I shoved my bike under a tree and took refuge in the car. The storm cell looked intense but small, like it would pass quickly. I wound up spending about half an hour in the car reading my book and dozing before the rain let up and I was able to resume my ride. After the rain I just stuck to the main loop, as the grave trails had been left wet and muddy by the storm. Still, it was a pretty ride. The park entry fee was expensive ($15), but I'd go back.

Taking refuge in the car

When I finished my ride I stopped at the park restroom to change clothes then headed to the fair. As I expected, the ride was smooth. What I didn't expect was how backed up it would be around the fairgrounds. It took me an extra twenty minutes to go the last two blocks or so into the fairgrounds, where the parking attendants had no idea where to send me to unload my gear. Actually, they sent me to the completely wrong place and before I knew it I was mixed in with the monster trucks at the back of the grounds. That clearly wasn't right. The event personnel back there couldn't give me directions either, so at that point I called Shawn, who gave me a good description of where I needed to go. A few minutes' more driving and only a brief stretch of driving against the flow of traffic and voila, I was in! And with plenty of time to get set up before our set. 

The Show Barn - band is at the far end

The performance itself was fine. Zac doesn't exactly work from a set list. He had sent me a list of songs, but it turned out not to be so much a set list but a list of songs from which he was going to draw. So, every song was "gee, what should we play next?", always a challenge for a fill-in musician who isn't familiar with the band's repertoire. But it went fine - there were no major issues, the crowd (moderate in size) loved us, oh, and there were even calls for more accordion! Plus, since we were in the show barn in between the animal displays and the antique tractors, I got to look at the animals before our set.

Farm animals and tractors