I woke up at 7:40 AM on a Saturday morning, for what? Oh, yes, an e2 noder gathering. It was worth it.
Took a taxicab to czeano's building. The building manager made me sit in the lobby which was covered in "no
loitering in the lobby" signs. I felt a bit out of place in my straw hat and corduroy jacket, but what they
hey? I knew a fun day was ahead. Eventually czeano came in and took me out to the park benches by the pool.
Maybe I should've read the directions? :) While waiting, we discussed the cast party of the previous night and
his subsequent hangover.
Nearly simultaneously, cerulean and DrummerGrrl showed up. I knew Cerulean from my real life, but we hadn't
met DrummerGrrl before. We knew hers was a nodercar, because it was, well, an artcar fit (and designed?) for
Burning Man. Now convened, we headed to downtown Baltimore but got highly, well, circuitous. Once we saw the
chicken people, it had to be the right place. The right place, if not a little early. We had ample time
to discuss czeano's bionic eyes which saw all sorts of things across the harbor. Pshaw. A goodly number of
people and dogs were around, but we weren't sure if they were there for the race, as well. We were all
pretty hungry, and czeano spied a restaurant, which he described as "The last time I went there, MC Hammer was
popular." Of course, we didn't want to go there, becuase then we'd miss the racing enjoyment. Finally, the
vehicles arrived for the water test which was really simple: float/row/paddle around the dock and don't crash
on the rocks. But after we'd had enough of them, it was restaurant time!
The Bay Cafe is overpriced. Don't bother. Bad service, too. Good things to come out of lunch: the knowledge that
some people drink ketchup through a straw--straight from the bottle, DrummerGrrl asking me "How good are you in
bed?", brian feldman's call, and leaving. But after lunch, DrummerGrrl had to run off to a Playa del Fuego
meeting. Sniffle.
Cerulean, czeano, and I drove up to Patterson State Park where we knew a lot more fun was to be had! We nearly
crashed a wedding at the St. Teresa of Hungary church. Instead, we found our way into the ice rink, where they
had a high school jazz band playing some standards. That didn't make sense. Behind the boards were hundreds of
people, and on the ice... murphy in a Tyvek jumpsuit, ice skates, and chicken feet!!! We hadn't seen him
in a while, so we made our way over to his side of the rink, and he promptly changed sides before seeing us. About
this time, we figured "Hey, maybe we should make some effort to find other noders..." Using a 3 by 5 piece of
cerulean's notebook paper, we had a makeshift sign that read: C!. I had been confused, thinking they were
just talking about a C on the paper, wondering "copyleft? C to mean a speed limit?' Not until the ! was
affixed did I figure it out. Cut me some slack, I was tired;) Though the jazz band played in the ice rink
lobby, somebody had put together a nice mix of Queen, Beastie Boys, and other
crowd-inspiring tunes. The giant frog, giant pink poodle, giant cow (with moving legs!), and giant dragonfly
followed murphy around the ice and he gave us a big wave and grin when he saw us, which put us in a happy mood.
The crowd pushed towards the door and we figured it'd be best to follow suit. In the process I slipped and fell on
the ice. In the middle of April. Surreal, whaaat?
We made our way up to the mud pit event. The balcony of the mini-castle held little promise for viewing, so we
headed down to the masses. Several minutes and one amusing cell phone call later, we had brian feldman (and his
camera:) with us. Hooray! Check out his pix to see my
hat and cheek, as well as the mud. Oh, the mud. Children in mud, vehicles stuck in mud, murphy
attacking us with mud. The fun didn't stop. Er, wait, it did. And so we got back in our cars,
and returned to...
The water! In a different place this time, and with no dock for the boats to hold on to. We had to wait a helluva
time, though, so we passed the time by eating, discussing Aftermath nodes,
the doctor in his scrubs on the docks, the Coast Guard auxiliary patrol boat, and the rubber motorized dinghy.
To keep our attention, a martial arts academy danced in Chinese dragon costumes. Dancers ranged from the age of
very young to young-20s. What was cool is that they traded places in the costume via a sort of tag team system.
This is also how they switched instruments with each other. We felt a few raindrops but stayed on to
see a few vehicles enter the water. murphy had reappeared, much cleaner than we'd previously seen him, and we all
hung out on the rocks right next to the entrance ramp. This soon grew boring, as we'd seen the same thing many
hours previous. So a group picture was taken. And we parted ways.
Celebrities we thought we saw that fateful day: Jerry Garcia, John Lennon(oops, just Murphy), Bono(oops,
just a guy on the dingy), Josef Stalin (oops, just a bust of a police officer), and qeyser(oops, just a guy in
the Chinese dragon group). Mistaken identity is a fun game to play in a city.