This weekend has been a fine, full, five-festival affair. Aided by a high pressure system that painted the sky a monochromatic cerulean blue, combined with cool fall temperatures that could easily be regulated, simply by stepping in to and out of the sunshine, this weekend’s weather was perfect. Three of these festivals were merely drive-by affairs. Stumbled upon, unexpectedly, they were nice to see, but I was already on my way to somewhere else when I found them and only tarried at them for just a little while.

First up on Saturday morning, was the Scottish Festival in Forest Park. When I passed by, a group of about a dozen bagpipers were just beginning to warm-up their pipes. A dozen bagpipes doing warm-up exercises makes for the most ungodly wailing racket that I found neither amazing nor full of grace. A passing woman exclaimed, “Just think, I was worried that it would be difficult to find this festival.” The photo with this post is of one of these bagpipers.

On Saturday, I biked downtown, passing through the Park, riding by the Scottish Festival and then on to midtown and festival number two, the aptly named, Midtown Street-Fest. My next stop was the City Garden, where I took the picture of the sculpture, “Big Suit”, which was used in yesterday’s post. Across Market from the City Garden, in the lobby of the Bank of America building, an exhibit entitled, “Da Vinci Machines” lured me next. At $15 admission, it seemed somewhat expensive, but being over 55, I was eligible for the senior’s discount, and only paid $11. Such a deal! Next up was the old courthouse, the Arch and the riverfront, always good photo-ops. At this point I turned the bike around and headed for the Gardens. There I played text-tag with Anne, in a vain attempt to rendezvous with her and Joanie. The Best of Missouri Festival was ongoing and was very crowed. I tried to keep from coming between the free food and the little blue haired ladies that feasted upon said food. On my way home, I stumbled upon Grove-Fest, the Grove neighborhood’s festival. While passing by this festival, I watched a fashion show that was in-progress, complete with runway walks.

On my way home, passing again through the Park, I caught the end of a rugby game. While not nearly as esoteric as cricket, the game of rugby is still a rather confusing sport. As one uninitiated, I can only characterize the motivation of this sport as to kill the man with the ball. There was much scrumming going on, and occasionally the ball would squirt out of one of these piles. When this occurred the old scrum would melt away and a new one, just down the field would quickly form. At the end of the game the two teams lined up, facing each other and in good little league fashion, go good game and slap the hand of all of the players on the opposing team. Then each team limped off the field. I got 22 miles. An astute reader might note that I have only enumerated four and not five festivals. The fifth festival we did on Sunday, but that is another day and is another story.