another road trip

Today I took another trip down memory lane.

As a recently-departed (just to another post, nothing to wear black about) colleague noted, having been an Au Pair in this country and having been very excited to be assigned here as a State Dept. professional, it's never the same as before, sort of an analogue to never being able to go home again.

The place changes. The faces change. More crucially, you've changed.

I knew this already, so I wasn't all that surprised today.

The town looks much the same as when I lived there. But there are important differences.

Today was day three of their annual festival. Once upon a time, I was a part of the celebrations, if only tangentally. My visit today was also tangental, but ever so much more so.

Still, the weather was beautiful, everyone seemed to be having fun, and I got there just in time to watch the parade. There were several marching bands, as well as other marching contingents.

I'm still not sure why a bunch of middle-aged women were dressed as Gummi-Bears, let alone another contingent dressed (it took me a while to figure this out) as lighthouses.

To say nothing of the high school age kids dressed as Sponge Bobs. An entire contingent of teenage Sponge Bobs.

But the bands weren't bad. I was a little surprised to hear a brass arrangement of the John Denver hit "Country Roads," but recall that it was rather popular "back in the day" as well.