What can you do with visitors that is unique to the area? We had a ready-made answer to the question. Go to the festival for paraponting. (that’s where people jump off a mountain with a parachute)
We didn’t get out there until the afternoon. It was pretty crowded. And sunny. And hot.
The event started with Kaitlyn getting upset when I told her she’s too small to jump off a mountain with a parachute.
She finally found an acceptable alternative: the stuff set up for kids. So after downing an ice cream, she went on the giant inflated slide. It was pretty high and pretty steep. Some kids were getting to the top then refusing to slide down. Those kids were older than Kaitlyn. She didn’t have that problem. She got to the top and would slide down, squealing and smiling all the way. Then she’d climb right back up to slide down again. Then she rode on one of those silly carnival rides where you sit in a car and go around and around in circles. We wouldn’t let her go on the climbing wall. Or do the fencing. Or play rugby. Or twirl a baton. Seemed like an aggressive set of activities for children.
We tried to watch the paraponters for a while. Truth be told, on a normal sunny afternoon there’s just as many as there were today. They may not be wearing funny outfits or twirling around or competing to land in the middle of a circle on the ground… but there are still more of them in the sky. The sun and the heat finally took their toll and we left.
Next stop: the bubbles.
Kaitlyn loves those things. I somehow always manage to forget just how much I hate them until we get in and we are starting the climb up the mountain. The view today was spectacular. It was especially clear…. we could even see Mont Blanc. That was pretty amazing.. considering it’s a two hour drive to it but it’s so big that we could see it!
We found out that the top area of the Bastille (the bubbles’ destination) is a hang out for teenagers on a Saturday evening. And we found out that teenagers here are as obnoxious as teenagers in the United States. They started pouring bottles of water on each other. Sometimes spraying them. I was not in any mood to get sprayed with water.
There was also a performance going on at the Bastille. Some sort of mime. Who occasionally talked. We watched for a while. The most interesting thing he did was use two ladders like stilts. Another time I went to watch with Kaitlyn and he was up there in his underwear. We were at the Bastille for a little more than an hour when we took the bubbles back down… and his act was still going on.
We tried to go to a fondue restaurant I’d heard about. They serve you the bread in a basket on a pulley above the table. I thought that would keep Kaitlyn entertained…. kind of like her granddad with the toaster that sent the bread down automatically. (legend has it, he made his mother toast two loaves of bread the day they bought the toaster so he could watch it. The missing link in the story is… how old was he at the time?) But without a reservation, that didn’t work out.
We went to plan b: the pizza truck. We sat at one of his little tables waiting for the pizzas. And now it was so cold, Debbie and I huddled under a blanket Bill fetched from his car. We’ll be lucky if we don’t get sick from all this hot then cold. If we do, we can just take some of Debbie’s mercury and I’m sure we’ll be fine.
This of course, screams for a response from me. The urban legend of my making two loaves of bread in the automatic lower/raise the bread toaster is really quite true, and indeed a charming story. I was there and remember it. So, I had to be at least six years old. The upper age limit for toasting bread in Indiana was ten at the time, so I had to be in that age range. You don’t believe my line about age limits for toasting in Indiana? Well, how about they can’t sell cars on Sundays, so people will go to church. Believe that? Then ten is the age limit for toasting.
So is the urban legend that you BEGGED to play the accordian also true?
I wanted to play an electric organ, but when I strapped it on I fell over onto it. It was a weighty decision, but I settled for the accordion.