I am so slack in the summer, I swear.

So, last week it was a gazillion degrees outside with a heat index of a kabillion degrees. Mountain bike, you say? Why not?

I'll tell you why not: because it makes you feel as if someone has taken your seat post off, filled your bike frame with lead buckshot and then tamped it back up. Ready to go! Hey, my bike weighs 100 lbs! My legs? Also apparently full of buckshot. It was everything I could do to keep the pedals turning. I grunted up hills like one of those sad sacks you see riding a bike for transportation because their car got repoed and they don't understand how gearing works. Fun, or not depending on how you look at it. Like, fun when compared to being nipped at by a pack of hungry hyenas but not fun when compared to, oh, anything else.

Honestly, I really do like mountain biking a lot and I also like heat, but man the humidity sucks the life out of me. I have apparently become what I hate: someone who complains out the humidity when they live in the south. I'm old!

So just to catch you up, K and I had a week off and it was grand. We ate pancakes while watch le Tour. We ate French toast while watching le Tour. We ate waffles while watching le Tour. Jealous yet? No? I can't imagine why not. We also went to two (2) different state parks to ride our bikes and no shit, passed the same car from Ontario both times. I think the Canadians were stalking our vacation.

Other things we did: Saw a blockbuster movie at two (2) in the afternoon, did not paint trim, were slothlike and ate candy, bought some stuff. It was a perfect week. Everything we hesitated on was backed up with this encouragement: "But we're on vacation!" Eating pie when still full from dinner? On vacation! Buying items we didn't actually need? On vacation! Going to bed way too late? ON VACATION. Sadly some of this vacation-era attitude has seeped into the past few weeks so I threw the goddamn scale out the window. It lies anyway.

So I'm sure you're reading this and are thinking: "yeah yeah yeah, whatever, tell me about the crazy at the Hanover Tomato Festival." And so I shall. There is only one problem - there was no crazy.

Perhaps you're thinking: "Hanover Tomato Festival, I've never heard of it!" Ah, but I'll bet you know it by its other name: The Seventh Ring of Hell Festival. You didn't know it was one in the same, did you? See, it was bad enough that it was held in the middle of a field in the middle of nowhere in JULY. Add to that the distinct Confederate flair created by the Confederate History Month folks passing out stickers that people actually wore (embarrassing does not even begin to cover it).

Now, top all this with a creamy layer of eleventy BILLION Japanese Beetles. Apparently the field was their birthing grounds and we were waving away bumbling swarms of the damn things all day. They dive-bombed our display, our tent and our heads. There is nothing that evokes the bug dance more than a beetle thwaping into your head and getting tangled in your hair. We couldn't relax for a second. The final nail in the coffin was the blandy bland suburban crowd who could not have been less interested in us. It was as if we were invisible. The few people who did deign to gaze at our display couldn't even be bothered to say hello. Eight hours in the sun being tortured by beetles and we sold NOTHING. Hanover County can kiss my ass. I hope they enjoyed spending our $90 booth fee.

Last Saturday we sold stuff at the Bizarre Market, a non-profit that puts on an arty hipster flea market/craft show a few times a year. It was quite the improvement over the Hanover Stupid Tomato Fiasco. We actually sold some stuff, won cupcakes in a cake walk, and generally enjoyed the stellar people-watching. Kids today wear the craziest shit, I swear. I mean, I have been known to wear some crazy shit in my day but I stopped wearing that bonnet when I was eleven. I did not rock Little House on the Prairie into my twenties, is all I'm saying. It was amusing.

13 chatty monkeys