An Aside (July Fourth)

The one break from long hours at the studio this past week came in the form of the fourth of July.  It was a day for spending outside with the PoetHouse Girls.  Lori, her pup Kita, Kelty and I participated in the Pet Parade (we walked alongside a very adventurous Chihuahua, whose owner must have loved the movie Up).  Then we met up with Jo and Cyr on Bikes to participate in the annual Freedom Ride, where thousands of Bend-ers gathered at Pioneer and Columbia parks to take Downtown by storm, clogging the streets in a rowdy pack.  After a dip in the Deschutes, we rode around town soaking in sunshine.   Cyr, Jo, and I ending the holiday watching Fireworks from Overturf Butte and a burrito from Taco Salsa with our fellow PoetHouse Honorary Girl, Jason.

Patriotic Duty

Bend celebreates the Fourth in slightly random ways. Random, yet entertaining. They kick off the Independence Day festivities with a Pet Parade. Kids of all ages dress up as their favorite pet, and attach leashes to their dogs, goats, rats, and snakes in order to march around downtown throwing out candy and waving at spectators, most of whom are four legged. We decked Kelty out in some sparkly stars and joined some friends in this years parade.

Juliet dressed up as a cat/ballerina.

Wrenna became a fairy/bunnyrabbit.

I'm Pretty sure this dog is related to Kelty.

Oliver Buzz Lightyear meets a very nice rat on parade.




This Girl and her Goat got the biggest applause of day.

After we made it through 3/4 of the parade route- sleepy kids, tired dogs- we went down to Drake Park for the Old Fashioned Festivities, which included lots of three legged races, watermellon eating contests, and some good live music. The temperature was perfect, the kids got to mellow out a bit, and I got in some quality people watching time.
At two pm we decided to head home to rest up before fireworks, but on the treck back to the car- we hit a bit of a delay. The annual Freedom Ride had commenced- which meant Hundreds of people on bikes (several costumed quite...ummm... patriotically with red white and blue body paint and not much else) had taken over the downtown streets, riding a loop and blocking traffic for a good half an hour. Almost every car waiting honked their horns happily and gave high fives to the bikers going by. My friend Marnie and I were sad we didn't have our bikes with us so we could have joined in.

This doesn't do justice to the scale of bikers clogging the streets.

And that was just Friday.

Tired little Lamb, waiting for Mary.