Living in Texas one of the things we missed most about living in Seattle was the Fremont Summer Solstice Parade. We’d gone many times in the past and always had a great time. Now that we are back we made sure to go this year. The parade is a little different than most. They have a few rules: no motorized vehicles (people power only) and no words. So what you don’t see are boring cars and political signs. What you do see are very clever human powered floats, cool interactive art and lots and lots of naked, body-painted bicyclists. Men and women (and a few little kids). Some of the paint jobs were pretty cool and often involved multiple people. So fair warning, this post contains some nudity. Here are some of our pictures (we took 551) from, as Wesley calls it, The Naked People Parade.
We headed to the U-district and picked up Pat and then to Fremont in the drizzle (it didn’t last). We found our spot for watching the parade and then waited. Being a solstice parade it starts exactly at noon. We had an hour to kill. Luckily a guy was walking around giving kids chalk. So Wesley and I partook in one of his current favorite activities: hopscotch.
The bikes, and their naked riders, are only sort of semi-official it seems. They lead off the parade before the real parade begins. So shortly before noon Wes and I gave up our game (I was leading 5 to 3) and took to watching some naked people ride bikes. Seeing the men, you realize just how much everything gets squished. Here are a few examples of probably a hundred or more different riders.
Probably Wesley’s favorite part:
Jillian couldn’t take her eyes off this bathtub and its ducks.
After the bicyclists, the parade gets going in earnest. You never really know what you are going to get. The floats, puppets and entertainment are all hand made by volunteers. You don’t know what you are going to get, but you’re probably going to like it. I’m not sure if this guy was the master of ceremonies, but he was throwing beads (we caught some gold ones) and was on stilts that made him about 10 feet tall.
The banner and mostly naked women always lead off…
Wesley got to spend most of the time on my shoulders. It gave him a better view and me, well, I’m a little shorter now.
Belly Dancers.
Huge, human powered puppets.
This guy (and a bunch of others) were giving out hugs. He tried to hug Wesley on my shoulders. I leaned forward and Wesley leaned as far back as he possibly could to avoid the hug. Cracked up the crowd. I got a nice hug though.
While he didn’t want to have a hug. And didn’t want to play kickball in the street, he jumped at the chance to get run over by a giant beach ball. He was awesome. He had a great time and a huge, huge smile on his face. Click for bigger pictures of him.
Because the parade is human powered and because there are so many interactive things going on, the flow can be a bit messed up. It moves in fits and starts. Sometimes people just breeze on by and other times they get stalled in front of you and you get a really good chance to see what they are up to. One of the times the stopped in front of us we got to listen to some good Mardi Gras style music. Another time we got hula hoopers.
The military presence is a little different in Fremont.
There were lots of dancers, but this group had the most coordinated effort. We were lucky that they stopped in front of us for a bit and we got to see most of the routine.
No Solstice Parade would be complete without the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. This picture doesn’t do them justice. They are always a big hit and do some good charity work, too.
Jillian fell asleep on the walk from the car. When she woke up, she was interested, but grumpy. On the way back she was upset because she wanted “to hug someone in a costume”. We found several people in costume and they agreed to a hug, but I guess they weren’t the right people because Jillian refused and then repeated that she wanted to hug someone in a costume. She was pretty upset.
After the parade we headed to the U-district to have lunch at Fondi. Really good pizza and yummy gelato at a reasonable price. I’d recommend the salted caramel if they have it. Wesley and Jillian (who did perk up at lunch) really liked their birthday cake flavored gelato. And it really did taste like birthday cake. Wesley insists my blackberry tasted more like raspberry. I won’t argue with him, but it was good either way.
Here is a gallery of 47 pictures (including the ones above) that we’ve uploaded to our server. We also have 551 photos in our 2010 Fremont Summer Solstice Parade set on Flickr. Already (only about 3 hours now since they all went up, we’ve had about 16,000 hits on those images. Update: After 1 day Flickr is reporting 42,000 views). A little nudity sells(even body painted public nudity). If you check it out, remember you’ll see breasts, butts and penises. Just so you know.
Tags: Amber, Fremont, Jillian, Joshua, Parade, Pat, Seattle, Summer Solstice, Wesley
Today the kids and I (and Redmond) went for a hike to Twin Falls. Amber had planned to join us, but wasn’t feeling very well. We went despite the rain. After all, if you let a little drizzle stop you around here, you won’t be doing much of anything outside the 3rd through 4th weeks of July. The start of the trail is pretty flat and Jillian was a hiking machine.
Wesley was running to catch up when he took a fall. So we made it six whole minutes before we had tears and blood. Just a small scrape on the hand, but it sure must have hurt.
Because of the recent rains the river (South Fork of the Snoqualmie) was really flowing. There were a half dozen or so kayakers taking advantage of the extra volume. The kids were really intrigued.
Once the trail started heading up hill Jillian ran out of steam. She ground to a halt. Apparently she doesn’t have a low gear. From this point on there are no pictures of her on the trail because she is riding on my back. Despite the fall, Wesley was a trooper and wanted to keep going on. Even when he said he was tired, when given the choice, he wanted to keep going over returning to the car. Here he is next to a big moss covered rock. He spent a lot of time on top as well.
Jillian woke up when we got to the overlook for the lower falls. She didn’t actually want to get out and walk, but she did make me turn sideways so she could see. Here is Wesley getting a little wet from the spray of the falls. At this point the kids got fruit leathers. Food is a good motivator.
Even after climbing up the many and rather steep steps from the lookout Wesley agreed to keep going to the bridge over the river between the falls. We agreed granola bars would be had there. We also agreed that on the way back I would carry him on all the uphill stretches as I’d done on a few of the harder sections on the way to the bridge. On the way we came across this log. Wesley was really taken with the stumps and fallen logs. Especially the nurse logs. He pointed out all of them. You can see he is holding his hand a bit gingerly.
At the bridge Redmond was a little freaked out. He wouldn’t sit near the edge of the bridge and he wouldn’t put his back to the edge of the bridge. I’m not sure he thought it was all that safe. Here he is exactly in the middle, the only place he would sit for a picture.
After the granola bars we headed back to the car. Despite being mostly downhill, there were plenty of uphills for my taste. I was huffing and puffing and we were garnering a fair bit of attention. Especially from people who saw me carrying Wesley and then couldn’t help but say “Oh, two of them” when they passed and could finally see J on my back. Wesley saved a native snail from sure destruction by moving him off the path to a safer location.
To keep Wesley motivated on the way back to the car (I was at this point out of snacks) I told him I had a surprise for him. I gave him clue after clue. We got all the way to “It has ice cream, is some type of drink, it is fizzy, brown, and called some kind of ‘float’”. I think he must of been exhausted because he could not for the life of him come up with the answer. I finally gave in a few hundred yards from the end and told him. He and J who was awake again by this point were very excited.
We stopped in Issaquah and went to the XXX Rootbeer Drive-in. An awesome place on every level. Highly recommended. The people were so friendly. First the kids climbed up into a coin operated wagon train and the waitress came over and dropped fifty cents in from her apron to fire it up. Then, when we ordered, she gave the kids two bouncy balls by tossing them against the window and letting the kids chase them down in the restaurant.
The kids loved the stools at the walk-up window. Because of the weather the place was much less busy than usual. We could have had a booth, but the kids loved those stools. So we got our drinks to go. Drinks by the way, which came with a plastic camel on top of the ice cream for Wesley, and a giraffe for Jillian.
Jillian’s float is the small one. Wesley is drinking his. Mine, only 40 cents more than theirs, was immense. Redmond got to help me finish it in the car. Such a friendly place and very family oriented (We were shown to the bathroom by a very polite 9 or 10 year old girl in waitress uniform and related to somebody working there). I think we will have to make at least one more trip out there this summer. And yes, by the way, the whole restaurant is that packed with stuff.
Last weekend we got the chance to visit with Amy, Jason, Gracie, Emmett and Jessee while they were here visiting from Montana. The last time I saw them we were in Carlsbad, NM a little over two years ago. Heck, this is the first time I’ve ever met Jesse. So it was quite the treat for us and the kids to get to see them again. We’ll have to get over to Montana sometime soon to check out their new house.
In case you are wondering, and because I can never remember …Wes & J are second cousins with Gracie, Emmett and Jessie. They are first cousins once removed with Amy and they are John and Bert’s grand nephew and niece.
John and Bert were gracious enough to host us. John got a good fire going and everyone gathered around in the drizzle to cook their hotdogs and marshmallows. Oh, we had cake, too. So a pretty good dinner I might say. Wesley really decided he likes hotdogs cooked and can now eat more than I can in a sitting.
After we got the hotdogs cooked in the rain we headed inside for dinner. The kids sat at a picnic table I remember from when I was a kid.
After dinner we wasted no time with the marshmallows. If you think the hotdogs were a big hit, the marshmallows were huge!
Not everyone had the best time cooking them…
But they sure did love eating them!
After dinner the kids went on what Wesley dubbed a “Slug Safari”. They tracked down and then relocated a lot of slugs. Probably 50 or 60 of them in all. Emmett would find them, but wouldn’t touch them. Gracie would touch them, but wouldn’t carry them. And Wesley, well, Wesley would probably let them sleep in his bed if we’d let him.
See all the photos from our visit on Flickr.
This weekend while Amber was out Wesley decided he wanted to write a few books. He did a great one a while back about Santa Claus. If I find that one I’ll post it as well. The way this works is I make the books out of paper and staple them together. I provide the crayons and the rest is up to Wesley. He decides what to draw and what the words are. I just write them down for him. He likes making them and really likes reading them. He even picked them as his bedtime books last night.
Penguins:
Space:
FYI, I made the videos by photographing them with our DSLR. Then I edited the photos for size and adding the text using GIMP. Finally I used Windows Live Movie Maker to create the videos. Flickr handles the actual storage and streaming.