AKA several hours of hassle for five minutes of “ooh, pretty!”
Back in 2020, I had asked my best friend Howard if we could go to a Water Lantern Festival for my upcoming birthday in May. He thought it was a great idea, because we enjoyed going to festivals, and bought tickets. As you may be guessing, we didn’t get to go because that March was the Covid lockdown and everything was cancelled. He held on to the tickets and two years later when they reopened the festival, we decided to go.
Normally we would both show up early to a festival like this, get good parking, and spend as much time as we wanted there, hanging out and telling stories. However, unfortunately I had taken a dog sitting job and could only leave the dogs alone for a few hours. So we agreed on a time that would be late enough so the dogs wouldn’t be left alone too long, but that we could still do all the activities. As I was on my way, he called me. He had gotten there early, of course, and scouted everything. He had bad news. The place was packed and there were cars lined up down the street trying to get in. I said, "ok, you go see what's going on inside and have some fun and I’ll let you know when I get in." So I called my sister and we had a nice conversation to help me pass the time waiting to get in. Once I got past the entrance booth, Howard called me. I put my sister on hold and answered. “I’ve spotted you,” he said. I asked “where are you?’ He said “behind you and to the right.” I asked “are you walking?” He said no, he was in his truck with his binoculars! He sat there and watched all the cars until he found me. I told him I needed to wrap up my call with my sister and then I would park. He said ok. I went back to my sister and told her what happened. She laughed and said “he’s a good guy,” and I agreed. She told me to have fun, and I parked. Not ten seconds later, Howard was walking up to my car.
I gathered my things and off we went. I told him first order of business I need a bathroom. If you have read any other stories on this blog, you know that periods can happen at most inconvenient times. This was one of those times. So I went to the bathroom and got that all taken care of, then we went in search of the bags and lantern kits. We got to the tent and Howard told me to find him a color, since he is red/green colorblind. I looked at the bags and they were all green, pink and orange! I told him so, and we laughed, and I explained to the guy sitting behind the table that Howard is colorblind. He had never heard of it, so we spent a minute or two explaining it to him. Howard showed him the app on his phone that lets him find colors, and the guy was fascinated. So I got him a green bag and picked out a teal colored mandala blanket, which also came with our ticket.
We then went in search of food trucks, one of our favorite things! Howard had seen one on the advertisement called Wonton Tacos, so we had decided to try those. We found the truck and the line was shorter than the others. Howard said “do you think the line is short because the food is bad, or people just don’t know what a wonton taco is?” I said “either way, it’ll be an experience!” While we were waiting for tacos I realized that each of us should have gotten a bag, and I hadn't picked up mine. Whoops! So I went back and got a bag. They were out of any of the good colors, so I got an orange one. That's ok, I got the blanket. We got our tacos and tried to help a lady who had too much stuff and was having a hard time holding on to it. I don’t know how much help we were though! Having gotten our food, we headed off to find a spot far away from the crowds. I was starting to get a whopping headache, so I needed to hydrate, get some food, and take my night meds. We were standing in line and I told Howard this and he joked “those meds aren’t going to make you do anything crazy, like last time? I didn’t bring a shovel!” I shrugged and said “no promises.” We often have dark humor, and I wonder what the lady in front of us in line was thinking!
That lasted all of five minutes, and then it was time to turn our attention to how the heck we were going to get out of there. There was already a line of cars all the way back to where I had parked, which was almost all the way back. We told each other goodbye and good luck and I got in my car and got in line. I got another friend on the phone to pass the time and it was a good twenty minutes before I even moved. When we finally did move, we went all around the park road, then saw that they were diverting the food trucks on to the actual road, and diverting us to one of the trails that ran around the park! So that was an interesting drive. So what should have been a twenty minute drive each way turned into at least an hour! Later I learned that Howard had found a back road out and avoided the line altogether. No surprise there, he’s good at that sort of thing.
All in all we had a nice evening, albeit a little stressful, and got our food truck food, TikTok video and Instagram pictures. Was it worth it? It would have been better if I wasn’t double booked with the dogs and could have come earlier, but we had a good time and some new stories to add to our lexicon. So it was worth it.
