EVENT DAYS -- May 27-29, 2016
Cap' n Baldy here!
Here is what you have to do ... hop on the I-15 and head due north for 85 miles. You'll come to a crime-ridden flat spot in Riverside County just west of Mount San Jacinto that's covered with over-55 housing developments and shopping centers. Jacinto is HA-SEEN-TOE in case you were wondering. You've arrived...this is Hemet, California. We come here twice each year ... we've been doing it for years. Now...I do recognize reasonable souls among you might ask this question ... Why?
It all has to do with SQUARE DANCING -- and the rich, lifelong friendships that activity has engendered for us. Barbara and I have been square-dancing for 25 years. We frequently have people come up to us and say, "Oh, that must be fun! I learned to square dance in junior high school! I learned to Promenade and Do-See-Do!" Now...I love all of you but PLEASE don't say DO-SEE-DO ... the call is DO-SAH-DO ... one of over 330 calls and concepts we need to know to be dancing here at Hemet this Memorial Day Weekend!
Square Dancing is not a casual activity. I certainly don't mean to sound ominous here... but I do have to share facts we both know to be true. Rightly or wrongly, Square Dancing has evolved into a definite hierarchy of skill levels, each defined by an internationally recognized curriculum of calls ... these levels are Basic, Mainstream, Plus, Advanced 1, Advanced 2, and Challenge Levels 1 through 4. We currently dance at Challenge Level 1 (C1) and are taking classes and workshops in Challenge Level 2 (C2). Ours is a world of arcane language which is unintelligible except to the initiated...a series of commands given at speeds faster than normal human reaction time ... Relay the Deucey ...Scoot and Plenty...Cast a Shadow ...Mini-Busy ... Parallelogram Out Roll Circulate ...Scoot and Ramble ... Alter the Wave ... Butterfly Walk and Dodge ...and so forth ...et cetera! Frequently, a caller will interrupt a call, making us do something else before finishing the call.
As Square Dancers, we are frequently in classes and workshops. Men learn to dance the women's parts; women learn to dance the men's parts...we learn to dance Left-handed as well as Right-handed . We even learn to dance with people that are not really there ... these are formally known as Phantoms!
In years past, we'd bring our RV to Hemet and stay at the Golden Palms RV Resort where our dance programs were then held ... a really splendid park with an enormous pool where we'd hang out with fellow dancers on hot afternoons ...
We had many fine travel adventures in that rig ... but enough of that history lesson in this blog ... after many thousands of travel miles, we sold our rig back in 2011.
I find that weird things happen with increasing frequency on our road trips. I am never a person of interest here since I am merely the guy who drives. Goldilocks? That's an entirely different story. Increasingly adept in the use of her iPhone, she is now fond of communicating with our grandchildren by use of Snapchat. These communications are wordless, consisting solely of exchanging grossly distorted pictures of their faces through the dubious magnificence of modern photo editing software ... for example ...
Goldilocks in Cubist Mode ....
Sour Lemon Expressionism ...
Goldilocks has been rummaging around old scrap books, looking at our dancing pictures of ages past. In the early '90's while we were dancing at the Plus Level, we'd get gussied up for festivals in matching Square Dance outfits ...
Square Dancers Then -- 1994
Square Dancers Then -- note the colorful sweat towel!
Square Dancers Here and Now -- 2016
Ourselves with Square Dance friends, Gary and Lois Burton ... represented in this illustrious group are 3 total hip replacements, 2 total knee replacements, 1 pacemaker and 1 quadruple bypass graft! We are all Marvels of Modern Medical Engineering! Not pictured: Our constant companion "Arthur Itis "! He hangs around more than we'd like!
The Hiram Wadsworth Pumping Plant pumps fresh water into Diamond Valley Lake at the rate of 16,000 gallons per second. When the lake is discharging water, 12 hydroelectric turbine-generators produce 26 megawatts of electric power, enough to supply 26,000 homes ...
We meet our friends, Bonnie and Dave Stotler, for lunch at the scenic West Overlook. The weather is gorgeous as is our view of Diamond Valley Lake. However, alas, our geocaching attempts here meet with dismal failure ... in formal geocache parlance, this is known as DNF ... Did Not Find! As I have related before, the sport of geocaching is a treasure hunt with a GPS receiver. We are much more successful over on State Street where we score five caches in about 40 minutes! Our crushed spirits are revived, especially when Dave buys the Starbucks coffee!
The Square Dance festival begins over at the Casa Del Sol RV Resort clubhouse. From the outset, the atmosphere is energetic, informal and congenial. We know everyone in the hall by sight if not by name. Dancers come in from as far away as Tucson, Arizona, and St. George, Utah. All of us come here year after year ...
An individual dance set is called a tip. Our position for any given tip is determined by computer ... the number next to our name indicates the square in which we'll be dancing ...
Active Dancing Widows Joyce and Carol ... we miss their husbands, Jim and Les ...
Debbie works on a quilt between tips!
Romney with Sally Ann and Pat, our inspired and ferocious Kitchen Masters!
=======================================================================
It is now Sunday morning ... very early! In our room at the Quality Inn, a very horny neighborhood rooster wakes us up by crowing every thirty seconds! The dance festival will continue for a few more hours but we must return to San Diego for another engagement. We are sorry to miss the fun of the festival's closing activities.
It's time for coffee and a breakfast sandwich at Hemet's finest Starbucks before we start to roll south...
Y'all have a nice day now ...
Until next time, Stay well and stay as active as you are able!
Affectionately,
Baldy
