Alticor has voted holidays – meaning that there are six days each year which are chosen as additional vacation by general consensus. This means that I had Friday off for the fourth and Monday off just because.
Friday afternoon, I headed up to Traverse City to visit the family and have my yearly exploration of the Cherry Festival, which is going on this week. It seemed kind of silly to be on the road most of the day, but that’s just how things ended up working out. Michael was also home, and took Monday off.
We went to the TC fireworks on the fourth. They were OK, but really not as good as previous years. The downfall was really the coreography, many of them were poorly timed. This led to odd pauses as well as sets that did not really compliment each other.
Saturday was the airshow. The Blue Angels were good, although one apparently had problems and returned to the airport shortly after the initial flyby. Typically there are six pilots, four performing as a group and the two soloists. This year it was the soloists and a trio of pilos. because they were performing as a pair and as a trio rather than quad. The other parts of the show were OK, but they suffered from the same ill timing as the fireworks. This wasn’t helped by the fact that I have not been able to find the naration on any radio station for the past few years, which really is necessary for full show enjoyment.
Sunday after the Polka mass the family went to the Platte. We only have four kayaks for five people, so I took my whitewater boat. Talk about a good way to ensure you fail to blend in with the drunk tubers…
Monday we went into the Cherry Festival fora few hours mid-day, but apparently there’s nothing happening during the day. Michael and I headed back downstate at about 6:00.
For the most part, I was a bit disappointed with the weekend’s events – and not just because I’m a generally surly person. As mentioned my issues with the fireworks and airshow, but I was really surprised with the lack of interesting thigns going on mid-day for Cherry Fest – apparently we should have looked for more evening entertainment. Oh, and I got sunburn… I hate sunburn.
I did get a large number of pics from the airshow – dispite my whining above. Some of them might make it to the gallery in the next few days.
