hooping

In our childhood days we called it hula hooping but everything I read on-line seems to indicate the more respectful term is hooping.  Alrighty then!

As I mentioned in my last post I got a chance to try hooping when we were at NCF.  Last year a colleague had coerced me into trying at the city folk fest and to put it bluntly… I sucked at it.  I gave up in shame but had the idea of trying it again in the back of my head.

A few months ago Annie posted a how to but it took trying some other hoops at the fair this past weekend for me to get the courage to get my own.  After perusing some instructions on-line, Kevin and I went around to all the hardware stores looking for 3/4″ 160 psi pipe on Monday night but none of them stocked it and it was going to take 4 weeks to get any.  I decided to go with plan B – 75 psi pipe that is better suited to kiddy hoops.  With little people birthdays and a visit with my cousins coming up I figured I’d have enough uses for the pipe so went and bought a chunk.

The 50 ft length yielded 3 adult and 2 child sized ones (M posted some of her photos taken well before dusk too).  The adult ones are so light and wobbly that they’re a little hard to use but with 2 evenings of practice I’m finally getting the hang of it.  Finally!

When I return from my trip I’m definitely going to be making a better one in preparation for this years editions of the city folk fest.

solstice weekend

After work on Friday, Kevin and I made the trek a few hours north for our first camping trip of the year.  This was, without a doubt, the latest start to the camping season ever.  In one sense I’m ashamed but we’ve been enjoying life close to home and been involved in more things locally so it’s really not much of an issue.  I do miss the mountains but I’m glad we’ve had the chance to discover how much less stressful it can be to stay home and spend an evening in the backyard.

Back to solstice… this year we decided to celebrate it at the North Country Fair where a stage had just been revamped and a new playground constructed in memory of our friends’ son.  Unlike most of the bigger music festivals in Alberta this one has space for on-site camping so I was excited about spending a weekend in one place.

We weren’t really too sure what to expect at this festival but figured it would be a little more of a family focused gathering of earthy folks joining to celebrate of solstice with great music of course.  That element was definitely there but there were easily as many obscene young drunks.  Thankfully those folks were gone before the music really got going on Sunday.

I still can’t quite get over why people would pay $100 just to drink and yell at each other all weekend but there probably aren’t many things like the fair in that neck of the woods.   I just wish we could figure out a way to train them to be more respectful.

All in all though it was a good weekend with some great music including one of our new favourites Trevor Tchir.  I also got to play around with hula hoops a little bit.  Fun times!

Oh, and during the little rain storm on Saturday Kevin and I huddled up in the back of the E to play our own music.  I wish we had the option to do videos with sound on one of our camera so we could have documented the dijeridoo, djembe, jews harp and recorder.  If for some reason we’re still here next year we’ll definitely be going back!