First Wanderlust Tour - Methow County Washington
I sure do love my life. Mostly it's the people I share it with, though.
Wanderlust Circus recently acquired the Wanderbus: a 40-foot tour bus that runs on vegetable oil. On Thursday we loaded it up with circus gear & folk, and drove about 10 hours up to the far central north portion of Washington. Doc, Dutch, Clover and I came up separately in Doc's spaceship. We joined the rest of the crew at 2 am on Friday morning at Sun Valley ski resort. They put us up in fantastic cabins and gave us delicious food.
On Friday morning we drove about an hour to Omak, where we set up in a spectacular venue at Omak Middle School. It's a superb theater that reminds me very much of my first theater - the Capitol Theater in Logan Utah. The stage was enormous, with a full 5-or-6-story overhead space for full-length curtains. It's been many years since I performed on a stage big enough for a full tumbling pass. Not that I threw any tumbling passes; I'm used to spring-loaded floors for my tumbling. :)
The kids were certainly appreciative of our circus. There were at least 500 kids there and they were quite blown away.
I'd forgotten the common small-town mentality toward flamboyance, though... quite a few of us got "faggot" comments from the teens. It was saddening and fairly amusing... none of us are primarily gay, and I'm not really gay at all, but since we were in makeup and tights we were labeled as queer despite being surrounded by a bevy of smokingly hot circus ladies. It always amused me when I cheered, too... the guys who hang out with the hot girls 24-7 are taunted for being fags, while the guys who spend their time belching and bragging with other dudes are viewed as masculine ladykillers.
The show was cut short, unfortunately, so that the imported kids could be bused back to their home schools.
We wandered to a local restaurant and enjoyed delicious food, then walked through Omak in search of a thrift store. We found one, and I filled a bag with clothes for $0.50. Sweet. Then we headed back to the middle school and prepared for the evening show. Well, other people prepared. I napped for 2 hours.
After the evening show we headed back to the cabins and began partying. Despite Dutch's fervent encouragement to partay down, not many people got all that intoxicated. But we had excellent fun. Jay and Tommy produced some wonderful ambient music with violin and accordian.
Alysia really threw down despite being the youngest person (18) and despite not partaking of any chemical party boosters. She's an amazing person. I have been worried about the Circus corrupting her and leading her into all manner of hedonistic revelry but she's got a strong personality and a healthy ability to keep herself within her own boundaries. I'm proud of her. I didn't have to big brother any of the guys... she just kinda exudes a "please don't hit on me, kind sir" sort of aura. I am very glad that she's safe with the Wanderlust crew. :)
Jay hit on the idea of playing Donkey Kong on the stairs, and he began hurling couch pillows down at us as we attempted to climb up to where he was at - theoretically to rescue our blonde girlfriend, though we never actually got to the top of the stairs. One of my favorite comments of the whole trip came at the end of one of his series of ineffective attacks - "I'm the worst giant monkey ever." The Donkey Kong game ended when I threw down a pillow that leaped past all safe targets and knocked a lamp and a glass over... shattered glass on the floor. But that was pretty much the worst damage of the whole trip, which is amazing.
Jay also waxed eloquently about ducks, and their aberrant social problems. Apparently there's an epidemic of gang rape by overly endowed boy ducks... pretty horrible to contemplate. Jay contemplated on it verbosely, to my ongoing amusement. My favorite comment of the entire trip was delivered with great feeling by Jay - "Ducks are wrong."
Finally, by about 5 am, everyone crashed out except Alysia and myself. We talked for an hour or so, just hanging out and being friends. She's awesome. My newest kid sister. Except that she's only a year and a half older than Jed, so she's a lot more like my daughter than my little sister. I hope she never takes a circus boyfriend - it'd kill me to try to balance "pal" with "teacher" with "self-imposed father figure". Poor kid's gonna get way sick of me trying to take care of her. But she'll let me know if I need to lay off a bit.
I went to sleep at 6 or 7, but she stayed up and cleaned for a few hours. Then she got up early and began breakfast. Paulina joined her, and the AWOL girls produced a spectacular high-meat-content breakfast for everyone. They also began kicking out some very creative pancakes. Alysia's specialty was hearts, and Uli & Miranda got an adorable broken-heart pair of 'cakes. Dutch got a horse with some hippolike qualities. Someone got a squid (Alysia's first departure from hearts) and Tommie Twimble got a very nicely-produced Junk 'Cake from Paulina. Awww.
Then Miranda went into high gear and washed all of the dishes. The maid staff at these cabins must've loved us. We left very little mess for as many people as we were.
We headed up to the lodge - some of us walking along a snowy trail. We filled up the oversized hot tub, and soon broke into all kinds of fun stunting. I got kicked off of a balcony after doing a handstand - pretty standard activity. Hanging out in the hot tub was much fun. Wet stunting in our underwear was fun, too... hopefully it wasn't too risque despite Miranda wearing see-through underwear.
Next we drove into Winthrop to The Barn, which is where all local events take place, more or less. It was a nice place, though the ceiling on the stage was too low for some of the Kazum throws & lifts. We're used to that, though. It seemed like the whole community turned out for the Saturday night show. They kept bringing in extra chairs, but finally the Barn was simple too full. I feel bad that they had to turn people away, but it's always wonderful to have a sold-out show.
They loved the show, and it went remarkably well. I love being in a circus.
We headed back to the cabin and began the final night party. Again, not too many people got tremendously drunk. We did a lot of climbing and stunting around. There were some sweet one-arm handstands on the stairway bannisters, and some excellent stunting in the living room and upstairs. I got to fly Paulina in an angel... she stunts like a dolphin, just like Alysia. She was also super nervous... her body was vibrating like a cell-phone. But as I expected she flies like a bird and stays tight like a pencil. I really wanna work throws and cradles with the AWOL girls so that we can put them up onto their apparatus, and then cradle them down afterward.
We did lift the aerial girls up to their hoops during the show, and helped them down, too. I just wanna do actual cradles. :)
The final hang-out crew was me & Dutch & Doc & Paulina & Alysia. Creature & Cherry & Clover were in the bedroom, producing occasional concerts of debauched ecstasy that amused us to no end. The highlight came during a hollow-body competition. All of us except Paulina were doing marathon conditioning, with all 3 big Kazum bases trying to outlast dolphin-girl Alysia. Right around the two-minute mark we were all being quiet other than gasps and grunts of agony. Now & then Alysia would try to cheat by shoving my feet toward the ground, but mostly it was honest, quiet, painful competition.
Suddenly a loud cat-meow emerged from the bedroom. Alysia, eyes bright with naievete, asked, "Was that a cat?" There was a moment of silence as we all digested her query, and then we collapsed in laughter. Except Doc - I'm pretty sure he won the competition for Kazum by outlasting Alysia. She blushed cutely and tried to insist that she'd won. Girls have no integrity, I swear.
Despite the fun happening in the bedroom, we were all tired out and ready for bed. The AWOL ladies retired to their cabin, and Dutch and I stayed up for one final beer. Creature emerged from the bedroom and hung out with us, talking about the amazing 60-foot metal person statues we're going to be performing on during the summer & autumn. Very exciting stuff. Clover and Cherry kept turning up the volume in the love shack, which was an interesting & amusing counterpoint to our circus discussion. I live a very rich & diverse life.
Everyone congregated again on Sunday morning for a quick breakfast and then we were off. The Wanderbus rolled out at 10:00, and Doc's spaceship followed at 11:00 with me, Russ and Clover - who, by the way, attempted to claim that she'd turned in early the night before and missed all the fun. Hah!
After 3.5 hours of being crammed into the spaceship's rear seat I offered to swap into the Wanderbus for the remainder of the trip. Louie took my place and I joined the bulk of the circus on the bus. It was pretty sweet. We just kicked back, snacked and talked. We stopped in some town to pick up three 55-gallon drums of vegetable oil for fuel, and then we stunted in the parking lot for a while while some local boys watched and wondered. Alysia did bunches of handbalancing contortion, to their great delight.
Several of us watched the 3rd season finale of Big Love on Miranda's computer. It was odd - I'd heard it's about Mormons. But it's not; it's about the offshoot "Mormons" who practice polygamy and are led by a reprobate old Prophet dude. It sucks that the show is probably a big part of what its viewers think Mormons are about... but in reality almost nothing from the show reflected anything LDS at all. *shrug*
I snuggled down into blankets & pillows and just dozed for the last few hours of the trip. 'Twas very enjoyable.
We rolled into Portland around 10:00, and I got a ride to the MAX station where I quickly caught a Green Line toward Clackamas. Then the Green Line transformed to a Blue Line at Gateway Transit when I wasn't looking, and I found myself heading toward Gresham. By the time I hiked back to the Gateway Transit, I'd missed the last (real) Green Line by 3 minutes. I had to catch a MAX *back* to downtown, and crash on the couch at the Egg. Lame. But now I'm able to catch up on internet stuff - yay!
And that was the trip. Highlights...
Hanging out with Alysia. She's totally awesome, and it's so fun to be along for the ride while a brand-new performer experiences her first circus tour. She wants to do this for her career, and I'm excited to be helping her to do so.
Performing for exceptionally appreciative people. Smalltown folk really appreciate the heck outta the circus. We lit up lots of faces and brightened lots of lives. I love that.
Acrobatics & stunting in a ski cabin. I dig that so many people who share my hobby are perfectly situated to stunt & play in a upside-downish way.
Incriminating cat noises by Clover from the bedroom. After the cat noise we all started making our favorite animal noises... it was a jungle for a brief time. Hilarity at its finest. Uli also did her Dolphingasm impression for us all, along with her Mean Turkey call. Super hilarious.
Circus folk. Hanging out with the bosses (Creature & Noah) and spending wonderful time together with everyone. Building stronger bonds with colorful, amazing people. We're a community that sticks up for one another.
Bummers from the trip...
No Joey. :( I missed my girlfriend something fierce and I wish I could've shared the amazing experience with her.
Biggest bummer: It's over. Life feels so drab by comparison.
But there'll be more. :)
Wanderlust Circus recently acquired the Wanderbus: a 40-foot tour bus that runs on vegetable oil. On Thursday we loaded it up with circus gear & folk, and drove about 10 hours up to the far central north portion of Washington. Doc, Dutch, Clover and I came up separately in Doc's spaceship. We joined the rest of the crew at 2 am on Friday morning at Sun Valley ski resort. They put us up in fantastic cabins and gave us delicious food.
On Friday morning we drove about an hour to Omak, where we set up in a spectacular venue at Omak Middle School. It's a superb theater that reminds me very much of my first theater - the Capitol Theater in Logan Utah. The stage was enormous, with a full 5-or-6-story overhead space for full-length curtains. It's been many years since I performed on a stage big enough for a full tumbling pass. Not that I threw any tumbling passes; I'm used to spring-loaded floors for my tumbling. :)
The kids were certainly appreciative of our circus. There were at least 500 kids there and they were quite blown away.
I'd forgotten the common small-town mentality toward flamboyance, though... quite a few of us got "faggot" comments from the teens. It was saddening and fairly amusing... none of us are primarily gay, and I'm not really gay at all, but since we were in makeup and tights we were labeled as queer despite being surrounded by a bevy of smokingly hot circus ladies. It always amused me when I cheered, too... the guys who hang out with the hot girls 24-7 are taunted for being fags, while the guys who spend their time belching and bragging with other dudes are viewed as masculine ladykillers.
The show was cut short, unfortunately, so that the imported kids could be bused back to their home schools.
We wandered to a local restaurant and enjoyed delicious food, then walked through Omak in search of a thrift store. We found one, and I filled a bag with clothes for $0.50. Sweet. Then we headed back to the middle school and prepared for the evening show. Well, other people prepared. I napped for 2 hours.
After the evening show we headed back to the cabins and began partying. Despite Dutch's fervent encouragement to partay down, not many people got all that intoxicated. But we had excellent fun. Jay and Tommy produced some wonderful ambient music with violin and accordian.
Alysia really threw down despite being the youngest person (18) and despite not partaking of any chemical party boosters. She's an amazing person. I have been worried about the Circus corrupting her and leading her into all manner of hedonistic revelry but she's got a strong personality and a healthy ability to keep herself within her own boundaries. I'm proud of her. I didn't have to big brother any of the guys... she just kinda exudes a "please don't hit on me, kind sir" sort of aura. I am very glad that she's safe with the Wanderlust crew. :)
Jay hit on the idea of playing Donkey Kong on the stairs, and he began hurling couch pillows down at us as we attempted to climb up to where he was at - theoretically to rescue our blonde girlfriend, though we never actually got to the top of the stairs. One of my favorite comments of the whole trip came at the end of one of his series of ineffective attacks - "I'm the worst giant monkey ever." The Donkey Kong game ended when I threw down a pillow that leaped past all safe targets and knocked a lamp and a glass over... shattered glass on the floor. But that was pretty much the worst damage of the whole trip, which is amazing.
Jay also waxed eloquently about ducks, and their aberrant social problems. Apparently there's an epidemic of gang rape by overly endowed boy ducks... pretty horrible to contemplate. Jay contemplated on it verbosely, to my ongoing amusement. My favorite comment of the entire trip was delivered with great feeling by Jay - "Ducks are wrong."
Finally, by about 5 am, everyone crashed out except Alysia and myself. We talked for an hour or so, just hanging out and being friends. She's awesome. My newest kid sister. Except that she's only a year and a half older than Jed, so she's a lot more like my daughter than my little sister. I hope she never takes a circus boyfriend - it'd kill me to try to balance "pal" with "teacher" with "self-imposed father figure". Poor kid's gonna get way sick of me trying to take care of her. But she'll let me know if I need to lay off a bit.
I went to sleep at 6 or 7, but she stayed up and cleaned for a few hours. Then she got up early and began breakfast. Paulina joined her, and the AWOL girls produced a spectacular high-meat-content breakfast for everyone. They also began kicking out some very creative pancakes. Alysia's specialty was hearts, and Uli & Miranda got an adorable broken-heart pair of 'cakes. Dutch got a horse with some hippolike qualities. Someone got a squid (Alysia's first departure from hearts) and Tommie Twimble got a very nicely-produced Junk 'Cake from Paulina. Awww.
Then Miranda went into high gear and washed all of the dishes. The maid staff at these cabins must've loved us. We left very little mess for as many people as we were.
We headed up to the lodge - some of us walking along a snowy trail. We filled up the oversized hot tub, and soon broke into all kinds of fun stunting. I got kicked off of a balcony after doing a handstand - pretty standard activity. Hanging out in the hot tub was much fun. Wet stunting in our underwear was fun, too... hopefully it wasn't too risque despite Miranda wearing see-through underwear.
Next we drove into Winthrop to The Barn, which is where all local events take place, more or less. It was a nice place, though the ceiling on the stage was too low for some of the Kazum throws & lifts. We're used to that, though. It seemed like the whole community turned out for the Saturday night show. They kept bringing in extra chairs, but finally the Barn was simple too full. I feel bad that they had to turn people away, but it's always wonderful to have a sold-out show.
They loved the show, and it went remarkably well. I love being in a circus.
We headed back to the cabin and began the final night party. Again, not too many people got tremendously drunk. We did a lot of climbing and stunting around. There were some sweet one-arm handstands on the stairway bannisters, and some excellent stunting in the living room and upstairs. I got to fly Paulina in an angel... she stunts like a dolphin, just like Alysia. She was also super nervous... her body was vibrating like a cell-phone. But as I expected she flies like a bird and stays tight like a pencil. I really wanna work throws and cradles with the AWOL girls so that we can put them up onto their apparatus, and then cradle them down afterward.
We did lift the aerial girls up to their hoops during the show, and helped them down, too. I just wanna do actual cradles. :)
The final hang-out crew was me & Dutch & Doc & Paulina & Alysia. Creature & Cherry & Clover were in the bedroom, producing occasional concerts of debauched ecstasy that amused us to no end. The highlight came during a hollow-body competition. All of us except Paulina were doing marathon conditioning, with all 3 big Kazum bases trying to outlast dolphin-girl Alysia. Right around the two-minute mark we were all being quiet other than gasps and grunts of agony. Now & then Alysia would try to cheat by shoving my feet toward the ground, but mostly it was honest, quiet, painful competition.
Suddenly a loud cat-meow emerged from the bedroom. Alysia, eyes bright with naievete, asked, "Was that a cat?" There was a moment of silence as we all digested her query, and then we collapsed in laughter. Except Doc - I'm pretty sure he won the competition for Kazum by outlasting Alysia. She blushed cutely and tried to insist that she'd won. Girls have no integrity, I swear.
Despite the fun happening in the bedroom, we were all tired out and ready for bed. The AWOL ladies retired to their cabin, and Dutch and I stayed up for one final beer. Creature emerged from the bedroom and hung out with us, talking about the amazing 60-foot metal person statues we're going to be performing on during the summer & autumn. Very exciting stuff. Clover and Cherry kept turning up the volume in the love shack, which was an interesting & amusing counterpoint to our circus discussion. I live a very rich & diverse life.
Everyone congregated again on Sunday morning for a quick breakfast and then we were off. The Wanderbus rolled out at 10:00, and Doc's spaceship followed at 11:00 with me, Russ and Clover - who, by the way, attempted to claim that she'd turned in early the night before and missed all the fun. Hah!
After 3.5 hours of being crammed into the spaceship's rear seat I offered to swap into the Wanderbus for the remainder of the trip. Louie took my place and I joined the bulk of the circus on the bus. It was pretty sweet. We just kicked back, snacked and talked. We stopped in some town to pick up three 55-gallon drums of vegetable oil for fuel, and then we stunted in the parking lot for a while while some local boys watched and wondered. Alysia did bunches of handbalancing contortion, to their great delight.
Several of us watched the 3rd season finale of Big Love on Miranda's computer. It was odd - I'd heard it's about Mormons. But it's not; it's about the offshoot "Mormons" who practice polygamy and are led by a reprobate old Prophet dude. It sucks that the show is probably a big part of what its viewers think Mormons are about... but in reality almost nothing from the show reflected anything LDS at all. *shrug*
I snuggled down into blankets & pillows and just dozed for the last few hours of the trip. 'Twas very enjoyable.
We rolled into Portland around 10:00, and I got a ride to the MAX station where I quickly caught a Green Line toward Clackamas. Then the Green Line transformed to a Blue Line at Gateway Transit when I wasn't looking, and I found myself heading toward Gresham. By the time I hiked back to the Gateway Transit, I'd missed the last (real) Green Line by 3 minutes. I had to catch a MAX *back* to downtown, and crash on the couch at the Egg. Lame. But now I'm able to catch up on internet stuff - yay!
And that was the trip. Highlights...
Hanging out with Alysia. She's totally awesome, and it's so fun to be along for the ride while a brand-new performer experiences her first circus tour. She wants to do this for her career, and I'm excited to be helping her to do so.
Performing for exceptionally appreciative people. Smalltown folk really appreciate the heck outta the circus. We lit up lots of faces and brightened lots of lives. I love that.
Acrobatics & stunting in a ski cabin. I dig that so many people who share my hobby are perfectly situated to stunt & play in a upside-downish way.
Incriminating cat noises by Clover from the bedroom. After the cat noise we all started making our favorite animal noises... it was a jungle for a brief time. Hilarity at its finest. Uli also did her Dolphingasm impression for us all, along with her Mean Turkey call. Super hilarious.
Circus folk. Hanging out with the bosses (Creature & Noah) and spending wonderful time together with everyone. Building stronger bonds with colorful, amazing people. We're a community that sticks up for one another.
Bummers from the trip...
No Joey. :( I missed my girlfriend something fierce and I wish I could've shared the amazing experience with her.
Biggest bummer: It's over. Life feels so drab by comparison.
But there'll be more. :)
Labels: kazum, Wanderlust Circus
posted by Scott | 11:22 AM
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