So this past Monday, for the first time, I went to the St. Louis Ren Faire. I must say I had a blast. I rode out there with my friends J and R and got there a little after 12. After walking down the hill we got to the area where it was being held and it was like walking into another world(well more like another time to be honest lol). As soon as I walked in I already started seeing people I know. You see I have a bunch of friends who actually work the Faire. As a matter of fact all but a few of them do.
The first booth I stopped at was the booth for Dracosinister Blades. I know the man who runs it and I always like looking at what he has for sale. While I was there I said hi, shot the shit a bit, talked about the party that's being held in July that I plan to attend. I soon noticed that J and R was walking to a different spot and left to catch up with them. I rode with them after all and didn't want to get left behind. We walked up the hill stopping to say hi to folks here and there; when we decided to check the schedule to see what all was planned. We happened to notice that the band Musical Blades was going to be playing soon so we decided to head that way.
Let me stop for a second to mention that there was this really cute mime that stopped us as we were walking up the hill. It took me a minute to realize it but she was telling us that J was beautiful(no argument here) and that either R or myself should buy her a rose. I've got to say that that mime was so cute I wanted to take her somewhere and see if I could get her to make a sound or two ;). So back to the blog post.....
On the way to watch Musical Blades we happened to stop and watch a guy doing a show, pretty much caught the tail end of it but it was still cool as he was on a tightrope juggling torches. While I was standing there I happened to notice my friend MO's booth. I decided to go over and say hi because she's cool and I always enjoy hanging with her. She happened to be a bit on the tired side but still good company. We chatted for a bit before me, J, and R headed towards the show. After a while we noticed that it was close to show time so we moved a bit faster to get there.
It was a really good show. I'd seen these guys perform at The Crack Fox before for Subversion: Pirate Booty Edition and I really like their stuff. This show was exceptionally good because for this first show there wasn't a lot of people there so they decided to perform it right where the audience was instead of on the stage I have to say that that was really cool. It didn't hurt that I was in the next aisle enjoying the show. While we were sitting there we were enjoying a skin of mead that J and R had brought(J had the mead and R had the wineskin). Not long into the performance our friend AH came over and joined us. AH is pretty cool. I've hung out with her on several occasions and have always had a good time, today was no exception. We shared the mead with her and she pretty much joined us as we walked around Faire.
So after the show we decided to go check out the jousting on our way there J was approached by a woman who is a fan of hers(J happens to be a performer) it was really fun to watch as it was a total fangirl. Me and R joked about how we felt like we were hanging with a famous person and how we wanted our own fangirls.
Right before getting to the joust I happened to see my friend MS, who also happened to be working Faire.I decided to go say hi and she proceeds to give me a hug after having just gotten soaked with water to help her cool off. I had just seen her get wet so I shouldn't have been surprised. It was pretty funny. I will say having my shirt wet felt pretty good because it was a nice sunny day that was getting pretty hot. As we were talking MS noticed that I didn't have a hat on. She admonished me for not taking precautions to keep myself cool in the heat. So she wets a scarf and gives it to me to wear. I tried to argue but I've learned over the years not to for too long. To be fair it was a good thing I gave in because that wet scarf on my head did a pretty good job of keeping me cool for a while. Not long after that she had to take off as she was working and I couldn't keep her for too long. Luckily the joust are was right there so I didn't have to go far.
The joust was pretty fun to watch. I wound up cheering for the English guy as his opponent was a French guy(the setting for the Ren Faire was 16th century France after all). It was very fun to watch especially the actual jousting. I had tried to take some pictures of the moments when they clashed but unfortunatly my phone had a slight delay and I always missed it by a couple of seconds. So after the joust was done I went to find J, R, and AH who were standing over by a tree. I was curious as to why they moved and they told me about this asshat who got a bug up his butt because J happended to say crotch near his kid. We were getting ready to leave the joust when we noticed CM stanging nearby. He was selling pickles and we decide to go say hi. I forgot who mentioned it first but there was talk about how another friend of ours, AO, could suck the inside out of a pickle. I bought the first pickle and thus begins the hunt to find a straw and AO.
J, myself, and R were so interested in seeing this the first thing we did was go hunt for a straw as one was needed to make this stunt happen. On the way we ran into more people we know. I stopped at another weapons shop and wound up buying this dagger that I thought looked really cool. We eventually made our way back to the booth where MO was and guess who was there but AO so we told her how we wanted to see the pickle thing but it turns out the pickle we had was too small. We were ready to give up on this when lucky us CM happened to show up with his bucket of pickles. It was on now. So a straw was produced and AO proceeded to try and suck the inside out of the pickle. Unfortunatly it didn't quite work out as the second pickle that got picked wasn't big enough either. While we were standing there laughing and talking I noticed someone was selling roses. I decided to buy three of them and Gave one to MO, one to AO, and one to J. I must say, big beautiful cleavage is a perfect place to hold a rose lol. It was definetly a gorgeous site :). While standing there I noticed MS had shown up and I went and chatted with her some more as we hadn't hung out in a while and it gave us a chance to catch up.
Not too much later we decided it was time for food as we had been drinking for a bit and had gotten hungry. On the way to food though we became distracted by belly dancers; three of them with my favorite being the tall, busty , brunette who looked stunning. After the belly dancers there was a guy who twirled fire. He was cool but the one I thought was the most entertaining was another friend of mine S. She was performing her own fire performance that was funny and cool. I even got added as part of the show. She used me as the unknown "member of the audience"(doubt anyone bought it but I think that was the idea lol). It was really cool because she twirled fire inches from my face and I could feel the warmth of the flames. By the way I've got to say watching someone do a fire performance without music in the background is really cool because the sound the fire makes as it twirls and spins is awesome. So after saying hi to S and chatting for a bit it was off for food.
We didn't have to walk too far as a food stand wasn real close. On the way there I ran into another friend KW who I had run into earlier and was really interested in the shirts he said he had. After seeing them I really wanted to buy one but unfortunatly I did not have enough money to buy one. R had the same problem but I know that one of these days I'll get one hopefully before Pirate Fest. At the food stand I happened to run into T. The same T from my Conflation post. We shot the shit a bit and I asked him if he was going to the party I mentioned earlier. He said yeah and I asked if I could ride with him and he said yeah so I was like woohoo.
After eating we went ahead and watched one of the ending shows they were having for the day. There were two and the other one was at the other end of the park. The one we chose had another performance by Musical Blades which was cool. There was also some humor, a guy playing on an instrument I don't quite know the name of, and overall good entertainment.
After all of that it was time to leave as Faire for the weekend was over. I looked at my watch and realized five or six hours had passed. You know you've had a good time when that much time has gone by and you didn't even realize it. On the way out we stopped at one more booth and chatted with some more friends. We chatted with TM(CM's wife), her mom AC, and KG. S also stopped by and we all just chilled and hung out for a bit. I bought this cool mask that I would love to do a costume with if I can figure out how to wear it and still be able to see. This mask does not work with my glasses lol. After a while we left as we kind of had to. It is really cool knowing a bunch of people who work the Ren Faire because it makes the experience even more fun than just going as a patron.
So that was most of my day at the St. Louis Ren Faire. Admittedly I didn't talk about everything this is mostly the highlight as there was quite a bit of walking around and just standing and talking but it was all fun. I will say though I am very glad I have good legs. This is definetly not something to do if you can't walk very well not without a wheel chair or something. So after Faire we all went over to another mutual friend AS's how and hung out with her and G for a little bit before going to eat at Hibachi Grill. The food there was really good. Once dinner was done they dropped me off at home and that was the end of a really great day.
