This past weekend’s trip to the (1st Annual, or so they say) Virginia UkeFest is just one of those things I’ve been doing this year, as a way of doing things so that...I’m doing things. Glen Allen, home of Cultural Arts Center which hosted this fête, is a suburb at the north side of Richmond’s beltway. It’s an area where Romney supporters put billboards-sized signs in their yards, and Obama supporters try to make up for the sheer square footage of the opposition’s signage by peppering their own yards with 15 or so “fun-sized” signs.
There is nothing, however, near the Country Inn & Suites where I camped for Friday and Saturday nights, unless you count unmown grass. It sits there, one year new, positioned starkly in a barren bit of farmland beside a road which looks ready to accept the slew of new development a hunch tells me is in its future.
In the morning, Marsha, who keeps the breakfast area outfitted, gives you a hug. Which is nice, and partially makes up for the reconstituted scrambled eggs. And the coffee is tolerable. There are cookies on the reception counter 24 hours a day, and the rooms are quite decent in a chain hotel way, but if they asked me there would be more than one place where you could hang a towel in the bathroom
I am an awkward person at a Uke (or any other type of) Fest. I suppose there’s an extent to which it’s always awkward to be a solo person floating around a group event, when there’s no sub-group with which you re-conglomerate during those in-betweenish moments. But this is one of those things I’m learning to get used to. Or at least I’m getting used to looking like an oddball without caring too much.
I attended three workshops and several performances. Food was slim pickins, but the hot dog truck did have a veggie dog option, so I ate two of those, along with some nut and fruit bars I’d picked up at a local Whole Foods Market. I felt a little bad for the vendor in the ice cream/snowball truck, since--except for a brief, sunny midday interlude--temperatures kept his line short to absent.
Take home points: I highly recommend the Bumper Jacksons. Lelehuna and the Aloha Boys were fun too.
