The Festival Is Back (Um... Yay?)

[fragger]

My little town's annual October Festival (not to be confused with Oktoberfest, except for maybe the beer part) has returned after a 2-year hiatus due to COVID. This is the one where VW van owners nationwide congregate in this humble seaside hamlet to try to get as many vintage "Kombis", or "Hippymobiles", in one place at one time. They already broke the record (such as it was) at the last festival 3 years ago, so I guess they're just trying to up themselves now.

It's also the one where an ultralight embedded itself in a Ferris wheel some years ago. I don't think they plan on including that as a regular attraction...

It's great for the local businesses, but I think I'll be holing up at home throughout. The last time the festival was held it attracted about 30,000 out-of-town visitors - to a town of about 7,000 - so the local population will likely more than quadruple. During the day, anyway. There are only a couple of small hotels and a smattering of holiday rentals here, so I assume the bulk of the visitors fill up all the hotels in the big town up the road, of which there quite a few as it's a major overnight stop on the road between Sydney and parts north. Now, some certain individuals may be declaring the pandemic to be "over", but as far as I'm concerned it is anything but and even though I'm double-boosted, I'm reluctant to swan around among crowds of alien blow-ins who could be filling the air with all kinds of viral nasties. If I do have to go to the shops for any reason, I'll be masking up, distancing as much as poss and sanitizing.

They always put on a surprisingly good fireworks display on Saturday night though which I can watch from my front door, so I'm looking forward to that part. Otherwise, I'll be doing the recluse thing. I've gotten pretty good at that during the past couple of years

[Dweller_Benthos]

Sounds like one of those double-edged swords, if you do want to attend an event like that (might be fun), you're close to home and don't have to drive for hours to get back once you're done, but if you don't want to attend and just find it s nuisance, you have thousands of people in town getting in the way of anything you want to do.

[PZ]

Sounds like it could be fun, but it would like too many outsiders are attending. Although good for local businesses, when events like that occur around here I tend to stay home because I dislike crowds enough to be willing to miss those events. I guess I'm just getting old. 

[mandru]

I had to see an Ultralight embedded in a Ferris wheel so I Googled it.

Pay day!  There were a lot of pictures and this vid:  www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0joEYPoesY

Livened up my day. 

[fragger]

I have gone down to check out the festivities a few times over the years. There's other stuff which goes on - live music most of the day on Saturday (some of it is not half bad), a pretty cool motor show and an aerobatics display with a couple of Pitts Specials on Sunday, rides for the kiddies and so forth. It all takes place in a park adjacent to an airstrip down near the beach. I live about a kilometer (or a mile) back up the road from it, so at least I don't have crowds streaming past my house all day.

This year I'm giving it a miss though, mainly for the reasons outlined in my first post. Plus I'm not big on crowds. At least I can watch the fireworks and the Pitts from home. Maybe in the future I'll check things out again. It's not the nicest weather here this weekend either.

@mandru, indeed, it's lucky nobody got seriously hurt in that ultralight/Ferris wheel how-do-you-do. The girl's video from atop the ride didn't actually get released for public viewing until some years after the event. The accident took place near the end of the day when things were winding down and hardly anyone was on the ride - just that girl with her brother and one or two others. In fact, I think it was going to be the last go-around for the day. Had it happened during the busy time it could have been nasty.