Here are two men who had some magic going of their own going that day, and we happened up as some of the very few bystanders, unrelated to that magic, who had the pleasure of witnessing it. We drove up and the man on the right was out with his pipe, and the other man had come up and turned out as well to be a bagpiper and played it. When he was done he was asked by the man on the right if he had brought along his own pipes. Indeed, he had and went to his car and and took out his pipes and the men played several songs together.
Before coming upon the bagpipers, we had eaten lunch at the Maswik Lodge (for some reason I keep calling it Mesaki), as we did last year and is a rather amusing place to dine. The woman making the sandwiches cheerily went on about how she was going on vacation herself in a couple of days and would be going “any place but here”.
Then we started looking for a particular viewing point we’d been at last year and got lost and by the time we began to find our way there were the bagpipers who we would not have seen had we not gotten lost.
The above woman was having too much fun, setting up the camera and running to stand with her partner. Very excited. Some tourists smile and show their excitement, not minding that others see it and not minding sharing a bit of it and spreading it around. Then there are those who won’t smile at all no matter what and it seems to be a studied, intentional aloofness to the situation rather than just one of those days.
It being Thanksgiving, the place was jampacked. There were a number of Chinese and Japanese and East Indian. And we heard Russian and German. Last year when we were at the Grand Canyon there were a lot of German tourists.
Because we came upon the bagpipers and I elected to stand and listen to them a while, we didn’t make it in time to the viewing point I was hoping to get to. I knew that would happen, as I stood watching them. But I figured this was the only time in my life I’d happen on two bagpipiers playing who’d happened upon each other at the Grand Canyon and was an event that demanded some respectful appreciation.
We returned to my mom’s place and I believe it was this night we watched “Holiday Inn”, which I’d not seen in many many years and really is a pretty incredible movie with some great dance numbers and costuming. I’m tempted to rent it some night soon and dress up the viewing with cookies and eggnog.
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