Smurfness

A week earlier, all of us made paper machet hats, using balloons, newspapers, and wallpaper glue. In the 3 days that it took mine to dry up while I was in Stockholm, my balloons managed to deflate, the hat managed to tumble, and proceeded to dry up with a very lop-sided American footbalish kind of interface.

The night before the fateful day, I was trying to unset the hat and reset it to my head instead of a hammer shark's.

By the way, I was 'elected' to be the drummer guy, the reason for which I found out later in the boat. This also meant that I needed to dress up in RED long undies (instead of white ones), and had to be fixed with a white beard and a red hat. This puts my outlook near a seasick Santa Claus. With red tights, white beard, blue-man-group blue face and hands and neck and all, baby blue shirt, a phallic hat, and helium balloons at the ready, I was surrounded by my little Smurfs (like Al at 6´5").

Parade

So on this Friday afternoon, we set out on the main streets to go in front of the main church to start the parade. The Smurf contingency comprised of me, 14 boy Smurfs, 6 girl Smurfs, and a naked Smurf (ran out of white long johns, so he was dressed in baby blue ones).

Critical note: beer drinking (for the non-pappa Smurfs) began at non-stop pace at 3:00 p.m., so by 5 when we set out towards town center, the Smurf clan was a zippy one (our heat was at 19:17, so 2 more hours of guzzling by the Smurfs).

On the parade, we were distributing candy to all the people, and many of them mistook me for Santa Claus. Though the kids understood who I was, and were very excited to chat with papa Smurf (not counting the ones who would run away screaming at the sight if a freak in red tights and blue face jumping up and down towards them)

The authenticity of my Smurfness was called into question by several 3-5 year olds. They would say 'hey , papa Smurf, how are you? Where are you going?' to which I would respond something like ' heello childs! I are goody, we is ....walking the boat with ....bats in ....water push.....'. To which they would say 'Papa Smurf, are you sick? Why do you speak so wierd[ly]'?

In the meantime the well tanked army of Smurfs stumbled like maple leaves in autumn, running into each other, giving each other grundies, and pink bellies and splashing "raspberry juice" on each others' now streaking blue-green faces. All this as we were parading through the middle of the town, getting looks of half awe half disdain from the elderly, and a freaked out fear-infatuation combo from tyoung ones.  Then the Smurfs discovered the aerodynamic properties of the hard candy they were giving out, and started blanket bombing the innocent bystanders. The spectator crew sustained moderate casualties. To compensate, I would be running with candy and putting them in their hands, which caused near cardiac arrests for many unsuspecting elderly women who were caught unaware as I appeared under their nose.

So this was the parade.

Anchors away

Then we sat and waited. Well, I sat and waited. The drunk and disorderly Smurfs continued breathing liquid sin-juice, which quite increased our entertainment value as a team, of course at the cost of our boating 'skills'.

Getting on the boat was a sight to behold also. The instability of solid ground for a drunk person, and the instability of a dragon boat in water DO NOT cancel each other out. Instead, they make for an unsightly mounting fiasco. we lost a hat, a Smurfina went head first into the boat, and of course I , being in the front facing this mayhem of blue drunkenness, suddenly realized the sheer insanity of our situation.

I am the red Smurf perching precariously on the tip of this oversized canoe, with a big drum in front of me, and the white and the blue mass of humanity below me is screaming as they are trying to figure out if these things they are holding are paddles or live fish. On the way to the start we 'practiced' our pace, whereby I would start drumming in the hopes that miraculously my beloved, drunken bluefolk would follow with harmonious paddling...

Here was my beating on the drum: GO......GO.....GO......GO.....GO......GO.... And The blue-mass's pace: GO......GO.....go...go..go..go..go.gogogogogog

This was going to be a very long 200 meters.

The race

When we got to the start, we had to turn the boat around. This resulted in us continuing full force towards the muddy edges of the canal, and then almost getting moored and overturned. Alas, we did manage to turn and get to the starting point.

Then the gun went off , and I began my task of keeping the pace, say 3 every 2 seconds. Well, I could have played la bamba, or some African rain dance tune up there, with the same result. There was sheer mayhem down below. The first row (Al and David) were diligently keeping pace. Mind you they were not near passing out. The 16 people behind them were busy getting their paddles tangled like clumsy sword fighters, scooping as much water as possible INTO the boat, yelling at the top of their lungs, pouting, getting smacked by the paddlers in front, quitting, and all around making our team be a truly hilarious sight of failure.

From the shoreline you would see this long dragon boat zip by (well, mosey is more apropos), the red Smurf violently beating on the drum, like a troll gone mad, while the rest of the boat resembled a boys school lunch room during a food fight session.

The finish line eventually came by. By this time I was just glad that I had managed to stay aboard this bobbing drunk barge. The finish line was set up at an angle towards the banks, so after passing the line you were supposed to stick the paddles in the water or at least stop paddling. Guess which one of these two happened with our boat....Well neither! The drunken hordes kept 'rowing', causing the canoe club steerer of the boat to frantically veer us away from the banks (stone walls 3 meters high), which sent me most violently towards my doom. At the last minute, I grabbed a hold of one of the drumsticks tied to the drum, tied to the boat, avoiding a dunk by about 2 centimeters

Dismount

We managed to get ashore without more incidents, except that they paddled too much again, and the boat overshot the dock, which meant that as I was about to dismount, the dock was no longer there, so I was doing the banana splits between the boat and the plank. Near miss again, as I barely managed to get back on the boat, instead of doing a honorary dive in front of the grandstand full of by now gut-clinching laughers.. Then , not listening to instructions, the Smurf blob of humanity all descended on the floating plank, which caused it to sink slowly into water, which meant every Smurf was knee deep in water and sinking, not that they realized it. I was never happier when I stepped onto the solid banks of this canal. Though we did come 43rd among the 50 boats (or something equally as embarrassing), we qualified for the 'best in show' competition, due to the authenticity of our costumes.

I am still trying to get the blue out of my earlobes.