Rupley Summerfest '06 Report

Well, another Summerfest has come and gone here in the Virginia Highlands. For those of you who don't know about Summerfest, it's basically a bigger and better Festival of Leaves. And Rupley would be the Summerfest equivalent of Chester Street for the Festival of Leaves. For that reason, we had several house guests at 991 for the weekend.

The festivities started Friday afternoon, with Ryan and Jarrett setting up the Washer Theatre in the front yard.



Washers is a yard game that our Indiana friends introduced us to. Basically, it's the same as horseshoes, it involves throwing washers from one side of the yard into a cup on the other side of the yard. It proved to be quite entertaining all weekend. For us, our houseguests, and even the neighbors stopped by to throw a washer or two... It is a gentleman's game, as Andrew demonstrates. However, we girls did get a few ringers in!







Wait a minute, I'm getting ahead of myself here. Let me not forget the front porch jam Friday night! Andrew and friends entertained us on the front porch with some tunes. Then they got ambitious and moved to the intersection of Virginia and Highland, where they serenaded some poor guy trying to impress his date at the Highland Tap. From there, I'm told they moved to the Summerfest Main Stage, set up in the middle of the intersection. I did not witness this, as I was in bed trying to get some sleep before my big day Saturday... more to come on that.







After a late night Friday, Saturday morning came early for most. I ran in my first race, the Summerfest 5k, which started at 8am. I don't have pictures of this spectacle yet, however I hope to in the near future. I will post as they become available. Our neighbors, Scott and Kim, have a party for the race. All the neighbors and guests gathered on their lawn to cheer the runners on as we raced past. John Marc and I had been training for the race for a while, going to bootcamp regularly and running on the off days. We were both glad to run the race together, especially when we rounded the corner on Rupley and heard all of our friends and neighbors screaming for us with Chariots of Fire blaring in the background. The good news is that our street came at the end of the race, so it was pretty much downhill from there (not literally). I finished the race, which was my overall goal, in 30:26. I am hoping to improve that time for next year!

After the race, I was glad to join everyone else at the party... the weather was great Saturday. Not too hot, no rain, perfect! We did have a party Saturday night, which was a raging success. I think Andrew and Jarrett and I all met new people Saturday night! (Yeah, there were definitely a few crashers!) It was a good time, as was evident from the clean-up we had to do Sunday morning. Good times.

Overall, I would say Summerfest was a fantastic time, another reason why our neighborhood is so great!