Cambridge Carnival

Went to the Cambridge Carnival this past weekend. There was a slightly smaller and more Caribbean version of the standard street fair stuff (food, fried food, more food, booths with jewelery, clothes and geegaws). There was also a parade. A big loud sparkling parade. That being most of the point. J. and I actually met up over at his place, when it turned out that was where the sound was coming from. We slowly overtook the parade on its way to Kendal square. Most of the groups were pretty similar: a truck with speakers on it, people in *very* elaborate costumes (eg: 10+ foot diameter spikey balls made up to look like peacocks, guys on 10+ ft tall stilts *actually dancing*, etc) followed by people in less elaborate but still very sparkly costumes who occasionally stopped to do a small dance routine.

Now, this may not sound very exciting. Let me explain about those trucks with speakers. Now, a few groups were pretty small. They had maybe 6 or 8 speakers, no, that's not fair - at least 10 or 12 speakers strapped into the bed of a truck. On the other end of things, there was what I'm pretty sure was a semi-truck bed built up at least as high as a standard load with speakers. On top were groups of people dancing, MCing and throwing water at the clamoring crowds below. Well, I say clamoring, but I have to assume. You see, hearing things from somewhere other than the speakers wasn't really an option. Maybe I just don't go to the right kind of parties, but having one's chest cavity resonate in time to the beat is profoundly strange. Musically assisted heartbeats shouldn't be *literal*. J. claims to have felt a breeze specifically from the speakers.

All in all, a pretty good time.

I meant it about the sparkly (not 100% safe for work)