festival by bicycle

One thing I like about my small blue car is that, as it's a hatchback with fold-down seats, I can fit my bicycle inside. However, once it's in, there's no room for anything else except the driver.

And what B. likes about her new folding bike is that it will fit in the trunk of her car.

That means that we may now drive together to go bicycle riding in places further than we'd wish to ride to, as unlike our mighty nephews we are not epic cyclists.

Our first thought had been to go down to the baylands trails, but this weekend was the Assyrian Festival in Willow Glen, so we decided to go there instead. I like these little ethnic festivals for their little ethnic food. Willow Glen is an older, small, quiet, off-the-main-highways town long since swallowed up by San Jose. We parked at the park-and-ride lot out by the Almaden corridor and rode our bicycles through the older and more colorful residential neighborhoods, down tight little winding streets where it'd be difficult to sightsee by car, enjoying the vistas of the houses and the occasional cat, and then circled out to the Orthodox church where the Festival was.

The Festival's announcements said it opened at 11. When we got there shortly afterwards, we were let in, but told it really didn't open until 11:30. And it didn't actually get going until about noon, when the food booths got cranking. I've been to better-organized festivals than this, but also to less-organized ones. (You do not want, while waiting at a food booth, to hear one staff member say to another, "We have a health inspector emergency," as I heard once at a festival to remain nameless.) Once the food was up and ready, we had yogurt salad with dill and cucumbers (lotta dill, lotta cucumbers; lotta yogurt, too) and dolmas, which apparently are Assyrian too, and brought home some flatbread.