Here Be Dragons

In this edition of Summer in Ithaca, I walk five miles to see boats and eat noodles, take a bus going in the exact opposite direction of Cornell, and sprint to catch another bus back to Cornell, all in under five hours. The day began bright and early with a walk to Cass Park, where the 9th annual Ithaca Dragon Boat Festival was in full swing.

My best description of a dragon boat is a less streamlined crew boat with less efficient paddles. It does, however, have more people crammed into it. I met up with some friends, some of whom were rowing and some who were just watching, watched a couple races, and then a friend and I decided that we should walk over to the Farmer’s Market. The Farmer’s Market is less than two hundred yards from Cass Park. Unfortunately, those two hundred yards are covered in a not insignificant amount of water, i.e. the river.

A little over half an hour (and two miles) later, we made it to the Farmer’s Market, where we had an unimpeded view of the whole dragon boat course. We sat on the dock, saw some close races, and waited for Cornell to race. Before Cornell raced, we got to see Harvard race in the lowest division finals. Not only did they lose to Cornell earlier in the morning (which I regrettably missed), but they proceeded to lose their finals race by more than an entire boat length.

When it was Cornell’s turn, they started out well, then the other boats started to catch up. By the time they were crossing the finish line, it was so close we couldn't tell who won, especially from our viewing angle. As it turned out, Cornell did, by a fraction of a second. So a satisfactory end to that set of races.

Cornell’s next race wouldn't be for some time and I wanted to get back to campus to get some work done hide out in my room so my friend and I went to get lunch at the Farmer’s Market. We got peanut lime noodles and corn fritters. The noodles were very good; the corn fritters were good, though a little expensive, though not as expensive as a meal I had in Collegetown that 1) was already expensive, then 2) I had to pay tax and tip, and 3) I was still hungry right afterwards. Considering that I can often get two meals out of a single dish at other moderately priced restaurants, this was worse than not worth it. So I would get the corn fritters again but I will not be eating at the Collegetown restaurant unless someone wants to buy me dinner, in which case I’d probably still choose a different restaurant.

I also got a strawberry lemonade (also good, but all the sugar . . .) and a chocolate chip raspberry shortbread bar. . . . It was not a health food kind of day. After lunch, we wandered around a little more, then went to catch the bus back to campus. The first bus that showed up was heading to the Ithaca Mall, the opposite direction we wanted to go. We got on anyway. The way to the mall did include a nice view of Cayuga Lake, so that was a plus, though I don’t think that made up for the fact that we started the ride two miles from campus and ended the ride two miles from campus.

We got off the bus, started walking to the stop where we could catch the bus that was actually going to campus, and ended sprinting to the stop where we could catch the bus that was actually going to campus. And fifteen minutes later, we made it back to campus.