There be dragons...

New Years in Oriental wouldn't be complete without a few dragons. We went down on Friday with our friends the Stepnoskis (sans Allison, who decided that 15 year old girls were more fun than 50+ year olds) for dinner, a dragon run and yes, the croaker drop at midnight. As Bob wanted to finish the TV installation, including the antenna, the 'girls' headed off to town to go shopping. Ok, my version of shopping, which usually entails a stop at the Bean, and drive-by of the rest of the town, but at least we got it out of the way.

We returned to the boat to find the installation proceeding, as do all things on a boat, in fits and starts, but at last Lydia and I were instructed to raise the antenna. We had purchased an amplified RV antenna, a white disk about 15 in across. The plan was to hang it from the main halyard, tied off to keep it from banging on the mast, and let the antenna wire hang down thru the main hatch.

It was remarkable. We watched a little football, not because we cared about it, but because it really worked. By turning off the amplifier, we learned that this was an important feature. The channel search returned 16 channels! One thing about this digital over-the-air is that you either get, or don't get, channels. None of this fuzzy, rolling, stripey stuff I remember from my childhood.

Now on to the celebration. On our earlier shopping trip, we had stopped at M&Ms to see if we could get reservations, but they only took reservations for parties of 8 or more, and we were only 6. They said we shouldn't have any problem if we got there before six.

But the TV held us up until about 6:15 and so we waited an hour and a half for a table. Next year we'll make the res and then invite two strangers to eat with us! Our late seating meant that we (a) spent WAAAAYYY too long in the bar and (b) missed the 830 dragon run. But I had promised Abby I would stay up until the midnight run anyway. And those poor souls at the early run didn't get to see the croaker drop.

At 1130, Ed, Kevin, Abby and I drove back downtown and walked over to Town Dock. There was a band of drummers in front of the Bean, a 3' long wooden croaker tied to the mast of a boat at the dock, and some not-too-bad karaoke from the Tiki Bar. We walked over to listen for a while, then wandered back to huddle in the middle of the street with a hundred or so other brave orientalites to wait on the dragon.

The drumming and banging continued.

At last, the dragon appeared on the poorly lit street, and wandered sort of aimlessly toward the knot of people. Many reached out to touch the dragon for good luck.

The drumming and banging continued.

After the dragon had passed we still had about 10 minutes before the croaker would drop, so what else would responsible parents do but take their kids back to the tiki bar.

But then the dragon made a reappearance, heading the other way, heading home I guess. And Ed took off running toward the dragon. We all looked at each other, shrugged and ran after Ed. Ed ran right up to the dragon, and under it. While shouting "what the heck are you doing?", we nevertheless joined Ed, and had the honor of bringing in the New Year from under the dragon's butt. Truly.

But what happened next, now that was the highlight. The countdown to midnight began, although the time had to be estimated as there was no big Times Square mega-TV to mark the seconds. And the now lighted croaker began the drop to the water. From an astonishing height of, oh, maybe 60', the little croaker was lowered on his halyard, although he, too, had to be tied off to keep from banging on the rigging. It was hard to stretch the drop to more than, say, 5 seconds, so maybe it's a good thing we didn't have a clock. And perhaps next year we could bring our new TV over to act as the billboard for the crowd (!) Then the Bean played Auld Lang Syne and, after winding our way through the crowds (not) and fighting the traffic (not), we got back to the boat about 12:05.

Approaching the boat, we could see the similarities between the antenna, and a flying saucer. As the waves rocked the boat, the antenna would sway and spin and the orangey dock lights gave the antenna an unearthly glow. A dragon, a croaker and a UFO. Not bad for just a few minutes into 2011.

Happy New Year.