Picnic Day

So last week was Picnic Day, the greatest annual event in Davis. Every year a hundred thousand people or so flock to the university's (and city's) open house. Live music blasts from five stages at any given moment, all of the departments put on events and every imaginable animal show finds a place here. Undergraduates wander drunkenly through crowds of visiting families. This year my family came; that is, my sister, mom and the Norrises, family friends whose daughter is a freshman here. Everybody slept in my living room and everybody was delightful.

I joined KDVS for the Picnic Day Parade. The weather was a perfect, cloudless low 80 degrees (the last one I was in was a sodden death march).


I thanked Allison for babysitting my family and began to show them around. The sheepdog trials are the most awesome event at Picnic Day, which is saying something.


We lounged in the grass and watched the incredible spectacle. The dogs work like their lives depend on it.


I slipped off to chat with to Jill and her mom, who were by then pleasantly tipsy. We lounged in the grass some more and her mom, Ra, snapped a couple of pictures of the two of us. This one was a keeper.


I met back up with my unit for some more grass-lounging as we listened to the Battle of the Bands, where school marching bands take turns playing songs until they succumb to exhaustion.

I later showed the Norrises my radio station, capping off my favorite Picnic Day yet.