Oh, The Glamourous Life!

Dear Constant Reader,

This past weekend, The Boston Babydolls road-tripped all the way to Cleveland to headline at the 3rd Annual Ohio Burlesque Festival. We left Boston early in the morning with Scratch, Stella and I in the Babydoll-mobile and Betty and Devora in the Betty-mobile.

After several uneventful hours on the road, we stopped at Howe Caverns* in New York. Our sassy guide Ella took us through the beautiful caves. The rock formations are staggering in their size and intricacy and age. It takes a hundred years for an inch to form**. The photo to the left shows The Chinese Pagoda, a massive stalagmite which had broken off thousands of years ago and was moved to a more picturesque location more recently.

We saw stalactites, stalagmites, flowstone, and the rare stalag-mouse (supposedly the calcified corpse of a pet mouse). After walking through the caves for a while, following the icy River Styx, we arrived at the Lake of Venus and got into boats. Our boat pilot was a gal whose name I never got, but gave us some fun insider dope about being a cave guide. She and her identical twin sister would sometimes switch groups if they didn’t think anyone was paying enough attention. The picture shows Stella and D.D. gawking at the rock formations. And yes, we were all bundled up in sweatshirts. It’s 52 degrees in the cave.

The last part of the cave was the best — The Winding Ways: narrow twisty passages (well lit) with some really beautiful formations overhead. I couldn’t imagine what it was like exploring with only an oil lamp. It goes on for a long while, but I still was sorry when we emerged and had to head back up to daylight.

After a quick purchase of some cave-aged cheddar for Sunday Social, we dragged Stella away from the H2OGO Balls and got back in the car.

Onward we drove to our stop for the night, around Rochester, NY. We chose Good Smoke BBQ for dinner. I think Betty gets credit for this one. Sadly, they were completely out of ribs when we arrived. Every bit of spare space in the little restaurant was displaying a trophy, plaque, or other award for best barbecue. And it was damn good. We got some dessert to go and then for some reason we sent the indecisive twins (Betty & D.D.) off to get some wine. Betty claims it only took as long as it did because the white was chilled for us, using a funky auto-chilling machine.

Once at the hotel, we put on the Food Network, opened the wine, dug into the desserts, and started rhinestoning. Like you do. Our dresses were already lavishly decorated with rhinestones, due to the party we’d had a week before, but the bras and undies were somewhat lacking. With four of us working at once, we got done in record time. The desserts, by the way, were caramel pecan bars and “gooey bars” — vanilla bars topped with caramelized bananas and bacon. Stella & I hate bananas and we were sorry. Everyone else said the bars were amazing, practically swoon-worthy. From their reactions, the bars might have almost been better than sex.

And that was our adventures on Thursday. Tomorrow, on to Cleveland and our performance!

* I like caves, although actual spelunking is not my thing. I’m content to be a tourist. This was my fourth cave, the others being Indian Echo Caverns (PA), Penn’s Cave (PA), and Actun Chen (QR, Mexico).

** I was annoyed to see, right after Ella warned us not to touch the calcite (skin oils disrupt the rock growth), that one of the other tourists slapped her palm right on the wall. We had just been shown what kind of damage that can do!