5 Things

The festivals are coming! The festivals are coming! Wine and music and HOT AIR BALLOONS. I repeat: HOT. AIR. BALLOONS. Cancel your mother-in-law’s visit. This is the good stuff.

May 8, 2014; 7:22 AM • by Susan Howson

1. Friday Cheers: Lord Huron with The Northerners

Everyone’s favorite weekly cheers kicked off last week, and will continue throughout the glory days of the Richmond summer (by “glory days,” I mean through June). This week: Lord Huron with The Northerners, all about whom you can read in Ross’s thoughtful, heavily researched¹ think-piece.

• Friday, May 9th • 6:00 – 9:30 PM
• Brown’s Island
• $10

2. Mid-Atlantic Balloon Festival

I once saw a hot air balloon festival (which seems like a very Turn of the 20th Century thing to say) in Albuquerque, and my life was never the same! You’re just driving around, minding your own business, with hundreds of hot air balloons just milling about in the sky, apparently motionless. It’s like some sort of jigsaw puzzle you’d find at a beach house. Witness the magic for yourself at this, the very first mid-atlantic version.

• Saturday, May 10th – Sunday, May 11th • see site for times
• The Meadow, Doswell
• $15 for adults, $5 for kids

3. Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure®

Let us race for the cure to breast cancer for the 17th time (or 1st or 3rd or 12th, depending on your personal history, which I don’t pretend to know)! Online registration is closed, so you’ll need to walk up to register, just like humans did before the invention of the internet or possibly mail. See site for details.

• Saturday, May 10th • 7:00 – 11:00 AM
• Brown’s Island
• $20 – $35

4. Cap2Cap 2014

If running isn’t your thing, maybe cycling is? And not just some sort of lackadaisical pleasure ride. No no, the Cap2Cap is from Richmond to Williamsburg. They promise you’ll pedal through 400 years of history, but I think that requires you to go extra fast and throw a flux capacitor upon your Spandex-clad person.

• Saturday, May 10th &bull 6:30 AM
• Rocketts Landing
• $55 – $90

5. Central Virginia Wine Festival

Everyone knows the best kind of festivals revolve around fermented anything. The Central Virginia Wine Festival has been flowing since 2005, and even though the logo is something of a nightmare for trypophobes like myself (don’t Google that word, you’ll be sorry), the actual event is the stuff that (good) dreams are made of.

• Saturday, May 10th • 12:00 – 6:00 PM
• SnagAJob Pavilion, Innsbrook, 4901 Lake Brook Drive
• $20 online, $25 at the gate

Photo by: dfbphotos

May 8, 2014 7:22 AM 0