Tight Spaces

 

Greedy little fin-flappers... And a sight like I had never seen before. Carp in Lake Mead outside Las Vegas packed so tightly in the warm water around the dock we stood upon that ducks walked on top of them.

 

The tourists could have dropped a hook in their gaping mouths as easily as popcorn, but they evidently had no such fear. Their conditioned response to the people above came from years of handouts. Why, some of these same fish were probably waiting for kernels of corn back in 1984 while we juggled like mad for a week in July inside the Showboat Hotel just 20 miles away in Las Vegas...

 

Because I'm not a gambling man, Las Vegas has always represented juggling rather than gaming to me. And though you don't have many bad juggling trips, this one certainly started out that way. Ten minutes in the air and spouse Ellen double-checked our airline tickets. "These say we return Tuesday, not Monday." Oh no, she's right. As bargain basement specials, there's no way to change them. The boss at work won't like this. A pall settles for the rest of the flight. Our hostess greets us at baggage claim in Las Vegas with more bad news. The juggler we came to see was called away to Europe early and left yesterday. But what about the pictures I planned to take? What about the interview? "Sorry, that's show biz!" Earlier tragedy with the tickets looms very large now, its effect multiplied...

 

So the weekend turned into a different sort of juggling trip, and not an unpleasant one. Usually you don't see much more than the clubs in front of your face and other jugglers on stage. We ended up touring the surrounding countryside for three days - climbing twisted boulders in Red Rock State Park, walking over London Bridge (which is now in Arizona) and, of course, watching the carp feed.

 

As the snapshot shows, they certainly looked crowded. Which brings me to this issue of "Juggler's World."  It's so crowded that a lot of good material got bumped all the way into next issue. Bad news for an editor, but a sign of a good thing, I think, It seems that our editorial choice is to continue disappointing writers and depriving jugglers of news, or to add more pages to each issue. I say let's give those carp

some room to swim!

 

   - Bill Giduz