I'm Sorry Darrell!

Saturday morning and it's beautifully sunny and cold outside. We're a little tired and achey - our show count goes up on the weekends, and that extra few burns really takes it out of me, but there was fresh crab with melted butter for breakfast so that helps.

It's not the fire dancing. The fire dancing is great. Fun, exciting, exhilarating, especially for big excited weekend audiences. It's the cold cold weather, and the "shaking out" - the 20 minutes of prep time before each show, fueling up all the tools and spinning them around vigorously to get the extra gas out before lighting them so it doesn't spray the audience. My body is sick to death of shaking out.

Last night during our 3rd show I didn't shake out quite well enough, and I could feel the little microscopic fuel droplets spraying me as I started our finale choreography. My tired mind started repeating, "don't hit yourself, or you'll catch fire. Don't hit yourself, or you'll catch fire.."

Now, you know what happens when you repeat a mantra like that, yes? You HIT YOURSELF. Or more specifically, you hit your partner. Bang on top of the head, with both wet poi at once. I managed to light almost his entire head on fire with one perfectly-aimed strike.

With flaming poi in my hands, I couldn't do a thing about it either.. except get wide-eyed and start blowing for all I was worth like my 50th birthday cake was lit up in front of me and I was guaranteed to get my wish if I could get them all out. (note to the uninitiated: when you blow on a fire, it.. um.. flares up higher)

The audience ooh'd and aah'd while Darrell calmly reached up and smoothed the fire from his long, flowing red tresses and then grinned at the audience while comically shaking finger at me. His big smile calmed the audience (and ME) down to the point where everyone relaxed, I jumped back into the choreography and we finished the show spot-on.

He's fine. He just got out of the shower and honestly, I can't even tell that I burned off a good portion of his hair. He's not even mad at me as far as I can tell. I feel guilty as hell though.. couldn't sleep too well last night, so I am baring my conscience and begging forgiveness. Darrell, I won't light your head on fire anymore, ok?

Fire Walking for the Guinness Book of Records in Wellington

The Fire Pixie team has returned safely and successfully from our New Zealand trip.  Such good times.

We spent the second week of our trip in Queenstown and the South Island, having adrenaline rushes and looking at gorgeous scenery, and then headed back to Wellington in time for a world record attempt at Fire Walking. 

The fire was Huge!

Neither of us had ever tried fire walking before - in the San Francisco area it usually comes with a weekend-long seminar and a hefty price tag - and so we jumped at the chance to do it in Wellington for a $20 donation (much of which went to charity).  

We dressed up in our flamey pants and headed out there at around 10:00 am to register. 

There were hundreds of people there all geared up to walk across the coals (though we were the only ones in costume.  Had this event been in San Francisco, *everyone* would have been in costume, I think).  The fire took a couple hours to burn down to manageable coals so we hung around and watched the local performers and basically jumped up and down a lot and got all excited.

When the coals were ready, we headed over (we were first in line, oh yeah). We bared our feet and wiggled our toes in the mud and tried not to be too nervous.

 

We sort of expected to be given some direction.. do we need to step light?  Step down hard?  Should we have wet feet?  Be in a trance?  But no.. the organizers just lined us up and said "go."

The fire was four steps across.  Darrell took it like a superhero:

As for me.. well, I walked calmly for the first two steps and then it got HOT so the last couple steps were more like a little skip and hop and then WHOOSH I plunged my feet into the tub of water they had waiting at the other end.

So yes.  It was hot!  They were real coals.  It was exciting.  And yes, we got burned - Darrell got a bit of a blister on his toe and Andrea, who was walking with us, got a couple blisters on one of her feet.  I seemed to get off easy with just a reddish patch on the bottom of my left arch.  We all headed across the street and put our feet in Wellington Harbor immediately afterwards, which felt amazing.

And it turns out we DID make the Guinness Book of Records - for the most consecutive fire walkers.  We also made the Wellington local paper: We're famous now!