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Santa Maria Pirate Weekend, September 2011 - Columbus, OH
(Photo: Mission's Collection)
The surgeon with his newly created surgeon's mate.
"What we have here is a patient requiring a trepanation,
or possibly downward purging. Perhaps we can combine
the two and create an exciting new operation. Hmm.
Yes. If we take this clyster syringe, a generous
length of copper tubing and the brace trepan...
yes, I might have something there...
"
Introduction: Featuring the tale of what happened during the
Author's latest voyage to Columbus, Ohio and his adventures aboard the Santa Maria ship which is moored in the Scioto River. Looking particularly at the many, many interesting displays
put on by the pirate invaders, the much pared-down battles, the introduction of the
Surgeon's Mate (the Surgeon's Mate is the assistant to the Surgeon for those of you who
don't read 17th and 18th century chirurgical books - I know, there are only a few of you,
but I still want this to be clear for those rare few); dinner amongst the oddly dressed
denizens of a street festival of some kind; and other oddments.
Prologue: A visit to local Columbus restaurant Dragonfly Neo-V and what transpired there, including: Michael and Mission share a bottle of wine; lots of photos are taken of food; yes, food; it's a restaurant, after all, what do you expect; and discussions about a knife. Fair warning to those of you who prefer that the Surgeon's Journal be relevant to pirate re-enacting, surgery and other things it professes to be about: you will find this page to be completely irrelevant other than a few selected bits. You have been warned.
Let's set the scene, which to the average journal reader will seem dull, but not very instructive. My Facebook friend, fellow iNTJ and magician Robin Wiley, who travels widely for his work as a trainer, posted a sterling review of the restaurant Dragonfly Neo-V in Columbus on his wall a few months ago. Sensing an opportunity to indulge in serendipity, I announced plans to go to this restaurant to those going to the Santa Maria for the Talk Like a Pirate Day celebration. Michael and Jessica "Kate" Bagley immediately agreed, so I made reservations. As I was driving down to Columbus, Kate told me that she had invited Kenneth "George" Smith as my guest. See? I told you it would be dull. This is why Johnny Depp doesn't like to do exposition.
(Photo: Mission's Collection)
The very bluish entrance to Dragonfly Neo-V.
Alas, we are not Johnny Depp. Otherwise we wouldn't have been helping Mark and Jennie Gist unpack their van and put their stuff on the Santa Maria before dinner. Michael and I left the unpacking event before it was complete because the reservation was for
7pm and I didn't want to miss it after going to all this trouble. Kate and George stayed
behind to help the Gists unladen their car. (Unladen is period ship-speak. None of this appears here due to my failure to take photos of it.)
My job on this journey to the restaurant was to find a way to keep the power cord connected to Michael's smart phone which doing double duty as a GPS. Michael apparently stomped on the phone side of the cord with steel boots, because keeping it connected was like the old days when you tried to adjust a TV's rabbit ears to get good television reception for a station hundreds of miles away. (A brief nod to those of you who know what I mean by television reception, let alone rabbit ears.) Michael and I managed to get there, although I had to stick one leg out the car window and hold the phone behind my back in just the right position to keep the power cord connected.
I should say we got to where the phone directed us. We didn't see the restaurant at all, probably because the sign was sort of hard to see. (Study the image above right and see if you can find it. You have two minutes from now. Go!) So we parked and wandered around until we found it. We then ordered a bottle of wine in anticipation of Kate and George's arrival. (Naturally they would want wine.) Kate and George eventually turned up someone around the end of the first glass. They did not want wine, so the two of us were tasked with drinking the whole bottle. This is more wine than I usually drink, but I figured I should take one for the team.
 (Photo: Mission's Collection)
On one side of the table, were Michael and Kate. |
 (Photo: Mission's Collection) On the other side, were George and Mission |
Dragonfly Neo-V was one of those restaurants that play a great mix of jazz music, have interesting lighting and a modern decor and yet feel very relaxed and casual. It is a vegan restaurant and, between Robin's recommendation and my experience with upscale vegan restaurants, I was pretty sure the food would be amazing. It was.See, being a vegan restaurant, no animal products whatsoever are used in anything, meaning a lot of thought was given to the spices in the food. This is why I was sure it would be good. I even learned that some of the vegetables were actually grown in the official Dragonfly Neo-V garden located behind the restaurant. (Something Kate told me after reading it on the menu.)
(Photo: Mission's Collection)
Headhunter hair salad with mushrooms.
Of course, no outing to an interesting restaurant like
this would be complete without showing you the food.
In a proper account, I would probably regale you with what the
dishes you see here were and how they tasted, what the ingredients were and so
forth. This is not a proper account, mainly because I have no idea what the
dishes were, even though the one I ordered can be seen below left.
As for the ingredients, I am pretty much hopeless when it comes to these sorts of things.
I do know that I had a mushroom salad which appears at left. Food is all about presentation and this particular salad seems to be presenting the concept, "I'm a happy headhunter hair mushroom salad." We all sampled each other's dishes and I can tell you that everything was delicious. Our waitress told us that it was pretty common for guests to share food. So I guess we were right on course as far as Dragonfly Neo V feeding customs go.
 (Photo: Mission's Collection) A stylish plate of... something |
(Photo: Mission's Collection) Dragonfly Pizza (sans dragonflies) |
 (Photo: Mission's Collection) Another stylish plate of food |
(Photo: Mission's Collection)
The dessert waitress
We now get to the part of the evening where Michael managed
to embarass Kate. (But not George - George is actually pretty easy going - one of
his winning traits.) It really started when the dessert waitress appeared, wgi can be seen
at right. Okay, she wasn't actually the dessert waitress,
but I was a bit confused by her role as she wasn't technically our waitress at all. She was the one who appeared to discuss dessert initially, so I gave her that
title. I decided to photograph her for the album, which must be taboo to those who
haven't ingested a half bottle of wine, based on Kate's reaction.
Being done with that, she left. Michael made his cloth napkin in to a large bunny head which I found amusing (Naturally) and Kate seemed to find discomfiting. Then our regular waitress appeared with coffee and dessert and I asked her to pose with me for a photograph. Her name was Kristen, although I have no idea if that's spelled correctly. She turned out to be the wife of the cook, who is also the owner of Dragonfly Neo-V. Kate asked her if she had ever had stanger guests and she pronounced us to be reasonable enough.
She then told us about a woman who was in on New Years who insisted upon lying on her back and extending her legs up the wall. (This seems pretty tame to me, but it's a nice restaurant and I guess the surroundings don't lend themselves to food fights, sticking straws up one's nose and attempting to make your date laugh when s/he has a mouthful of milk to see if you can make it come out her nose.)
There is a moral to this part of the Journal: when someone offers you wine, you should accept. Sober people have no place among writers of humorous journals when said writers have had to share half a bottle of wine with one of their friends. Another moral is if you have the opportunity to order something called "Breakfast for Dessert" you should do it, based on your author's experience.
 (Photo: Mission's Collection) Hey Rocky! Watch Michael pull a rabbit out of his napkin! |
(Photo: Mission's Collection) Your Journal author with our waitress, wife of the cook & most likely part owner |
 (Photo: Mission's Collection) Breakfast for dessert! How cool is that? (No, I don't know what it really is.) |
I want to regale you with one last thing we did that seemed to disturb Kate and then we'll move on to the actual pirate event. In fact, I didn't think it was all that bad, but what do I know? I had noticed during the evening that the butter knives were curved one way and the handles were curved the opposite way. This reminded me of a surgical knife I had seen in reading various Golden Age of Pirate era surgical manuals. (No doubt you noticed this as well.) It suddenly occurred to me after they had cleared the table that I wanted a picture of me holding this knife to share with you. (I am forever thinking of you, reader, even after consuming half a bottle of wine.) So I asked the dessert waitress if she would get me one - which she did. This was the point at which Kate asked if we were too annoying or something like that.
As it turned out, the knife I was thinking of was a form of the clean-up knife that Ambroise Pare used for amputation, as seen below center. (This is from page 492 of his surgical book Oevres, that you have no doubt already read since Pare is such a notable icon in the world of surgery from this period.) When I explained all this to everyone at the table, George said he knew how to make knives! Readers of previous Journals will instantly recognize that I love nothing better than have my fellow pirates make me surgical tools for my outfit, so we are in the process of working this out. You may eventually see a Pare-style blade on my table in the future, courtesy of George. Pretty cool, eh?
 (Photo: Mission's Collection) Mission holding the Dragonfly Knife |
(Source: A. PareOevres, p. 492 ) |
 (Photo: Mission's Collection) George showing off his first handmade knife |