It was hot. I arrived with the family and assorted friends at about 6 p.m. It was a perfect temperature. If you did not move.
We spent the first half hour wandering around looking for all of our friends that were already supposed to be there. Friends working in various booths or involved in horsie events. I finally tired of hunting people down and decided to sit and watch the rodeo for awhile. That's when everyone else found me. So I briefly watched the rodeo (quite fun) and was then steered on to other events.
Eating was most important, but unfortunately, there was a 2 block (or should I say tube lock) line of people waiting for food. This made us unhappy. Service would have been faster at the Lions area, but we wanted something different. So we walked around and looked. Not very many booths this year. All of the floral and baking displays were wilting and melting in the heat. The farm and home entries and commercial booths were all in very hot buildings. I don't remember ever being quite that miserable inside the fair buildings before. Perhaps they used to run fans. I don't know. I do know, however, that it was one hell of alot better before they put in that second section of bandstand. There used to be a whole nuther row of interesting venders and booths. But oh no. More people show up, and the fair gets smaller.
We finally got our food. There was still a huge line at the oriental food booth, so I opted to eat barbequed chicken and corn with Mr. Wyrd. It was good, despite the fact that my chicken skin was way salty, my roll was soggy, and my pepsi was warm.
Oh and there was music. I can't say anything nice about the music, so I will not discuss that. There was an older hippy/gypsy dancing so it was not all bad.
The highlight of the fair, besides the few parts of the rodeo I did see and the super-huge as usual big glowing moon, (and dammit moon, I've seen prettier of you too), was when the cops decided to taser some drunk guy. He didn't seem to be that unruly to me, but for some reason the police were very, very afraid of him. At first I thought a gun was pulled, creating great shock on my part because there was such a pack of people right there, in front of the beer garden, with all the tables of people and families eating and such. Then I realized it was not a gun, but a taser. Finally they whoop ass handcuffed mr drunk guy. He was standing still having a talking match with a yelling cop with a taser. Other people were yelling at the cops too. They drug him off, end of excitement.
If I go next year, it will be to suck dirt at the rodeo and eat massive amounts of dripping greasy hot food. And to see the moon.
