Fast fair

So Ali and I made our trip to the fair last night.  Wed decided to just walk to it, something we never did before.  It was bad enough it was going to cost us $20 to get into the fair, we didn’t want to drop another $5 to park, plus it was a nice night for a 1 mile plus walk.

Our normal fair agenda goes like this, look at the animals, eat food that is bad for you, go home.  A few times over the years I did some of the rides there but the past few I haven’t even felt motivated enough to do that.

After going through the farm animal area which was filled with various chickens, turkeys, geese, rabbits and more we checked out their garden exhibit.  We saw a bunch of stuff we were already growing in our garden.  I was most interested in seeing their cauliflower.  Our cauliflower at home has HUGE leaves on it but we still don’t see anything resembling the part of the plant you actually eat.  I was somewhat relieved that I didn’t see any heads developing on their cauliflower either yet, I guess that comes later in the process.

We headed into the animal petting exhibit.  I bought a couple cups of sliced carrots to feed the various animals.  We made various goats, llamas, ostriches, ox, and more happy.

The fair has always had these “SEE THE GIANT HORSE AND COW” exhibits where you pay a dollar each to see these supposedly huge animals.  In all of our fair going years we never went in to see the animals, I just thought it was a scam.

Well I had talked to a couple gym buddies this week that went to the fair and both of them saw the giant horse and cow.  They said it was well worth the dollar. So I decided 2011 was the year we would finally see what was behind the curtain.

We first met Hercules, the giant horse.  He was pretty damn big, I imagine around the same size as a Clydesdale although I have never seen a Clydesdale up close.  He didn’t pay much attention to us and instead focused on devouring his bale of hay.

We then headed next door and handed another two bucks to a kid that was no more than 12 who didn’t say a word to us as he continued to play his PSP.  Black  Jack was not as visually impressive as Hercules, perhaps because he is not as tall.  He was still a huge animal.  Much like Hercules, he hardly noticed us as he worked on his hanging hay bale.  We hung out with the big steer for a little while, wanting to make sure we got a dollars worth of entertainment.

We continued around the fair, checking out other odd animal exhibits like sea lions, a camel and even a shark tank.    Ali really isn’t all that thrilled with seeing these animals in captivity and it bothers me to a degree as well although I do find it cool to see them up close.

We even ventured into the hardcore carnie area, my least favorite portion of the fair.  Since it was a weeknight and still relatively early in the night there weren’t tons of fair goers yet, meaning you were solicited non-stop by creepy carnival people as you went by their stands of stupid games that reward you with worthless junk you don’t need.

I cringed when I heard the electronically modified voice of the clown in the dunk tank.  I flashed back to 5 years prior when I had my traumatic experience with the dunk tank clown, where I was insulted  mercilessly as I was unable to dunk him, despite hitting the target indirectly several times.

I commented to Ali about how seedy life as a carnival worker must be.

As we were walking around we were checking out the food stands.  Ali was looking forward to scoring her customary fair apple dumpling.  There was one problem, it didn’t appear anyone was selling them.  We walked by the stands 3 or 4 times verifying that dumplings were not available.

I mentioned to Ali I was getting a hankering to grab a cheese steak despite having a PB sandwich before we left.  Originally the plan was I was just going to grab some sort of junky desert.  Eventually I relented and grabbed a greasy, messy cheese steak.  It was quite a challenge to eat the sandwich on a bleacher.  On the first bite I wound up wearing some of it on my shorts.

Ali decided to go with soft serve ice cream in a waffle cone for her treat.  I decided to double up on my dietary badness and grabbed a slice of chocolate covered cheese cake.  I bought from a specific stand that was manned by a very nice and personable old man.  I bought it there 100% because he was there.  He was like a bright beacon of niceness in a human sea of scuziness.

The carnival workers were not the only people there that were odd.  There were tons of “Florida Crackers” walking around the fair aka. rednecks, white trash, etc…  I definitely felt like I was in the minority since I still have all my teeth. Let’s just say I don’t think there were many Obama voters there.

We didn’t dilly dally at the fair long since we had to get home to do some prep for a race we are timing this weekend.  We were able to go out a back gate which cut about a half mile off our walk home.

As I mentioned, tomorrow we are timing another race at way too f’ing early.  Saturday night we are going out to dinner with Ali’s girlfriends and Sunday I am hoping to hit the water park for another exercise session.