Fixed?, Fair-ly good time

So I picked up my truck yesterday, expecting to see that they replaced the water pump that was supposedly leaking.  When I was handed the bill I saw there was hardly anything on it.  The guy said they replaced the gasket around the thermostat instead, it was pinched and leaking. Oh ok…..  I am skeptical if that was the actual source of the leak .  You can bet that if I was the one paying for the repair the water pump would have been replaced for sure.  I’ll be monitoring the ground under the truck closely.

So last night we went to the county fair.  We didn’t even bother going to the fair last year even though it’s only a 1/2 mile from our house.  The $10 per head entry fee plus $8 to park was just a rip off.  Well last night was “family night” at the fair.  They run specials on week nights to try to get bodies in the gates.  If you brought a can of food to donate your ticket dropped to $5 each PLUS there is free parking.  Somehow we actually managed to get in the gate for a total of $5.  I don’t know if the ticket clerk did some bad math or the deal was even better than I thought.  So instead of spending nearly $30 to get into the fair we paid $5, sweet!

It was chilly last night,in the upper 50’s.  I was almost embarrassed by how many layers I put on.  I adorned a long sleeve t-shirt, sweat shirt and a zip up hooded sweatshirt to keep me warm.  Even with all of that I still felt a bit cold as we walked around.

Shortly after entering the fair we passed a large food stand.  They had a huge vinyl sign in front of it listing their food items.  Every single one of them was disgustingly bad for you.  Blooming onions, fried dill pickles and the item pictured here were some of the highlights. A donut burger, a hamburger with bacon and cheese on a freaking donut.  What is wrong with people?

The highlight for the fair for us is seeing all of the animals, they had a ton of them. We saw pretty much every farm animal you can imagine.  Of course walking by the pigs and cows that were laying down sleeping peacefully made us feel bad, especially me since I still eat meat.  The idea of slaughtering the animals that we were interacting with seems unfathomable.  I rubbed a cow’s head as we walked around.

We also went into a petting zoo area that had a variety of animals including exotic ones like a zebra and camel.  We bought carrots to feed the animals.  The camel got the most food from me.  He was really good about taking stuff nicely from your hand.  He let my rub his fuzzy head.

We saw a trained bear show.  Some old guy with a Grizzly Adams beard and his sons ran the show.  They had 5 or 6 trained bears that went through a variety of interesting and funny tricks.  However Ali was ready to bolt when the trainer whapped the one bear on the snout when it didn’t do what he wanted.  I told her it was ok and we watched for awhile longer. 

I told Ali I had no urge to walk around the rides portion of the fair.  I had a bit of a headache so doing rides was not really on the to do list.  Plus when you walk through that area you are in the midst of the hardcore carnival people, the ones that will accost you repeatedly to play their stupid rigged games that offer shitty prizes that wind up in the trash.  Plus I have flashbacks to the year where the dunk tank clown insulted me endlessly as I failed to connect on the target that would drop him in the water.  I hated that clown.

One thing I noticed that was missing from this years fair is the mega-ride.  In years past they have had a hardcore thrill ride that costs a fortune to ride, usually in the $20-$25 range.  I’ve done them a couple times.  There was nothing hardcore this year, I guess they didn’t get enough thrill seekers to pay the bills.

Ali’s favorite part of the fair is getting an apple dumpling, something she would never have otherwise.  I had a few bites of the massive dumpling along with the two big piles of vanilla soft serve. I grabbed some hot chocolate at another stand to help me keep warm.

We walked around a bit more as Ali finished her dumpling.  We looked at the tank of seals swimming back and forth and saw the tail end of the alligator show.

After the show ended the handler was allowing people to come up and hold a baby gator.  There was a larger, maybe five or six foot long gator in the pool below the stage.  The gator was getting agitated, I saw him whip his tail around and hold his mouth open in an aggressive manner. 

I looked around and saw the source of the gators agitation.  There were some Hispanic teenagers in the line that were hissing at the gator and poking their hands through the fence at him.  Stupid kids, I was cheering inside for the gator to have a little snack of Mexican fingers. 

After the dumpling was gone we headed for the exit.  Unlike prior years where Ali and I felt we got ripped off for our $30, this time we felt our $5 was well spent.  We had a chilly good time.