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Wednesday, August 20, 2003
Just got home from the California State Fair, a several year running tradition for myself, and the 150 anniversary of the fair (it's only a few years younger than the state). California is known for so many high-tech and celebrity things, but the fair is rooted in agriculture. Every year you can see calves and pigs being born, lots of livestock like sheep, goats, cows, pigs mostly. Lots of local ranchers enter contests with their livestock and you can walk down all the stalls and see rows and rows of big ol' smelly animals. Kind of grounds you to see a bunch of real farmers making a living. The fair was a little disappointing last year, but it more than made up for that this year. We arrived around noonish and were pleased with the less-than-100-degree weather. Low 90's - cools for August. We did a bit of walking around first and headed to the wine tasting tent. There's lots of wine made in California and the fair hosts a big wine competition every year. All the gold winners are available to taste and buy. I had a Gewuerztraminer (sp?) and J.T. tried a Merlot (which the dude pronounced "mer-loT" - *sigh*). Then a quick snack of deep fried food. A fair isn't a fair without fried food. Artichoke hearts and zucchini, not so typical. Also not typical was J.T.'s roast lamb sandwich. I still haven't tasted a lamb I've liked. Then it's off to "Super Pork"! Yes, Super Pork, the 600lb trained pig that responds to dog commands like "sit", "heel", etc. He proved cooler than even the average trained dog and was quite entertaining...and dare I say cute? We walked all over the "Side Show" area which was themed after the old-time circus acts like two-headed cows and fat hairy women. It was way cool. Lots of amazing reptiles, snakes, spiders - many of which they had an albino version to compare to. They even had two sphinx cats. They just are not cute. We managed to catch a presentation on a bunch of snakes. The speaker was really knowledgeable and showed us really awesome snakes, some being poisonous but with their venom removed. The ultimate of course, was the king cobra. Just awesome. Later in the day in the same Side Show area, we saw a domino demonstration. Some people like to spend hours lining up dominos so they can be tipped over. Well these "dominolologists" spent five hours setting up ~4500 dominos in an elaborate display that ended with setting off 75 mouse traps in a cage, each with a plastic egg on it that was flung into the air. Those guys must have a lot of patience... (Indecently, other new words learned besides dominolologists were “predation”, “splendiferous” and “pestiferous”.) Other standard fare included the county exhibits, crafts and sales booths (where everything says "as seen on TV" on the box, "it dices, it slices, it cuts through tin cans"...) I *love* that stuff, though I never buy anything. Every now and then something is real popular. A few years back, everyone was carrying a mop over their shoulder. :) And let's not forget the exhibit hall, which has amazing crafts from 5 year olds on up. Architecture/CAD drawings, photos, paintings, hand made furniture, quilts, crochet, silk screens - you can really appreciate the talent. One or two of the exhibit rooms are usually themed. A couple years ago it was "Route 66" paraphernalia. This year they had a dedication to the fair and its anniversary. They also had a room of U.S. presidents - pretty neat. Some you've never heard of, simply because they didn't have much affect on history or the country. I'm sure I was taught all that president stuff in grade school, but ask me how much I cared about it then. The pinnacle, the height of the day, was the freestyle motocross (a.k.a. crazy young men that fly through the air on motorcycles doing stunts). Oh my gosh. Right out of ESPN's X Games (no, really). One 8' tall ramp propelling them ~35' in the air. And they'd do tricks called "heartattack" and "kiss of death". Yeah, well, they made my heart rate accelerate. I have to say the tricks are appropriately named. What motivates someone to fly through the air - over concrete - and throw their legs off their bike? turn the bike on its side? or practically do a hand-stand on it? only to regain control and sit back on the bike a split second before landing on the other side? I've seen this type of trick riding on TV, but nothing compares to live and close up. J.T. knew what some of the tricks were called. I was pretty impressed. He's quite the expert on an ATV PlayStation game. :) Speaking of video games, I was transported back to my childhood. One of the exhibits had a row of TVs hooked up to various video game consoles. By the look of the controllers, it was all XBox, GameCube and PlayStation. But in the corner, oh my gosh, could it be? Could it be an Atari 2600? And is that? No... YES! It's Adventure!!! Of the hundreds of Atari games, they chose this one, my all time favorite. It was such a trip! Top it off with more wine tasting and a deep fried Twinkie, and I was in heaven.
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