Friday evening, arriving home fresh from the salsa humiliation, Rachel and Mike pulled up from San Francisco at nearly the same time as Megan and Tucker drove in from Truckee. Rachel and Megan had been house mates for awhile in Truckee before Rachel moved to SF a few of years ago. Tucker is Megan's wonderful mellow golden retriever.
There were lots of laughs just hanging out at home, of course, but we spent most of the day together at the Fair on Saturday.
You can see us having lunch in the bleachers between musical acts at one of the stages. The most excellent (we hear) Hawaiian hula group was setting up, but we had stuff to do...
...Like run around and see all my Fair entries, watch the frisbee dogs, check out the water bubbles (barely visible in the background in this photo of Megan, Mike and Rachel). If you haven't seen them, they are clear plastic bubbles with people zipped inside floating on water. One's bubble can be moved by trying to run inside it (as on a hamster wheel), but mostly one just falls and flails around, being bumped and jostled by other bubbles with other people falling and flailing inside. Looks like wonderful fun!
We spent quite a bit of time in the animal barns. Megan had been a 4H kid (cow division). That would be Rachel and Mike checking out the pigs in the next photo. We love touching their spongy noses. We also hung out with the goats, chickens, turkeys, alpacas horses, cows and dug our fingers into the wool of the unsheared sheep. Mike and I listened to most of a seminar about bees. His dad keeps bees (in Illinois) and we have been the lucky consumers of some of his bees' honey.
Along with all the entry tickets and VIP (ahem) parking pass, I also had some free carnival ride tickets. Tom was only too happy to hold our purses, hats and sunglasses while the rest of us zoomed around on some wild-ish flingy contraptions. We chose our own poison in pairs.
Mike and Megan hopped on The Viper--it has those little two-seat gondolas suspended in a wheel formation at the end of an arm which is one of several like it spoked out from a central, uh... So, that last sentence didn't go well. Anyway, they spun in the smaller circle at the same time the smaller circles were also spinning around in a much bigger circle. A lot of circles. You know exactly what I mean. I tried to get a good action shot, but missed them every time. Here they are at the beginning, before they began to regret their decision. An experimental experience gone awry.
Rachel and I, on the other hand, chose the Fireball. It's simpler. There's a giant vertical circular track with a multi-seat open caterpillar-like car that moves back and forth around the circle until the riders are suspended upside down at the top before they are whooshed around and around a few times frontwards, then backwards. We were in the front (well, one of the fronts). And we loved every second. There we are coming down again late into the ride. See how happy?
Toward evening, Tom and I needed to report to our duties at the beer garden. My choir is part of the Music in the Mountains organization and one of the ways we earn extra money (besides making music) is to operate the beer garden at the Fairgrounds for different events. Tom and I had been assigned the Sat night 6:30-10:30 shift (like last year) before we knew the kids would be there. Still, they needed to take Megan back home to her car, anyway, so she could sashay on back to Truckee.
This year, we worked the ticket booth (people buy tickets for beer or wine) and checked IDs, instead of slinging suds. It was fun! Later, Rachel and Mike picked us up.
Sunday was low-key and nice as we just rested up from our raucous Fair Day around the house before they had to drive back to SF.
So, that would be about it for this year's cutest-little-fair-in-the-most-beautiful-fairgrounds-in-the-state. Next year, I'm totally gunning for first in cheesecake world. Look out, Flo!
