A Day at the Fair

Ok, so I didn't even go inside Frostbite this weekend.  I have plenty to do to her with our maiden voyage scheduled for this coming weekend.

But I simply didn't feel like it.

Instead, we decided to take my daughter to the Williamson County Fair on Saturday.  We've been here for four years now and have yet to go.  It is always held in August during the hottest two weeks of the year for some reason but we decided to tough it out.  My wife got ahold of 2 free adult admission tickets so we only had to pay for a $3 child ticket.  I went by the bank and picked up $60 cash so we could eat and do some things with my daughter.

I seemed like more than enough.

Things proceeded nicely at first.  We arrived and were surprised to find that they had free parking.  Not only free parking but, once we parked, a golf cart arrived to take us to the front gate.  I broke one of my 3 20 dollar bills paying the $3 child admission leaving me $57.

We were very impressed!

We walked in and my wife reported that she was hungry so we decided to eat.  My daughter wanted to go directly to the rides but we convienced her to wait.  There were numerous stands selling festival type food.  Everything looked wonderful.  We stopped at one of the larger ones that had a good variety and made our order:

1 nachos for my wife
1 cheese quesadilla for my daugher
1 corn dog for me
1 lemonaid for my daugher
1 sweet tea for me
1 water for my wife

They handed the stuff to us as it was made and I pulled out my wallet to pay.  The guy behind the counter tallied up numbers in his head and then told me $32.

Now I'm not one to make a scene but this caught me totally by surprise.  Nearly screaming, I couldn't stop myself from exclaiming, $32 DOLLARS!?!?!  JESUS CHRIST!!!  Which garnered more than a few head turns from the crowd in my direction.

He went over the price of everything I ordered.  Once I heard, Nachos $12, I didn't really listen to anything else.  I was too busy trying to take in how a handfull of chips, 3 jalapeno slices, a spoonfull of salsa, and a couple of squirts of melted processed cheese could possibly be sold for anything remotely approaching $12. 
I reluctantly gave him the last two of my 20 dollar bills and got back 8 bucks. 

I had just spent over half of my cash in the first 10 minutes at the stupid fair.

We found a picnic table, unshaded, and sat down to eat.  The quesadilla turned out to be a flour tortilla with a generous squirt of the aforementioned processed cheese and folded in half.  My daughter ate one bite and said she didn't like it.  My corn dog was pretty tasty, hard to go wrong with that.  My daughter and wife shared the $12 nachos while I finished the $8 quesadilla.  It was as horrible as it sounds but I wasn't about to just throw away an $8 quesadilla.  At some point during our lunch, my daughter spilled her $4 lemonaid.  I gave her the rest of my tea and we set out for a building desperately seeking AC.

Once inside, we noticed all the tables set up for folks to eat in the AC.  If we ever return to the fair and for some reason decide to invest money in food at the fair, I'll have to remember those tables.  We walked around inside a bit, visited the petting zoo, and then gave in to my daughter who wanted to ride some rides. 

The rides took tickets so we found a ticket booth.  You could get a wrist band for $25 which allowed for riding the rides free all day.  She wanted me to go with her on the rides so that would have been 50 bucks.  Not only did I not have 50 dollars, I had no intention of staying there all day to get stroked out in the heat.  I opted to get the $20 special which was a sheet of 22 tickets.

I was now left with five bucks.

We found what appeared to be a fairly harmless ride.  It was a spiderlike gizmo that had three 2-seat boxes on each *arm* of the ride.  The three seats rotated and the entire ride itself rotated.  I had the proper number of tickets ready in my pocket (3 tickets per rider = 6 total) but we were just led to a seat.  I figured that maybe they would come around once everyone was seated.  Nope.

Now I admit it has been over 10 years since I been on any type of amusment park ride.  Prior to that, I never had any problems at all with any ride.  My stomach is very tough and I always got a thrill from such rides.  I've done the roller coasters, things that go upside down, etc.  Always had fun.  This little spider ride shouldn't be any problem for me.  I was worried about my daughter who had up to this point never ridden anything stronger than a Merry-go-Round in the mall and how she would react.

The ride stared very slow.  I teased my daughter telling her that this is it, we are going as fast as the thing would go.  She knew better.  Eventually, the thing kicked in and I swear I could feel my brain actually hit the back of my skull.  Our little car was zipping around so fast that my eyes couldn't keep up with the view and I immediately got dizzy.  My brain felt loose in my skull and rattled around like yatzee dice.  I closed my eyes and put my head in my hands which seemed to help.  My daughter, however, was screaming, laughing, and, when I ventured a peek to make sure she was ok, was holding her hands over her head eyes wide open, her face beaming with joy.  I put my head back in my hands, squeezed my temples, and started to pray that this would end soon.  My mind kept wondering how it would feel if the car was to break off from the arm and send us flying into the fairground.  At least a part of me could see the benefit of this as it would at least stop the @$% spinning.  I wouldn't say I was on the brink of throwing up or anything but I can definately classify the whole exprience as "Most Unpleasant."

The ride mercifully stopped and we rejoined my wife who was smart enough to sit back and let ME take our daughter on the rides.  My daughter loved it, by the way, and already had her eye on the one next to it which was a series of cars in a circle that spinned around while an arm raised the entire circle perpendicular to the ground so the cars were spinning in a loop.  Looking at this terrifying machine, I realized that there is a perfectly good reason why you generally only see kids, teenagers, and young adults in line for these things.  One never sees geezers in line for these rides.  I put two and two together and realized that my journey toward geezerdom might have already left the station without me realizing.

Still reeling from the previous ride, I convienced my daughter to give me some time to recover.  She wanted to see the game booths and win a prize.  I tried to explain that it was pretty hard to win a prize at those things without spending a lot of money but it fell on deaf ears.  We first came to one of the games that involved throwing darts at balloons.  I was askinig how much it was to play and the guy said $5.  I was looking in my wallet to see if I even had 5 dollars left when my daughter picked up a dart and threw it.

While fussing at my daughter for not waiting for me to pay, the carnie told us that all kids win a prize for playing.  I counted the ones in my wallet and had exactly five.  We gave it to him and my daughter threw the remaining four darts.  She missed on the very first one but managed to pop a balloon with each of the remaining four darts.  Her gave her a choice of three crappy stuffed animal prizes that he pulled out from under the counter while I was wondering why 4 out of 5 popped balloons didn't result in one of the larger prizes that were all over the walls and ceilings of the stand.  My daughter was pleased though, so we left.

I was now completely broke.

I explained this to my daughter as the reason we couldn't play any more games.  I still had tickets for rides, unfortunately, so I suggested that we return to where the rides were.

We got in line for the large cirdle-that-goes-upside-down thing and, thankfully, she was not tall enough to go on the ride.  We did some other, not nearly so violent, rides and she had a ball.  I was pretty much happiest when each one ended.  My wife stayed with us lurking like a thief in the corners and edges of tents and buildings trying to find a small bit of shade. 

I did have to find an ATM and get more money so we could buy some water that was on ice in the vender booths which, by this time of the day, had all melted and the water was lukewarm.  I got another $40 and payed $2.50 for the privledge.  It was like visiting hell.  I was hot, uncomfortable, risking my lunch as well as my life being here and it was costing a fortune for the experience.

I did notice that EMTs had loaded a guy who had stroked out onto a stretcher and was putting him in an ambulance.  I couldn't help but note that the stroked out guy was clearly in his 20s.  Even my daugher was hot and complaining so we decided to leave.  We caught a golf cart back to our car and left for home.  We did stop of the first convience store and got some cold water and gater-aid.

I still had 22 ride tickets in my pocket.  Not one of the rides we went on asked us for tickets.  I may as well have set that 20 dollar bill on fire.

Boy, I can't wait for next year's fair.