the state fair round-up
ok, i am going to try to pull out all the stops to tell the tale of our day at the VA state fair (i even got a you tube account to do this), but b/c of my technical ineptitude, i will make no promises. also b/c i am only giving myself 30 minutes b/c i really need to work on my paper topic. and with 30 minutes i can generally only manage to upload one picture, not multiple pictures and you tube videos. we’ll see how it goes. ok. here goes.
so ave and i arrive at the fair at 1:45. we figure this
gives us a bit of time to stroll around b/f we head to
pigeon rolling. we start at the front, where we find a
pavilion of all sorts of wonderful delights.
mostly, when i say “wonderful delights,” i mean
the t-shirt stand where we found my 12 hours worth
of joy and my lifetime of disappointment. but that was
not the only fabulous shirt to be offered. check out what
anthony found:
we amble around for a bit, checking out the foodstuffs and whatnot, before we decide that we should try to find pigeon rolling. it is at the other end of the fair, but we’ve got a map and that shouldn’t be too hard, right? i mean, pigeon rolling will surely be fairly obvious. and surely everyone who works at the fair will know what it is. i mean, IT’S PIGEON ROLLING FOR GOD’S SAKE! and it happens twice a day, so you think the people in the vicinity would have seen it by now. well, as i’m sure you can tell, it’s not so easy to find and no one knows where it is. well, at the last possible second, we find it. now we can finally settle the debate we’ve been having about what is pigeon rolling. i say you just kinda throw the pigeon and they try to flap, but i figure their wings have been clipped or something, so they can’t actually fly away. anthony thinks it’s the pigeon equivalent of log-rolling and they’ll be rolling sticks with their feet. i think this is ridiculous.
well, at 2:31 we find howard tess, who opens our eyes to the world of pigeon rolling. turns out that once upon a time, someone swore he saw a
pigeon rolling, so they have now bred these birds to roll. howard describes it like “the backstroke.” basically the pigeon just rolls backward. it’s a little disturbing actually and anthony isn’t sure he’ll ever be the same.
this is when howard opens our eyes to the seedy underbelly of pigeon rolling. this is a competitive sport. so there are people out there who juice up their pigeons! yes, steroids! in pigeon racing! with steroids, the world record is like 750 feet. without, like 300. i think our pigeons rolled about 10 or 15. the one was going well til he fwacked into the wheels of a woman’s mechanized wheelchair. anthony thinks that in addition to breeding them for the rolling, they have also been bred so that their noses are metal detectors.
ok, so once we have been scarred by this, we go on to pan for gold and befriend some lady who likes us b/c we go to UVA and she “has been forced to talk to people from tech all morning” and then we ride a ride that lets us fly and we go to the worst fun house ever. truly. awful. anyways, then we meet up with lexi and aaron, ride a few rides that remind me that fair rides are all in circles and tho i love roller coasters, circle rides make me feel yucky. fortunately, there are plenty of other things to be done. next we went to see livestock, which it actually turns out was the "animal birthing pavillion" or some other such thing, which would explain why we saw lots of newborn baby animals and spent that 30 minutes cooing and petting fuzzy cute things. it was good times. it made me want to be a rancher. the kind of rancher that just coos and pets fuzzy cute things. ok, so i would be a terrible rancher.
then we go to what is perhaps one of the most amusing things i have ever seen. it was the "amazing animal adventure" where princess jara showed us her "magical castle" and we pretty much giggled thru the entire over-acted thing. i'm not really sure there is any better way to describe it, except for to say that it REALLY warranted a lot of giggling and i'm not too sure how you do that with an animal show.
oh, but there would be another way to explain it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWqlGqRkuZU
(yes, the point is that the cougar show is set to enrique eglesias' "hero." that is ridiculous! hysterical! preposterous! awesome.)
then to porkchop downs, the pig racing. while the princess jara show was one of the most amusing things i have ever seen, this was maybe the funniest. lexi and aaron finagled us some good seats in the front, where lexi proceeded to jump up and down, shoving small children out of her way in an effort to be named a "pig rooter" and vie for a prize of a poster of a pig, grumbling all the while, "i bet it's not their birthdays," when the 6 year olds were picked instead. tho to be fair, lexi and i were way better pig rooters than any of the people they picked.
ok, so they hype us all up for the final race. the asian pot-bellied pigs. they tell us that they get faster with every race, and we've seen some pigs running. but then you realize that this is 300 pounds of meat on a 1 foot frame. the gun sounds, the gates open, the pigs mosey out. this alone is pretty funny. but one pig charges past the rest of the pack (still at an amble, but he didn't get distracted by things at the gate, like the other pigs did.) so while everyone else is still about 4 feet after the starting line (i had a picture, but it won't work, so cut me some slack here), pig #4 is a foot from the finish line. where...he...proceeds....to....just....sit....while all the rest of the pigs waddle around the track. so in the end pig #2 overtakes him and wins. we are convinced that they had hidden food right there, and that this was all scripted, but you have to understand that it was about the FUNNIEST THING EVER and it took about 5 minutes for this all to play out. all the while, lexi and i were both crying from laughing so hard and my stomach hurt. priceless. i'm sorry i can't get the picture to work.
and finally, was our time at the pirate singalong.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vrf4ttXSrIA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9gl-hzGN9Q
awesome. lexi and i even got a shout-out during their next song, which was about two norwegian oystermen who rowed from the US to france. yes, we sure did. from the stage. it was good times.
anyways, it was an awesome day and hopefully a happy birthday celebration for both dee and lexi and tho i regret the lack of my t-shirt, i've probably got enough other memories to last me. i highly recommend checking out the pirate videos, if you did not.
so ave and i arrive at the fair at 1:45. we figure this
gives us a bit of time to stroll around b/f we head to
pigeon rolling. we start at the front, where we find a
pavilion of all sorts of wonderful delights.
mostly, when i say “wonderful delights,” i mean
the t-shirt stand where we found my 12 hours worth
of joy and my lifetime of disappointment. but that was
not the only fabulous shirt to be offered. check out what
anthony found:
we amble around for a bit, checking out the foodstuffs and whatnot, before we decide that we should try to find pigeon rolling. it is at the other end of the fair, but we’ve got a map and that shouldn’t be too hard, right? i mean, pigeon rolling will surely be fairly obvious. and surely everyone who works at the fair will know what it is. i mean, IT’S PIGEON ROLLING FOR GOD’S SAKE! and it happens twice a day, so you think the people in the vicinity would have seen it by now. well, as i’m sure you can tell, it’s not so easy to find and no one knows where it is. well, at the last possible second, we find it. now we can finally settle the debate we’ve been having about what is pigeon rolling. i say you just kinda throw the pigeon and they try to flap, but i figure their wings have been clipped or something, so they can’t actually fly away. anthony thinks it’s the pigeon equivalent of log-rolling and they’ll be rolling sticks with their feet. i think this is ridiculous.
well, at 2:31 we find howard tess, who opens our eyes to the world of pigeon rolling. turns out that once upon a time, someone swore he saw a
pigeon rolling, so they have now bred these birds to roll. howard describes it like “the backstroke.” basically the pigeon just rolls backward. it’s a little disturbing actually and anthony isn’t sure he’ll ever be the same.this is when howard opens our eyes to the seedy underbelly of pigeon rolling. this is a competitive sport. so there are people out there who juice up their pigeons! yes, steroids! in pigeon racing! with steroids, the world record is like 750 feet. without, like 300. i think our pigeons rolled about 10 or 15. the one was going well til he fwacked into the wheels of a woman’s mechanized wheelchair. anthony thinks that in addition to breeding them for the rolling, they have also been bred so that their noses are metal detectors.
ok, so once we have been scarred by this, we go on to pan for gold and befriend some lady who likes us b/c we go to UVA and she “has been forced to talk to people from tech all morning” and then we ride a ride that lets us fly and we go to the worst fun house ever. truly. awful. anyways, then we meet up with lexi and aaron, ride a few rides that remind me that fair rides are all in circles and tho i love roller coasters, circle rides make me feel yucky. fortunately, there are plenty of other things to be done. next we went to see livestock, which it actually turns out was the "animal birthing pavillion" or some other such thing, which would explain why we saw lots of newborn baby animals and spent that 30 minutes cooing and petting fuzzy cute things. it was good times. it made me want to be a rancher. the kind of rancher that just coos and pets fuzzy cute things. ok, so i would be a terrible rancher.
then we go to what is perhaps one of the most amusing things i have ever seen. it was the "amazing animal adventure" where princess jara showed us her "magical castle" and we pretty much giggled thru the entire over-acted thing. i'm not really sure there is any better way to describe it, except for to say that it REALLY warranted a lot of giggling and i'm not too sure how you do that with an animal show.
oh, but there would be another way to explain it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWqlGqRkuZU
(yes, the point is that the cougar show is set to enrique eglesias' "hero." that is ridiculous! hysterical! preposterous! awesome.)
then to porkchop downs, the pig racing. while the princess jara show was one of the most amusing things i have ever seen, this was maybe the funniest. lexi and aaron finagled us some good seats in the front, where lexi proceeded to jump up and down, shoving small children out of her way in an effort to be named a "pig rooter" and vie for a prize of a poster of a pig, grumbling all the while, "i bet it's not their birthdays," when the 6 year olds were picked instead. tho to be fair, lexi and i were way better pig rooters than any of the people they picked.
ok, so they hype us all up for the final race. the asian pot-bellied pigs. they tell us that they get faster with every race, and we've seen some pigs running. but then you realize that this is 300 pounds of meat on a 1 foot frame. the gun sounds, the gates open, the pigs mosey out. this alone is pretty funny. but one pig charges past the rest of the pack (still at an amble, but he didn't get distracted by things at the gate, like the other pigs did.) so while everyone else is still about 4 feet after the starting line (i had a picture, but it won't work, so cut me some slack here), pig #4 is a foot from the finish line. where...he...proceeds....to....just....sit....while all the rest of the pigs waddle around the track. so in the end pig #2 overtakes him and wins. we are convinced that they had hidden food right there, and that this was all scripted, but you have to understand that it was about the FUNNIEST THING EVER and it took about 5 minutes for this all to play out. all the while, lexi and i were both crying from laughing so hard and my stomach hurt. priceless. i'm sorry i can't get the picture to work.
and finally, was our time at the pirate singalong.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vrf4ttXSrIA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9gl-hzGN9Q
awesome. lexi and i even got a shout-out during their next song, which was about two norwegian oystermen who rowed from the US to france. yes, we sure did. from the stage. it was good times.
anyways, it was an awesome day and hopefully a happy birthday celebration for both dee and lexi and tho i regret the lack of my t-shirt, i've probably got enough other memories to last me. i highly recommend checking out the pirate videos, if you did not.
posted by laura at 5:45 PM
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