This is Fair Week here in Portage County, and for the first time ever (having lived here over 20 years now--ack!!) I took the whole week off and went several times to the fair. It's also called the Randolph Fair, because the fairgrounds are in lovely Randolph Ohio (very small rural community). I haven't been to very many fairs, not since I was a kid anyway, and this has been a lot of fun. The first day I went to see one of "my" horses, one of the boarders that I feed in our barn, compete in Driving Classes. Actually he doesn't currently stay with us, but he has been here a few times, and his driver has another horse with us right now. So this is Apatchee, being driven by Lisa. She is an excellent horsewoman, and of the six classes that day I believe she won first place in at least 4 of them, and probably placed in the others. Way to go Lisa! I had seen horses pulling carts before, of course, but it was an education for me to see the other things they had them do. One class is called "Gambler's Choice," and it's an obstacle course where the driver gets to choose which obstacles and in which order to complete them. They're each worth points, and the more times they do them the higher the points they earn. But they have a time limit, and if they don't do it right they don't get any points, so they need to know their horse's best abilities and be quick and clever about choosing. It was really interesting.

Here Apatchee is being backed into a space between poles. This was really tricky for some teams, but not our Lisa.

And here Lisa takes Apatchee over the "bridge" with no problems. Then there was "Double Jeopardy," in which two competitors take turns driving the same horse through the course, and you have to go through all of the obstacles, can't skip any. The fun one is stopping at the mailbox to "pick up the mail"! And in another, "Ride and Drive," after driving around for certain laps, they stop and unhitch their horse, saddle him, change their own outfit and mount up to ride the horse around. Again with a time limit, I believe. Complicated stuff!

I spent 2 hours watching the horse driving, then went home to feed our nags, I mean horses :-) and went back to the fair (good thing I bought a "season pass" for the week) to meet my friend

hklbry  for the Demolition Derby! Woo hoo! I had never seen one in person before, and was thinking I might get bored after a while, or find it too loud and lowbrow. Well, lemme tell ya, it was a hoot! I had no idea it would be so darned entertaining. The cars looked like matchbox cars scooting around, and it was fascinating to see how they continued to drive as they got more and more smashed up. There were wheels falling off, fenders falling off, occasional flames shooting up from exhaust pipes--

but they have a great safety team and they stop the action whenever there's a problem like fire, or a gas leak. There are firefighters right there. Several times drivers had to hop out of their cars for safety issues. However, something I found rather disturbing was that when a car was finally "out"--could not be restarted within the minute time limit, and the driver had pulled down his tiny pink flag that signaled he was done--the driver still had to stay in the car for the rest of the match! Those flags were to indicate "do not hit me, I am dead" but a lot of times those cars got hit anyway by cars whose drivers either couldn't steer or couldn't stop or I don't know what. Gotta be a little scary for the "out" drivers, as well as frustrating. It was just crazy, seeing these guys go at each other. Sometimes they drove in circles, not able to steer properly. They did a lot of their driving backwards, which I didn't expect. There was a tractor bout first, but it was pretty boring; three small tractors just pushed each other around in the mud til they got so mucked up that their gears no longer worked. Yawn. Then the "mini" cars came out, which I thought was an odd name since they clearly weren't Mini Coopers or hatchbacks. But the very last group, after the Trucks, were the Large Cars--hoo boy! NOW I knew what Mini meant, because these were the big ol' gas guzzlers, with pre-smashed trunks for better battering rams, and holes cut out of their hoods so that if the hood flew up they could still see. They were also the LOUDEST. Their drivers seemed to be the most vicious; they really went after each other. I liked the minis best. They were more like movie stunt cars; the big guys were tanks, and there wasn't as much room for fancy maneuvers. The other fun aspect was the decoration and the names of the cars. They had goofy paintjobs and names of girlfriends or sponsors or "HIT HARD OR GO HOME" slogans on them. Some even lit up with plastic neon lights. Best Target: the purple Barneymobile.

Doesn't it look like it will stop at any moment? Check out the stuffed barneys! And the "donut" tire. It was truly amazing how long some of these cars (and drivers!) lasted, when they were seemingly just a rolling ball of compacted metal. One heat lasted a tremendously long time because the final two cars who could move were so dangnabbit persistent; they went around and around, and just when you thought one car took a hit from which it couldn't recover, oh no, it would start up and roll slowly over to bash in the other guy some more. A couple of times a car went up several feet in the air on impact! Or got stuck on the concrete barrier that fenced the track.

This guy sat here for a long time, spinning his wheel, a foot off the ground, trying to get unstuck. It was quite comical. Smoke billowed and coolant sprayed forth, yet they still kept coming... It was like a cartoon come to life. Anyway, I could go on but ya kinda had to be there. Good oldfashioned redneck fun! And this has completed my "Derby Trifecta" for the summer: I went to three new Derbies that I'd never witnessed before, Soap Box, Roller Derby and Demolition. Yee-ha! Now if I can get down to the Kentucky Derby some year, that would be a dream come true. Might have to settle for the Ohio Derby horse race this fall.

At the end of Demo Derby we walked around the midway, enjoying the lights on the rides and eating some ice cream for dessert.

Cute motorcycle ride for kids, where the bikes do "wheelies".


My "Fair Food Tally" for the day: I had a balanced meal of steak, potatoes and vegetables! No really! I had Steak on a Stick (surprisingly NOT breaded, a big kebab), Ribbon Fries

(this photo is from the Kent Heritage Festival, where they called them Butterfly Fries--only this time we got one loaded with sour cream, bacon and cheese), and Fried Veggies (big bucket o'fried zucchini, cauliflower, onions, peppers, etc). Haha! Burp! Plus an elephant ear, naturally.

Stay tuned for "Big and Heavy vs Small and Speedy" on Day Two.