So the big family reunion (mine) for early August, and ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger's brother's wedding, meant that bunnyhugger would miss the chance to go to the Jackson County Fair and the Calhoun County Fair, where she's racked up like three ribbons per photograph submitted the last couple years. The obvious alternative: find some other fairs she could submit to. Thus, and our next adventure, was the Ionia Free Fair. Ionia County is partway to Grand Rapids from where we are, and it's a long fair, running ... oh, I don't know exactly, 34 weeks start to finish? A bunch anyway.
Ionia Free Fair is free admission, although they do charge for things like parking in the lot that is right up against the Grand River, and did I mention that the day before we went we had 76 inches of rain? So the parking lot was cut in maybe half and finding a spot was a long twisty path on the edge of water, which since August 2021 is my very not-favorite thing. We ended up waved back and back into what remained of the parking lot; I think our car was finally placed in north Indiana and we had to walk back from there. But getting into the fair itself was, as promised, free.
Her pictures, now ... she did rather well, especially given that she hadn't been at the fair last year and had no idea what kinds of pictures the judges liked. No worries. She got several respectable ribbons, including a second place for a picture of me near the State Christmas Tree and looking vaguely sad, put up with the array of Christmas-themed pictures, a special collection separate from the other categories. She also got a blue ribbon for a nice photo of a Zipper ride at night, this explosion of lights and blur lines like you would imagine. Another picture of this forlorn house in the neighborhood with a rusted-out car beside got a blue ribbon too; a similar picture of it at winter got a Best In Class ribbon from Calhoun County last year, so we could conclude that county fair judges like this house. Also this great black-and-white picture she took with her film camera of The Peanut Shop downtown, so, we can say she knew what would fly in Ionia.
The photo entries were in a building up against the Grand River --- not so close as to be in danger of flooding, at least not this time --- and shared with other exhibits, such as a display case of old mostly film cameras. Also somewhere in here were a couple of Lego cameras (nonfunctional) built and shown as art projects. It also had antique tractors and lawn mowers and similar gear. Christmas trees and little setups to look like a living room ready for the holidays, including one with an endtable with a copy of The New York Times from the Apollo 11 moon landing. I don't know whether an original or one of the many reprints the Times has sold over the years, but in either case: wrong time of year for that. Also more explicable things, like old signs from mechanics and owners guides to 60s cars, including a 1961 Corvair guide.
We did also, once, see the guy who's the 'living mirror statue' walking around. He wears this suit and costume that's hundreds of little reflective surfaces so he looks like a video game rendering error strolling around with you. Great scene.
In rides, well, there's ones we would naturally be interested in like the merry-go-round. The fair also had a Stinson band organ in, and a huge one, bigger than we've seen at any other fair or modern carousel installation. They also had a Super Round-Up, one of my favorites; we watched a barely-understood drama play out as a kid's mother explained that she used to ride those things and couldn't anymore, and he got on the ride himself, got off, came back on, and changed what compartment he was riding in several times before accepting the ride. This was a faster and longer Super Round-Up than usual. Not like last year's Gravitron incident, but it was a good ride.
The thing we did not go on but that we could nt get enough of was this funhouse called New York, New York. It's a New York City-themed funhouse, the sort of thing with rotating tunnels and shaking floors and spiral slides (the thing we were least sure we could possibly fit through) and glass mazes and rotating foam bars that bump into you and all that. (The final part of the ride is 'Times Square' and it's a bunch of rotating gears that bump you back as you try to move forward.) It also had a prerecorded barker, chanting out the ride's thrills and its safety instructions to the tune of ``New York, New York'', all done in your classic Movie Brooklyn Cabbie accent. We couldn't get enough of the spectacle and if we were sure that adults as big as us were safe on the three-storey slide that ends the main part of the ride --- or that there's an alternative that isn't sad --- we might have got on it.
We closed out the fair, of course, and had some ride tickets left over. bunnyhugger might have gone back --- she had the afternoons and evenings free --- but ended up not; we'll just have to hope the ride tickets are good next year, or whenever that rides company goes to something else we attend. Driving out along the edge of the waterline, this time in the dark and with almost no other cars and certainly no guidance? Not my favorite thing, but that'll happen. Maybe next year the river won't flood.
Back to Bronner's pictures; here's more things to look at and that could theoretically make your Christmas more wonderland-ful:
Is ... is that Inspector Gadget's dog Brain? Why is he a reindeer?
Some more really big decorations, in case you need to be The Christmas House in your neighborhood.
And now to some practical ornaments, like raccoons! Much more reasonable!
There's also a good number of rabbits to use as decorations.
I'm sorry, I did not check what the price might be on a polar bear statue. Probably need a heck of a tree to hang it.
Progression of raccoon ornaments so it looks like they're going through that wormhole sequence in Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
Trivia: The American delegation to the 1908 London Summer Olympics filed protests against decisions or actions of the officials in the marathon, the tug-of-war, the 400-meter run, and the pole vault. Source: Encyclopedia of the Modern Olympic Movement, Editors John E Findling, Kimberly D Pelle. On the United States and the United Kingdom entered teams in the tug-of-war, the UK entering three teams. In protest of a ruling about boots the American team did not compete against the Liverpool team.
Currently Reading: And more comic books.
