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Balloons, fried Oreos and other adventures
May 26th, 2008 by witherow
This past Saturday was a day full of Adventures of the Grandest Sort. Christy, April and I, along with guide dogs Reba and Winston, went to the Freedom Weekend Aloft festival in Simpsonville. Basically, it’s this big festival to-do revolving around hot air balloons—pretty sweet! Anyway, here is another attempt at photo journalism.
First of all, though, I must say I had a grand morning out with my friends Rebecca, Brian and Stephanie. There are no pictures because I didn’t think to bring my camera to a yard sale (go figure). The yard sales turned out to be a bust, so we went to the farmer’s market and found fascinating things like pickled okra and garlic jelly, as well as some things you would actually eat.
We then went to Saffron’s Indian restaurant and had exotic foods like mango pudding and these cheese balls that had been deep-fried and drenched in honey syrup. You would think this would be the most devastating thing healthwise that I would eat all day, but no, it gets better. (Saffron’s, by the way, is great and I would recommend it.)
My Simpsonville adventures with Christy and April started out, as most of my adventures with Christy and April do, with me taking a … detour. Yes … let’s call it a detour. A detour that added about 40 minutes to our trip (but hey, at least I got to see downtown Mauldin) (not that I had ever been planning to).
Things got better after that. The balloon festival has rides and crafts and overpriced fair food, so we partook in our share of those. And for the first time in my life, I went up in a Ferris wheel (no, seriously, I had never ridden one before).
Christy and I went around … and around … and around … and we began to wonder if we had accidentally gotten onto some sort of Wheel of Eternity and would show up on the next rerun of the Twilight Zone. Fifteen minutes later, we made hand signals to the operator guy to let us off!
A view of the fair grounds from the Eternal Wheel.
There is a predominately bubble-gum pink building in the center of this photo. It is a fine vending establishment called “The Sugar Shack.” Pay attention to it, because it becomes important later on in this story.
We then went on some other rides, including one of those bungee bouncers and a giant inflatable slide. Winston and Reba were quite worried to see their moms get strapped into a giant swing and whirled around! I stayed behind and tried to reassure them.
By the way, when Winston gets nervous, he drools. On your pants, if he can. Grin.
Now for the main event … the balloons! It’s really hard to grasp how huge these things are. Pictures don’t really do them justice. In this photo, the tiny people at the bottom of this balloon (near the teal truck) give some sense of how ginormous this thing is.
Off they go! This photo has been brought to you by the letter B and the basic principles of physics.
Then it was our turn. They had tethered balloons that would float about six stories above the ground that paying customers could ride. So after forking over $15 each, Christy, April and I decided to take a spin.
Christy went first. Smile, Christy, you’re in a balloon!
Here’s April in the balloon, all smiles. This is before we took off. Yeah … it was pretty cool.
Then April and I had a turn. The balloon pilot was pretty much amazing and had his wife stand on the ground and call up so April could get a sense of how high we were. As for me, the height actually didn’t scare me at all, which was kind of surprising. Of course, maybe it was because I was too busy taking pictures to think much about it.
As we were floating up above the crowd, it seems I recalled early memories of being inside a balloon basket and watching the pilot run the propane. But I don’t think I ever rode in a hot air balloon as a child. I’ve come to the conclusion that I must have seen an episode about hot air balloons on Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood way, way back in the day, and the camera person must have gotten into the balloon and showed close-ups of all the parts. So now I’m wondering how many other memories I have are things I never actually experienced and were actually just Mr. Rogers. I mean, we did have a miniature train running through our living room at the same time each day, right?
Anyway, after that, like after every Grand Adventure, it was time to eat.
It seems that once upon a time, some carnival workers were standing around and had a contest to see who could come up with the highest-calorie-per-square-atom snack food. One particularly devious worker decided to take an Oreo, smother it in batter, deep-fry it and then sprinkle powdered sugar on top. In honor of him, the three of us went to the aforementioned Sugar Shack and bought deep-fried Oreos … and actually ate them. They tasted good, but I will still be working off those calories in October.
Here I am with said Oreo. It looks kind of like a doughnut hole, but it so isn’t.
One of the last stops were the bumper cars.
CAUTION: Blind women driving!!
And of course, it wouldn’t be a fair if you didn’t have to sit in gridlocked traffic for thirty minutes just to get out. Grin.
Honestly, though, I had a wonderful day and at the end of it I thanked God for so many great friends and for these fun experiences, even those that involve great heights or trans fats.
Posted in That's life | | | 1 Comments
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on June 2nd, 2008 at 10:43 am
Wow, it sounds like you all had a ton of fun! I wish I could have been there with you. But, alas, Australia is calling my name and I will be answering that call in a few short days.
By the way, is a deep fried oreo really that good? I mean, why change a thing that is so good in its own right?