Louisville Weblog

Our annual trip to the Kentucky State Fair (We went on Senior Day, and got in free). It was hot, as usual. There were very few parking lot shuttles; nowhere near enough for the demand on such a day. There used to be plenty of the tractor-drawn wagons that one could ride. I think they may have privatized the service.

This year they had several large fiberglass animals at the entrance. To get you in the mood, I suppose.

CVH always looks forward to her State Fair Corn Dog each year. She arrived just as they started frying, and got a fresh hand dipped dog (not a Sysco dog from Houston). This year I refrained from eating an elephant ear or a large fried whatever and I felt much better.

The State Police had an small helicopter that you could get inside. I thought it was so cool to see the actual implementation of what I was familiar with only through Flight Simulator. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get a good photo of the copter, but here is CVH posing as a pilot.

We watched a magician escape from a locked box. He had a young female assistant in a sparkly outfit (some things never change). It wasn’t too hard to figure out how the magic box worked, but it was amazing that a guy his age could do it so quickly.

The Culinary Competition

Last year, for the first time, CVH entered the culinary competition. She baked a pound cake.

It did not win an award.

When we went to the displays, we studied the award winners very carefully to see what it was the judges were looking for. All of the top pound cakes had a much tighter crumb than CVH’s, and their crust was very light (her cake had a darker crust). So this year she bought a silver flute pan instead of the dark one she used last year, and she strove for a denser cake.

Imagine our shock when we saw this year’s winning cake. It had not been cooked in a flute pan at all, was glazed (in clear violation of the standard), and had a nearly burnt crust. Unfair at the fair!

However, we regained our composure and enjoyed the rest of the day.

Finally, there was the always popular baby duck exhibit.

Along with a bunch of other geezers, we went to the Abbey Road On The River Beatles festival today.

We had to walk across the long bridge to get there. The festival used to be held on the Louisville side of the river, but then there was some sort of dispute between the organizers and the host hotel, so the organizers moved to the Indiana side. CVH told me that things must be better for them there, as she read they signed a contract to host the festival there for the next five years. I said “That ought to carry them through to where we all start dying off, or they move this thing to the nursing home.”

We saw several great tribute bands, including The Starclubbers, Itchycoo Park, Classicstone, Beatline, George Harry’s Son, and LSB Experience. We sang along to “I Want To Hold Your Hand”, “Bésame Mucho”, “Piggies”, “It’s All So Beautiful”, and other hits. Yes, that last was Small Faces, not The Beatles, but they have dozens of bands over five days, so they have to stretch things out a little.

At one point the skies opened and the rain poured, causing the festival to shut down. I started the Woodstock “No rain!” chant, but for some reason, nobody picked up on it. Strange.

That guy in the front was really tall.

Our son got married today.