JoCo Fair 2010

We started to head to the Fair at 5:30, and promptly decided it was too hot to even think about. The rides area seemed lifeless in general, nobody was lining up to ride what appeared to be no rides.

There were rides, of course, but two noticeably absent rides that usually make this circuit, the Power Surge and the Avalanche (or is it Ali Babba?) made it seem a little empty. They brought in a slide and an additional fun house, but that's not the same as two high grade thrill rides.



When we went back at sundown there were lines that sprawled to where it was often difficult to tell what ride people were waiting for or if they weren't waiting for anything but had come down with a stroke in the middle of this gravel lot.



First time I've ever taken the girls to something like this and not ridden with them. I could have, but I'd have left myself with no cash at all to buy food or drink with on the 100 mile bike ride I had planned for Sunday, and sometimes life is about the choices.



Actually, that's for a different post, but maybe I'd have been better off riding some thrill rides, sleeping late the next day and not doing anything more strenuous than making a BLT.



I've often joked that the thrill of carnival rides is that they are maintained on the road by alcoholics. I joked with a woman behind me in line for the Zipper about this. She looked at the machine as one of the carnies got up into the works and had a guy throw him a wrench (it took four tries for him to catch it) to adjust or tighten something).



"My life is worth more than that," she said in total seriousness. Yet she was letting her two daughters ride it, that was who she was waiting in line with. Come on, really? If you believed one of those cars might fly loose (it feels like it could happen, voice of experience), would you put your kids in it?



And of course, if carnival rides routinely killed people, you'd have read about it. When people advocating choke-proof hot dogs make the front page of USA today because six kids managed to get a wiener down their air-hole last year, I think a Scrambler fatality would get it's own reality TV series.

Anyway, it's a stereotype, not all carnies are booze hounds. Some are tweakers.



Em got off one of the rides and asked if I knew the operator. He was kind of far off at the time, and it wasn't until she said where he'd told her he knew me from that I remembered him. The recovering, ex-con meth addict who used to come to a park I launched rockets at with his own kids; the last time I launched at that park he'd had fallen off the meth recovery bandwagon and found some 'go fast' (his term for it). If I hadn't seen him operating that ride at the fair, I'd think he might still be in that park holding a one-sided conversation with me.



I'm not going to say amphetamine abuse is a good thing, but I'll say this: if someone is going to abuse drugs and operate heavy machinery, speed is my choice if me and/or my kids are riding said machinery. A drunk won't see the problem; a pot head will decide it's not a problem; opiates, the problem is forgotten in a nod. A speed freak will repack the bearings just because it's something to do at 4:30 a.m. when there's nobody to talk to and there's no way he'll fall asleep this month.

Wheels 'n' Squeels

I volunteered to help out at the Autism Speaks booth at the Wheels 'n' Squeels BBQ Challenge at Olathe Bible Church on Saturday. I didn't do much real helping, there were four or five volunteers and mostly people coming by one at a time to buy raffle tickets.



Mrs. Kansas US, on the other hand, sold I don't know how many dollars worth of our raffle tickets walking around with her sash and tiara. Came back with a bunch of folding money. I bet if I'd had a sash and a tiara, I'd have gotten...well, I'd have probably gotten punched in the junk.



Speaking of which, K.C. Wolf was on hand, and watching him work, I realized something. I've always looked at those costumes as all down-side. It's hot in there, right?



But there's a huge up-side I'd never considered. K.C. Wolf can walk up to a woman he's never met and sit on her lap and everyone just laughs. He can pick a guy up, he can act all flustered at Mrs. Kansas US walking by and suggestively thrust the hula-hoop waste of the costume. K.C. Wolf gets away with murder!

I want a costume like that. I picture a big elephant with an enormous Hawaiian shirt on, the Party Animal. I could show up for events like this without anyone booking me, I'll bet, and misbehave just about as outrageously as I care to and everyone will figure it's good clean fun and I'm probably being paid by the event organizers to get into shenanigans.



The best part, though, was the Marching Cobras. I always love when these guys show up for a parade or any other kind of event, because they are just awesome. I saw them first when they came to my school when I was in 8th grade and they are still bringing it every time they perform.





I took way too many pictures trying to capture the Cobras' act, and it can't be done with a puny pocket camera.



They did something I hadn't seen before, they dragged people out of the audience and to their credit, everyone I saw dragged out onto the field got into it and shook their bad selves as best they could. I was impressed, I don't think I'd have known what to do if they'd grabbed me.









I also wandered around a bit and checked out the cars (the wheels part of the show, I thought, the squeals being the barbecue competition—until every car leaving the show did a burn out right in front of Olathe police officers directing traffic who didn't appear to issue a single citation for exhibition of acceleration).







I got mauled by K.C., by the way, and maybe it was a long day or maybe the costume doesn't launder easily, but that paw smelled bad.

Tasting...One-Two-Three...Tasting...

I had the great fortune this year to have James Worley guru me through growing some heirloom tomatoes. The experience has been the total opposite of my last attempt at semi-large-scale gardening, 1993.



And from the time I bought my plants from him (or maybe even before that), he's been reminding me to come to this tomato tasting.





And of course I wouldn't have missed it for anything except, maybe, if it had been my year to have the girls for the County Fair, we'd have been riding Daisy in the parade.





Valuable prizes (ten free Worley plants for next year, for instance) were awarded for Heaviest Tomato, Ugliest Tomato and Tomato Art. I think the last category turned into a door prize or something when nobody brought tomato art.



There were 70 varieties of tomato on offer, about two per person who showed up.



And you can tell men who have good taste by the shirts they wear and the tomatoes they grow. And talk about a small world, Keith (on the right) is someone I already know through church and other friends, and it turns out he's the mad scientist horticulturalist of the local tomato scene.



He's de-hybridizing something, I think. When you start talking alleles, the check-engine light on my forehead lights up and I process nothing.



I didn't quite sample all 70, but I made an honest effort at it. I know I want to grow Juanne Flamme, Barracker's Favorite, Sun Gold, Black Cherry and Japanese Black Trifele next year. Probably Aussie, too, though the red beefsteaks are probably my overall least favorite. I tend to enjoy the black and gold varieties quite a bit more.



And I love a bi-color. No Berkeley Tie Dyes were on offer but maybe next year.






Julie kept snapping pics of this little girl, and she was so focused and intent, I had my camera practically in her face and I clicked every time she did, and she didn't even notice.





I won a valuable prize myself for the Heaviest Tomato. A 14 oz. Carbon (they usually don't get that big). I had a Kellogg's Breakfast that was twice that, but I ate it. At one sitting, now that I think of it (can you spell gluttony?)

Sickness in the Garden

It looks healthy enough when you stand way back, but I'm seeing more spots, yellowed leaves, and so on. I quit treating with antifungal around mid-July and I wonder if I stopped too soon. I resumed last Sunday when I noticed some of this stuff, and I've pruned quite a bit but so far to no avail.



Even my Sweet Italian Basil has taken a hit.

I've grown too attached, I'm sure, to these plants, most of which now tower over me. And my fears of having more tomatoes than I could possibly use are giving away to the realization that I need to put out even more tomato plants next year. I envisioned a year's supply of canned tomatoes for chili, soups, stews, salsa, chutney and so on, and so far my own consumption and giving away a few has kept up with the ripening crop.



There's still a lot of fruit out there, green on the vines, but blossoms promising even more are pretty scarce.



There are blossoms on the mystery/mutant plant that was supposed to be a Tigarella. It was late putting on any fruit, so maybe it'll be a late producer all the way through to the frost.

Gadzooks

I think I'm going to have to take out the middle zucchini plant so the other two can live wild and free. I also think the experimental tomato plants grown from cuttings might shoot up fast enough to avoid being overtaken by the canopy of squash plants.



Might, it's too late to try and move them, so if I get some late tomatoes to go with some lovely squash, that'd be swell. It appears I'll at least get one zucchini, anyway.



I'll also pull aside the SRM over the rest of the Extension Office (I covered what never sprouted to control weeds) and sew lettuce in a week or two. I've never attempted growing lettuce before, but I hear you can get a late crop of it by sewing in mid to late August.

DeSoto & Back

It's my bachelor weekend, no kids, so I did my Thursday night ride on Friday. I was so tired yesterday I'd have skipped it anyway.

But best laid plans, I put my bike on the rack, picked out my pink flamingo Hawaiian shirt, grabbed my Cambelbak and my Pearl Izumis as I got me and Mo showered, dressed, tooth-brushed, medicated, etc., and managed to get to work without those Pearl Izumis. I swear I had them in my hand on the way to the car, but nope.



So my intention of doing a 30 to 40 mile ride from work went the way of George and Lenny living off the fat of the land.

The route I took, to DeSoto, included an outtake shot from War of the Worlds (or something like it), four identical water towers on the horizon.



I knew a ride from home would mean rednecks in pickups who accelerate loudly and at length to express their dissatisfaction at having to steer their vehicle or even remember it had a brake pedal; it means Daimler mini-SUVs that think it's okay to honk and then pass incredibly close to you even when there's a center lane nobody is using. And I did it anyway.

The one incident I'm not sure what to make of was when I heard a beep-beep horn which startled me (cranking through the country, alone with my thoughts and mainly vigilant to the possibility of big nasty farm dogs). I jumped, and a set of four motorcycles with two riders apiece passed me, and the girl riding bitch on the lead motorcycle was holding a finger up in the air.



I'm pretty sure it was her index finger, and I took it to mean 'We got one,' as in I jumped when they honked. Later, I wondered if she'd been flipping me off.

But for the most part this was a pleasant ride, and I'd probably do it again. I got chased by a couple of dogs along 127th Street, but I didn't get out my pepper spray because I've had cats bigger than these two mutts. They were (especially the black and white Chihuahua) really fast, but as they ran alongside me in the ditch barking repeatedly, they reminded me of fans lining the Tour de France more than any real menace.

Thai-ish Meatballs

This is an incomplete dish, I ate one of the meatballs plain because I ran out of steam before I could finish the concept.

Em was at a party, that became a sleepover, and there was shuttling of things back and forth and whatnot, but that wasn't the real problem. The real problem is Mo didn't sleep much last night, which meant I didn't sleep much last night. I got her back to sleep around five-ish and proceeded to sleep soundly through two alarms. Em would sleep until noon if undisturbed anyway, and when Mo finally fell asleep, she was really asleep.

So after showing up an hour late for work as a zombie, the commute, tending to the Tomatosaurus Rex (inadequately, there are a lot of brown spots on leaves on one of my favorite varieties, the Kellogg's Breakfast, and I didn't get around to getting out there with the snips to prune off the diseased branches—I'll have to do that tomorrow, I can't lose that one in early August, it's so far my favorite BLT tomato) and so on...



I'd never really thought about tomatoes as role-players before. I've grown tomatoes, bought tomatoes, but I've pretty much treated it as 'a tomato is a tomato.' But the tomato that makes a great sauce/paste tomato (Opalka, for example) is not so whippy for, say, salads and sandwiches. For just a slicing tomato to salt and pepper and eat, I am really digging the 'black' varieties. I had two Cherokee Purples and a Carbon for lunch today, and it did not suck. A coworker asked me, 'That's all you're eating?'

So anyway, I had set this package of hamburger in the fridge to thaw on Sunday and kind of forgot it, and it was still good but I wouldn't have wanted to push it another day. I didn't have any hamburger buns, we just had taco's Sunday night and still have a little leftover taco meat, and there's no way I'm firing up the oven to make a meatloaf when I come in dripping sweat from the garden.

So I made grilled meatballs. I chopped up some Lilac Peppers along with a couple jalapeños and a Kung Pao (all grown in my garden), tossed in some garlic and dried fenugreek, some dark soy sauce, oyster sauce and a bunch of Thai Basil. It was a pretty wet mixture, so I worked in a couple big handfuls of cornmeal to stiffen it up, formed it into baseball sized balls and threw them on the grill.

The charcoal had died down quite a bit by the time I got that far, so I threw a half bag of mesquite chips in and let them catch fire to boost the heat. I covered for most of the cooking time to effectively smoke the meatballs, but not until I let a good char form from the flames licking up.



As I say, this was only the beginning of the planned meal, and after we shuttled Em's night meds to her and made a separate trip for a sleeping bag, pillow and PJs nobody thought of on that first trip (she called to ask me to shuttle a teddy bear and clothes for tomorrow and I told her to wear her PJ's home in the morning because it's just not happening), I ate one unadorned meatball and put the other four in the fridge.

The rest of the meal involves a tomato sauce with similar Thai-ish twists, plenty of Thai Basil from my garden (I have three varieties, Thai Magic, Siam Queen and Purple Stem), probably a bit more Kung Pao or Thai pepper, and who knows what else. And brown Basmati rice. Lay down the rice, put a meatball in the middle and cover with the tomato sauce.

I bet that'll be good, whenever I get the crushed tomatoes I got as far as making out of the fridge and finish cooking it.