Demolition Derby

Thursday, the 29th-Daryl had to work today on the documentary (for no money, btw) so he didn't get home until nearly 6:30p. It had been super hot the past few days and after I cleaned the house I had to take a shower just to cool down. You know it's hot when you take a cold shower and it only kinda cools you down. Anyway, traffic to Pomona was crowded and I wanted to eat at In-N-Out in case the LA County Fair didn't have anything for me to eat. So, when we got to the parking lot it was 8p. It took us 20 minutes to walk from the parking lot to the Grandstand of the fair. They had people on bikes with little chariots hooked up in the back to provide transportation from the lot to the fairgrounds. You had to pay so Daryl and I passed. We missed the first round, but Christian and his date Carmelina were also late so I don't feel like we missed that much. They arrived just as the second round started up and Christian had gone and bought a bag of cotton candy to be shared by all. I realized I was no longer a kid when I started to not want the cotton candy halfway through the bag, and this is while sharing it with three other people. I just can't take that amount of sugar anymore. The derby was just a mud pit surrounded by concrete barriers. They paraded around about 20 cars to be destroyed and there was a prize of about $4000 for whoever lasted the longest. The contenders were a souped up car painted like the American Flag, #70, a serious muscle car painted yellow, #69, another black muscle car, #707, and my favorite, a black station wagon, #99. The numbers were painted on the cars with what looked like graffiti paint and more than a few of them were sponsored by auto parts shops, whose endorsements were also spray painted on like graffiti. The cars had only enough gas for the evening, the better to prevent an explosion, but there were still a few fires. One even started up inside the interior of the car. One was so bad they had to stop the derby for a few minutes while they put the fire out with extinguishers. The crowd was wild over these cars and there were lots of NASCAR fans as well. One guy even said as we walked in, "I like your hat!" Score one for the Pioneer Trucker hat! The Derby was loud and there were a few cars that just stalled right from the get go. There was quite the fight from the cars mentioned above, #70 crashed into #69, #707 also crashed into #69, and then #99 crashed into #707, and so on and so forth. At one point, #69 looked completely dead and the other cars moved on to destroy each other and then #69 came back from the dead and rammed #70. In the end, #707 stalled out, #99 got stuck, and #69 finally got crushed by #70. I was hoping for another round, but apparently that was it for the evening and we all went out to enjoy the fair. Christian even paid for us to all play in the bumper cars, which was fun, even though I could only go backwards for while. Daryl, as we were walking into the fair, said, "Tonight, I'm gonna eat somethin' fried." And he did. He had a corn dog on a stick and a funnel cake the size of a pizza. Christian almost ate a deep fried Twinkie, but Carmelina talked him out of it. He actually had one last year and got really sick later. Too bad, I wanted to see him eat one. Christian also made us get foot massages, which made my feet itch. But I suppose that's what I should expect for $0.25. The LA County Fair is huge, btw. Aside from the Grandstand, there are carnival rides, shopping booths, a large variety of food stalls, and whole restaurants, scattered all over the place, a petting zoo, a whole row of Clydesdales, and an animal section. And I'm not even including the quilting, pottery, and needlepoint galleries. They each took up whole buildings. I'm sorry to say we missed the animals. There's nothing like feeding a goat from your hand. I recommend it to everyone. But they were all asleep by the time we got there. I looked in the pamphlet we got at the gate and I noticed we missed the donut eating contest, too. Darn. While we were there we saw many, many rides which looked really, really dangerous. One ride was basicallly a chance to do some bungee jumping off a crane, one ride was basically being strapped in a gigantic slingshot, and one ride was called the Flyer, where they harness you to a wire then pick you up about 80 ft., then let you swing like a pendulum back and forth. And the clearances here are very slim. You are just about skimming the ground and just missing the huge stadium lights as you swing back and forth. The slingshot one was fun to watch because it was miked. Anything you said was then pushed out of speakers on the ground. There were quite a lot of expletives and screaming. We walked from one end of the fair to the other and then took a chair lift all the way back. It was just like when you go skiing. Next year, I'm going to go to the Monster Truck Rally and the Demolition Derby.