One man’s voice Thoughts, rants and commentary from a husband, father of five and professional web geek

It was a fair day today

So today we went to the Alameda County Fair. As in years past, today was a warm day filled with all sorts of walking and lot of noise.

Unlike years past, however, today carried with it much more expense and much more experience. It started out with us getting there as early as a family of our size could... 11:00AM. Believe it or not, we had every intention of getting there when it opened at 10:00AM, but as is usually the case with our family, when we get there is quite a bit different then when we wanted to get there.

After getting to the park, and seeing the cool Toyota Tundra exhibit (birthday ideas, anyone???) we moved on to the vendor fair that takes place in the pavilion. We checked out a few really cool gadgets, ooed and awed over the fudge, then left to make our way to the rides.

Ah, rides... what can we say about ride? $1.00 per ticket, 4 tickets per ride. I know what I'd like to say about them. But I digress. It wasn't as bad as it could have been, seeing as we bought unlimited ride armbands for the kids. Each band was $25, so the rides portion of the day was only $100 (plus another $30 or so for the few rides that my wife or I took my son on). And that is not that bad if you consider how many ride the kids went on. In fact, it was probably a cost saving for us to go that route. Lunch, on the other hand, was an awfully expensive experience.

The kids had hotdogs and corndogs for lunch. Not too bad there, as the cost for their lunch was about $18 for all of the kids. The BBQ prok sandwiches Sandi and I had we almost $20. That's right, you heard me. $20, for two sandwiches and a soda. I almost puked when I handed the guy the money, but realized soon thereafter that I would have spoiled the appetite that I was just about to feed.

After lunch we hit up the rides again. Only this time it was the big kid rides. Those are the ones that go upside down, side to side, move really fast and otherwise scare the living hell out of any kid that sees them. Well, remember those armbands we bought the kids? Yup, you guessed it. Useless. I think the kids rode maybe three rides in the big kids section of the rides. That included the carousel and the fun house. Nice.

We decided to leave at about 4:00 because we needed to get home to prepare for tomorrow (Alaynah's birthday party) plus I was flat exhausted. The one thing that made the day really good was the fact that, despite the heat of the day, when you found shade it was cool there. Everything else today just made me tired.