Day 12: The End

           The lawns of the Minnesota State Fair Grounds were tired, trodden brown mats that only resembled grass upon close inspection. I remembered the green suburban landscapes I had observed at my interview in July. Was the wilting greenery some sort of metaphor for how I was feeling?

          Nah.

          I dropped my bike off at the corral and cut across to the sidewalk on my way to start my shift. I stopped at the Ocean Spray promo booth and grabbed a cup of juice.

          "Last day huh? How does that feel?" I asked.

          "It feels great!"

           Yes, I have to agree. It did feel good. Over the past two weeks, I'd had a great time chatting with other Minnesotans, visiting exhibit booths and becoming the world's best hot dog artissst EVER. I wasn't tired, and I certainly had not seen everything there was to see at the fair. But, my dreams were starting to involve boogeyman ketchup bottles and supernatural relish with nefarious tendencies. I felt perfectly content leaving a few things for 2012.

           There were some things I had to do before I left this year:

Take a picture of my peeps at Chicago Dogs!!

Ride the oldest ride at the Minnesota State Fair: Ye Old Mill

...and when one of the employees at Ye Old Mill asked if Elf wanted to sit in the "captain's seat" I had to say yes. I am so proud at this moment. If only my camera worked better in dim light conditions!

Possibly the best addition to the State Fair and the coolest new exhibit I saw this year, The Giant Sing Along!

So long State Fair! Until next year!

          

           

Day 10 and 11: Workers' Heaven?

           Labor Day weekend at the fair is busy. Seriously. Busy. Crossing the street is a five minute affair of slowly tiptoeing past stroller wagons and wading through cliques of high school students. Getting into a bathroom and eating during my lunch break? Not happening. 
           With all these folks in attendance, Chicago Dogs has been hopping, churning out dogs and beers like airplanes emit carbon dioxide. Being a quality Chicago Dog making artissst, I happily stayed on past my shift for the evening rush. The plus side of this decision was that I enjoyed the privilege of throwing relish, cleaning mustard fiascoes and dancing to karaoke for more than ten solid hours. Honestly, I had a grand time sprinkling onions and doing the 'Chicago Dog making dance' (I must suggest to my boss that we choreograph this to the music). But after the long shift, I was wiped. Instead of stumbling home to write half-thought out post--eerily reminiscent of late Sunday night college essays--I made the executive decision to enjoy the fair while I still could and worry about the posts later.

TTFN: Ta Ta For Now
    

Day 9: Hot Dogs in the Dark

           Today would have been a busy day at Chicago Dogs. By 11 am, the lunch rush hour had already begun. I raced to and fro, building Chicago Dog masterpieces, filling sodas, and refilling condiments from the back-up fridge. As scheduled, karaoke began at noon. Halfway through a painfully bad rendition of some unrequited country love song, the power went out. 

           The crowd applauded as the music stopped. We groaned as our heat source, cold source, registers and soda machines all went out of commission.

          "Cold beer!" my boss yelled at the crowd, "We still have cold beer here!"

          The occasional ship-wrecked soul wandered over, but between the dim light in the garden that obscured our menu and the slow payment time it took to generate change manually, we lost a lot of customers. Fortunately, the fluorescent lights flashed back on ten minutes later when the power returned. Unfortunately, the power failed three more times throughout the afternoon. Finally, at 2:40 pm, we received word that the power would be out for an entire hour from 3-4pm as they attempted to fix the electrical problem.

           "Fill up your topping trays to the brim, avoid opening the fridge doors and let's hope for the best," my boss told us.

          I guess hoping for the best did work. The repairs took no more than twenty minutes. At that point, the power returned, and business resumed as usual. Do you think this is a legitimate experience to bring up when asked at my next job interview, "Can you describe a time when you faced a challenge in the workplace and overcame it?" 

Elf and a baby pig

           From darkness I strove for the enlightenment of The Miracle of Birth building where two friends and I wove through small children to look at recently born farm animals. Overhead, previously recorded video of people wrestling mucus filled sacs out of mama cows played cheerfully. Ah, the glory of life! The babies themselves, clean and cute looking, now lay in the center ring, soaking up a shower of admiration, "Ooooh, honey look at the baby cow! So adorable!"

Day 8: The Tide Turns

Elf Elf stands alone...

 

Not alone. Chicago Dog makers!!

Eight days are behind us with just the last weekend dash to the finish left.

TO THE FAIR!

Day 7: Taste buds, Let's Tango

         Without a doubt, one of the central attractions of the Minnesota State Fair is all the artery clogging goodness. Six days in and all I had eaten were the Chicago Dogs, some cookies and a glass of milk. Time to give those taste buds a workout.

          I prepared for the day by packing a small lunch. As I was munching on my carrot sticks and plum during my break, a thin woman sat down next to me on the bench.

           "Wow, that's a lot of self-control to only eat a plum at the fair!" she commented.

          If only she knew what I was going to be consuming in the next few hours...

Elf was pretty into the beer...

          My partner in crime was my father. We met up after my shift and got down to business. A Chicago Dog--of course--and a cold beer were our first conquests. 

           One of the most important strategic components for eating at the fair is to absolutely forget that there exists a thing such as "daily caloric intake." The other, is to take lots of breaks. On break number one, I met up with a friend whose personal mission was currently to find an elusive wine slushy. She had heard about the slushy from a friend, but nobody we asked had any idea what we were talking about. Finally, we found it, at the wine bar in the back of the French Creperie. Verdict: One sip is tasty and the presentation is beautiful in a deep scarlet, but too sweet for me.

Break number two. Watching the dog show!

          Every day, people walk past Chicago Dogs carrying boats of steaming cheese curds. I have been jonesing for one every day of the fair. After meeting back up with my dad, the cheese curd stand was our next objective. Here's the thing about cheese curds: they look better than they are. Eating them is somewhat akin to putting cement blocks in your stomach. We had about three each and realized there was no way we were going to finish the rest. I called in reinforcements. Fortunately, another friend, an avid cheese curd eater, was also at the fair. He helped us with the cheese curds, and also gave us a hand with the corn fritters and fried green tomatoes we bought next. 

Sunflower honey ice-cream

          I had spent most of my shift at work daydreaming about the various foods I was going to eat this evening and asking my coworkers for advice on what to try. My cashier told me that her favorite sweet food at the fair was the honey and sunflower ice-cream. As I consider ice-cream to be its own food group, and dearly love honey, I was all over this idea. It did not disappoint, sweet enough to taste bad for you, but not over powering, and with a hint of sunflower that gave it a distinct twist of earthiness. 

         A small order of fries later, and I was craving something healthy. I ran up to the Horticulture Building to buy an apple. Unfortunately, they are closing. A young employee stood in the doorway.

          "Please," I pleaded with him, "Could you just grab me an apple?"

          He looked around uncomfortably, "I'm not supposed to."

          I must have this apple, "It's for writing research!"

          "I'm not supposed to," he just repeated.

As usual, Sweet Martha piles on the cookies waaay over the top!

          I sighed, "No worries man, I understand." 

          What choice did we have? We decided to try the new fried apple pie instead. And then later, after taking a break to listen to Nick Sterling, we hit up Sweet Martha's Cookies on our way home. These types of things happen when you try to eat healthy at the state fair!   

Day 6: Where am I again?

         Just as I was about to get off work today, a coworker told me about a cool band that was playing on a side stage this evening. He is a musician, so he knows what he's talking about. I decided I should check it out, so I asked him where it was.

          "By the grocery store," he said. 

           "The grocery store?" I repeated, certain I had never heard of such a thing, "I didn't even know there was one of those here."

          "OK," he said and tried another landmark, "It's by the moose."

          "The moose?" I had no idea what he was talking about. I felt like a complete and utter State Fair Failure. Where had I been for the past week? I began to wonder if my entire life's fair experience had been based on a shamefully incomplete picture lacking even the most iconic geographical knowledge.

          "Yeah, and the fish."

           "The fish...?" suddenly it clicked, "...oh right! The DNR exhibit!"

          My coworker shrugged, "Probably."

          See self, I reassured myself, you are not a State Fair Idiot.

          "By the Milk Stand?" I confirmed.

          "I have no idea," he said. Ha! What kind of a fairgoer doesn't know the Milk Stand?

           Here's when I realized the obvious: The State Fair is so huge and has so much going on, that two people can spend years going to the fair and both develop two completely differing images of what the fair is.  Different strokes for different folks, as they say. I might describe something in relation to a stand of all-you-can-drink milk for a buck. Someone else might describe the same thing in relation to a grocery store, or a giant moose. The other obvious thing: Even more important than listening to this band, I definitely had to go find it just to go find this grocer:

I found the store. Here it is in all its glory! Like my coworker told me, it was in close proximity to a giant moose and as I suspected, just behind the Milk Stand. Why I never noticed either this store or a giant moose before, I cannot say.

Yup, inside is a fully legit grocery store, complete with jars of PB for $3.79 and $1.00 Red Delicious Apples. Note: local MN awesome apples available for less from the Horticultural Building. Elf here sits in the tooth pics like a good dentist, reliving some Christmas film memories.

 

Day 5: Trouble in Paradise

          "Good morning," the man on the sleek red road bike said to me this morning, "Look at me pass you at approximately double your current speed with my spandex clad legs of steel and bright neon yellow wind resistant commuting jersey."

         Rather, this is what I interpreted in his cheerful morning greeting. I stuck my tongue out at him as he and his water-proof panniers vanished quickly into the distance.

          "How many times," I asked the empty road, "Do I have to ride this stinking route before I am no longer the SLOWEST bike out here?"

          No response.

          Yet, now that I know the route down pat, I have been biking a teensy-tiny bit faster every day, mostly to get the whole ordeal over with. Not that I still don't revel in the ultimate coolness of being a bike commuter, but...(shh...don't tell anybody!)...at certain points in my ride today I found myself a little, well, bored? Just in the more mundane parts of the route, like where the scenery consists of nothing but concrete and dusty looking warehouses.

Then, at work...

         It was the fifth day at Chicago Dogs and I was thirty minutes into my shift.

         Dude, I am bored already, I thought.

         "Dude," I told my cashier, "I am bored already!"

          During the first hour of work I made a grand total of two hotdogs. It picked up a bit around lunch, but not much.  The minutes dragged by. Potential customers fled my welcoming grin. My face drooped, my smile faded, my dancing steps lagged into a half-hearted shuffle, the voice in my head that usually sings a bright high-pitched theme song that goes, "I am making hotdogs, I am making HOTdogs, I am making HOTDOGS!" kicked down revolutions per minute to a slowmo, "I...am...not....mak...ing...any....hot......dooogggsss." A serious case of the yawns spread around my side of the stand.

          Not only was this the slowest day of the fair yet, but the register I was working was even slower than the others.

         "It is the suckiest one here," according to my cashier, mostly because, "Customers can't see the beer!" The taps at this particular resister are placed to the side, hidden behind a tree of chip bags, instead of right in front next to the till as they are at the other stations.

         I am pretty sure more people came up to me to ask where they could find other food stalls than people jonesing for hotdogs. Then, when people did request dogs, well, I am just so efficient at making them now that it simply is NO LONGER A CHALLENGE! I have such problems.

         I suffer from the "got the routine, mid-gig blues." I named this condition in college when I would find myself unreasonably crabby at the end of every October. It's far enough into the semester that it's not new anymore, but not far enough to see the end in sight. I am not alone!

         "Yeah it's been slow here too," the bike attendant who checked my ticket told me as I left, "Sure makes the hours go by slowly."

         That's what I am talking about! My bike attendant friend and I, we all like to busy here.

I came to this Conclusion: We need more people to come to the State Fair with their bikes and purchase hotdogs at Chicago Dogs!      

Fully determined to make the most out of my time at the fair after work, even if I was feeling bored and uninspired, I decided to take the Minnesota State Fair History Walking Tour and showcase it in an Elf picture album.        

Elf attempts to become a Child of Local Minnesota Corn in the Agriculture Horticulture Building.

This guy, J.V. Bailey, whom I knew nothing of previously, apparently had his own house on the fair grounds from 1916-2004 and was instrumental in all things green related to the fair.

My mascot next to the Fair mascot!

Hey Santa! How do you like them cookies?

I'm on a boat! In the 4-H building at a kid's exhibit about wind powered boats!

I check out the art in the Fine Arts Center. Elf admits he shall never be as skilled as these figurines :(

A new sleigh design for Santa from Machinery Hill?

One year I will have to ride the Sky Glider...

Old fashioned stuff and things at Heritage Square.

Elf screams like a girl at the Midway!

No explanation needed...