The San Mateo County Fair

Since today was such a beautiful, warm, summer day, we decided the moment was perfect for going to the fair. We live just 10 minutes away from the fairgrounds in San Mateo. Fairs, in areas such as this, are not as big a deal as in a place like Bishop. We didn’t even know the fair was going until we saw the lights of the Ferris wheel the other night as we drove out to see the meteor shower. When we walked in today I checked the schedule and found out that the fair had already been going almost a week.

We made sure to eat lunch before we went, thinking we would save some money that way, but we still plunked down a pretty penny, what with admission, rides, snacks, and whatnot.

Among the highlights: I test drove a Segway, once hyped as the wave of the future, but now reduced to a sight gag on Arrested Development.

They charged me $5 to ride the thing, when they should have been paying me to do it. The guy in charge swore up and down that Segways are selling like hotcakes, but I suspect that if they were I would be seeing more of them around town. Still, it was fun. It moves intuitively: lean forward, and it moves forward; lean back and it slows, and eventually starts moving backward. I suppose that if I could drop $5,100 and not miss it, it might be worth buying a Segway; but since I can’t, it isn’t, so I won’t.

I tried to get Gabe to go down the giant slide, but he refused, so I ended up going alone.

I did manage to get him onto a small rollercoaster and onto the Ferris wheel, where we admired the view.

Gabe also won some goldfish at the midway, and then we capped off the day with a trip to the pig races.