Tuesday

The blog recognizes my sister Rosemary as Sister of the Day.  Happy Birthday! ( I'd highlight the designation, but either Blogger or my desktop is limiting use of the editing functions again today...very annoying.)

And today is also the one year anniversary of my retirement from biking up the high mountain roads.  Here's a reprint of the pic of my pal Pete and I atop Mt. Rose last year.  The reason he looks so cool, calm and collected is that he had time to take a nap back at the condo, get the car, and come back to the crest to pick me up!  I will NOT be making the climb from the Reno side again!

Finally, from history, my basement calendars indicate that 2 closed on her house on this date five years ago.  You've come a long way, Baby!

The Mississippi Valley Fair starts today in Davenport.  It runs through Sunday.  Toby Kieth is the grandstand feature tonight.  Country singers Josh Turner and Jake Owen headline a couple of the other nights.   I'm guessing that they'll have 20-25,000 for each of those shows.  That's a lot of folks to put into the fair grounds.  The fair sells a "Fun Card" (for like $25 when they first go on sale in the Winter, and $45 now) that gets the holder in for all of the shows.  That seems pretty cheap compared to what you pay for an arena show, but the finances must work.  They've been doing it this way for lotsa years.

Our county fair from growing-up days on the farm was in Eldon, Iowa.  The Wapello County Fair.  It was a big deal.  I'm sure that I've mentioned it here before.  It was the equivalent of our annual vacation.  4-H projects and displays.  Living in the dorm there for 4 nights.  Walking the "midway" of rides and food booths.  The grandstand events were horse racing (trotters, not thoroughbreds), a car dare-devil show (Joie Chitwood, I think), and some auto racing on Sunday. 

That auto racing was always my favorite.  Today, they would call them midgets, I think.  Was that the start of my NASCAR interest?  Daddy would usually get grandstand tickets from the sales guys who called on the County Supervisors, so we always had good seats.  The cars were loud, and they threw up sprays of dirt/mud as they slid through the corners.  Very macho!  (The guy who drove the Bardol Special... the black #2 car, Booby Grim, actually made it to the Indy 500 in later years.)

OK.  Blogger has gone nuts on me.  I can't even get it to do some basic things, like go to a paragraph, now.  I'm hitting the "publish" icon and maybe I can get some editing done later.  This is like WORK!!

Make it a Good Tuesday.

BCOT