Monday, September 21, 2009

Sealegs In Midair

We were out at the Morton Pumpkin Festival on Saturday, my first time. What a gala! Functional guy that I am, the myriad arts and crafts displays were both impressive and useless. But the tent filled with all treats pumpkin was sublime. Our friends ate pumpkin ice cream sandwich and pumpkin pie, Dena had a caramel pumpkin shake, and I a pumpkin ice cream cone.

There was entertainment enough to cause me to conceive new career options. The New Mexico family band that sold their home for an RV and travels the country playing all manner of fun music. The two-clown act.

The signature moment was the carnival ride I'd done once before as a kid. You've probably been on it - think of a big gondola boat that swings waaaay up to the left, then waaaay back to the right like a pendulum. And you sitting at one of the ends. There's a single bar locked across your lap for safety. As a ten-year old, that bar didn't touch my lap and so, naive to concepts like centrifugal forces that would generally have wedged me safely in place anyway, my stomach nearly turned to jelly with panic.

Now I had a chance to conquer those demons - with pumpkin ice cream in my gut, no less. And sure enough, it was downright fun! Not $5 worth of fun, but who could pass up a rite of passage into adulthood? Ten-year-old Joe would've sworn the ride was a half hour long, but this was about two minutes of free-falling bliss.

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