Like taking Candy from a Baby

"Give me that damn chicken!"

I read in the daily free paper today ("24 hours") that the air show was on at the Ex at 1pm. Looking in my wallet, I found I still had my "Get in free" coupon that I received the last time I was there. Today being a friday was the perfect time to go. Most people would still be stuck working away in their office leaving the CNE grounds not as populated as on a weekend and the weather forecast was sunny with some puffy clouds. Clouds that would make an interesting backdrop for the planes.

Of course all best plans usually have a few bumps in them when it comes down to putting things in motion during the real thing. The "bump" for me was that the newspaper was wrong. The air show would not be taking place at 1pm on friday. This was made clear to me when I saw jets flying around on my approach to the CNE grounds on the streetcar. It was only noon. Why were there planes in the sky already?

Once inside a teenager who manned the info booth informed me of the typo. He apologized profusely. I told him it wasn't his fault. If anything it was the CNE's responsibility for advertising wrong or the 24 hour newspaper typing in the wrong information. As I wasn't really doing much that day anyway and had a free coupon... No big deal.

I bee lined to the nearest corn dog/lemonade stand. $13 later (yes the corn dog was $6 and the lemonade $7 - sheesh) I decided to try winning a prize. I've never been good at darts, throwing baseballs to break plates, or shooting out stars with BB rifles. I decided to start off on an easy, no effort game. It was the guess your weight, age, or month you were born in.

No effort on my part other than having to stand there and give the person guessing $5. I thought I'd try the weight thing as the last visit to the Ex I got them to try guessing my age. The guesser guessed 180 pounds. "Holy Crap!" was the first thing to come to my brain.

Since I don't own a scale I haven't weighed myself recently so I thought maybe I'd actually put on a few pounds. I stepped on the scale and came in at 219. The guesser exclaimed "Gee, you are a lot fatter than you look.". "Nice... Give me that damn chicken!" I thought as she told me to take whatever stuffed animal appealed to me.


"Take that you Mole!"

With the Chicken win stuffed into my camera bag I decided it was time to do some real winning and play the Whack-a-Mole game. As UncaringBear is probably the only one to have ever beat me and he's in Australia I felt pretty smug playing against a Dad trying to win the prize for his kid and some jock trying to impress his girlfriend.

"You guys are going down!". I'm not sure where all this in your face attitude comes from when playing this game. Perhaps it's the way I vent my whole year's troubles. An annual release of accumulated pent up aggression by whacking tiny cute mole heads as they pop out of their little hole. It was almost poetic. I was in a dream like state when the girl activated the game saying "Go!". I missed the first two victims.

After the first two I became a systematic mole hurting machine. I managed to hit all the other moles before the game was over signalled by a buzzer and a light flashing in front of the determined winner. I looked up from the mole killing fields to notice the light was flashing in front of me. I had won.

A stuffed panda bear was waved in front of my face. I took it, looked over to the Dad and thought "In your face!". That was just before I made eye contact with the kid. The kid took his eyes off his loser Dad to look at the panda. His eyes started to swell with tears.

"Crap." I gave the bear to the mother who promptly gave it to the kid saying "Say, Thank you.". The kid filled with glee grabbed the stuffed toy smiling at me said "Thank you". Once done the kid then looked back at his father and frowned. I walked away laughing at the kid's expression but at the same time feeling bad for the father who had to live with the humiliation of losing, at least, until the next CNE opportunity arose.


Looking down on the CNE from the ferris wheel

It was time for another corn dog and a ride on the ferris wheel. The wheel was 6 tickets. You could buy 11 tickets for $10.00 and single tickets for $1.00. So I did the ride twice. Mainly to get shots of the CNE grounds from above. I left the CNE at around 4pm. I needed to do some computer shopping then get ready for a bachelor party. More on this in the next entry.