Richard Simmons, armless volleyball, and Crazy Mouse for free!

In the spirit of summertime fun, we did what all urban Canadians must do: visit the local exhibition. In Regina, it's called Buffalo Days, and is themeless as far as we could tell. It had all the usual stuff--midway, mini doughnuts, B-grade bands on a free stage--but it also had many unexpected treats. Unfortunately, it wasn't exactly camera-friendly, so I can't supply any visuals. I will rely on words alone to explain our fabulous tale of adventure!
I think I'd better go chronologically, for fear of forgetting things. Here, in point form for the attentionless MTV generation, is our adventure:
-Arrival, wherein we discovered that small cities rock because parking is only $3 at the exhibition grounds, and you pay your gate admission as you drive in. Smart.
-Exploration, where we sussed out the lay of the land, noting the abundance of Stewie Griffin-themed carnival games.
-"K9s in Flight," which consisted of some guy yelling unintelligible things into a microphone while he threw some frisbees for his dogs, who had about a 75% catch success rate.
-Petting zoo, including the usual goats, pigs, sheep, bunnies, cow, and llamas, plus cages of snakes, and a blue-tongued skink which closely resembled the one which used to reside in one Tony Russell's lab at U of C biosciences and which was named James (after James, of course).
-Barrel racing in the arena where the Regina Pats (WHL) play. Kind of disconcerting to have horses thundering around indoors.
-The North American Sepak Tarkaw championships. This is essentially volleyball played with anything but the arms. Kicking and heading were the most common moves. It's played with a ball made of hard plastic woven strips. It's also the game which murdered Ted's ankle when he was visiting the lower mainland on a Seminary excursion. We had never heard of the sport when Ted tried to describe the origin of his injury, and it appears that we aren't alone in our ignorance. It can't be very widespread, because the athletes at these North American championships, uh....kinda sucked. But hey, they were raising awareness. And it was free!
-Attending a play directed by Aaron Coates, who was a member of my high school playwriting group at ATP. Cleverly, the Regina Fringe Festival runs on the exhibition grounds during Buffalo Days. The show was very good, and I enjoyed being back in a theatre after a looong absence.
-Drenching each other with the water balloon slingshots.
-Midway riding. We bought passes for two rides each, but then fortunately were loaded in a hurry onto the Crazy Mouse rollercoaster, and dude forgot to scan our pass. So on we went to both the big slide and the log ride. Wooooo!
-Munchies from the "Romanian Orthodox Deanery" food booth. What makes you orthodox, we asked the proprietors. Well, they said, we've got two Orthodox priests serving sausages in here. I see! That'll do it.
-The juggler show, where we didn't realize that we were sitting behind the president of the congregation until he and his wife were called up on stage to help perform a card trick. Then he got to hold some spinny plates and balance one on his head. It was the good times. Jimmy also got called up on stage to do that trick where you sit in a square, lean back on each other's knees, and then remove the supporting chairs. It just about blew his knee out, but he kept his cool.
-A trip around the indoor exhibits where much swag was obtained from the Turn In a Poacher booth and the Saskatchewan Environment booth. Magnets and pencils and tattoos, oh my! We also stopped by the Lutherans Helping People booth, where people from our church handed out tracts and leaflets. As James pointed out, it sounds like they're implying that Lutherans aren't people. Time for a name change, perhaps.
-A trip to the beer gardens to watch Captain Tractor. They were quite excellent despite a very sparse audience, But we hooted and hollered, and brought out our best jigs and polkas when they covered the Arrogant Worms' The Last Saskatchewan Pirate.
-Finally, the hypnotist, who hypnotized our dear Jimmy into doing a fabulous Richard Simmons impression, complete with wig and yellow pinny. I proudly observed as Jimmy showed off the moves he'd learned in our aerobics class. It was legendary. So much so that the hypnotist asked James to come back for the all-star show on Sunday night. The jury is still out on that one, but my guess is that he's had enough humiliation for one year.
So that was our adventure in all the itty bitty details. It was great fun and relatively cheap (especially compared to the Stampede).
Oh, and we located Ted after his U-haul adventure, and all is well. This afternoon we had our very official meeting with the Sunday school superintendent (read: beer and pretzels at her place, followed by a BBQ. Yessss.) Now it's time to go help the Jims with his children's message for tomorrow so that the poor kids will stop giving him confused stares.