Frederick County Fair

We went to the Frederick County Fair a couple of weeks ago and boy did it bring back memories! The smells, the sounds, the filth...and I’m just talking about the people! This one ride brought back vivid memories. I know it by the name of The UFO. You might know it by another name. It’s basically an enclosed cylindrical, sphere looking thing-a-ma-gig. Everyone is loaded on and then the door is slammed shut by some Appalachian Hairball whose teeth, or lack thereof, are desperately in need of Crest in order to get rid of those Cavity Creeps. Seriously, I don’t even think Crest could help, but I digest, the funnel cake I just ate..thank you very much. Who doesn’t love funnel cake?!? The thing about funnel cake is that you get so worked up, so excited to order it, douse it with powdered sugar, but then the guilt sets in even before you take the first bite. I will eat the whole damn thing, but then I get that same feeling I get when I drop $500 on a street walker from 14th street for a night at the Motel 6…I’m a baller! Back to the UFO…or as I refer to it- The Sphere of Spew. After the door closes, everyone takes their spot with their backs up against the wall. The ride starts to rotate, sort of like a human blender, and then it starts rotating faster and faster until it is going fast enough for everyone to stick to the wall and then the floor drops out. As a kid, I absolutely loved this ride! I would go on it 6, 7 times in a row or at least until my equilibrium was completely shot. Now that I am 30, it is like I have developed some type of adult onset vertigo where even the freakin’ merry go round at the Dulles Town Center makes me woozy. As a kid, we would spin purposely to make ourselves dizzy. We spun around in the yard until we fell. Get up. Spin in the other direction until you fell again. I could spin all day long. One time, my buddy Derek, we called him LD because he had a learning disability, spun for what it seemed like 10 minutes without stopping, then all of a sudden he collapsed. I think he collapsed because he was going so fast that the oxygen couldn’t make it to his brain, but the doctors said it was something more serious, something called epilepsy. What did we know? Anyway, back to the UFO. Once the ride is going and everyone is stuck to the wall, you attempt to do amazing tricks, like lift your head, lift your arms, or if you were skilled enough, flip over. Our one buddy, Choppa, is missing two fingers on his right hand, so I always contested that the reason he was able to lift his hand so easily was because he was more aerodynamic. Apparently, if you are 30 or over, eat a funnel cake before riding, and get queasy on the merry go round, you should not ride the UFO. As we hit 2 G’s I get this funny little feeling in my belly. It’s that same feeling that instantly wakes you up out of bed at 3 in the morning and makes you sprint to the toilet as fast as you can. I will spare you the details, let’s just say that since the ride was moving rapidly in a counter clockwise motion, I was able to douse everyone on the ride with the contents of my tummy. I must say, even though I was feeling squeamish and sick the remainder of the night, I felt quite proud because when we were walking by the UFO later on there was a sign that said “CLOSED.”