This morning, early, it was raining. Then around 9 a.m. the sun came out and stayed out. I thought, bad combination, sun and Saturday, for those wanting to go to Fair and hoping for small numbers.

It’s been raining hard since before the Alaska State Fair opened up. This has resulted in low attendance. It was as if there wasn’t a population explosion occurring in our area. As it is, the Mat Su Valley is the fastest growing area in Alaska. And Anchorage is the largest the area in the state. And so, this is why you have days like today, when the sheer number of people at the fair is representative of this growth.

From 10:30 a.m. until 5:10 p.m. I worked on sorting, cleaning, cataloging and distributing kids’ books. I waited for more books to come in. None did. Bill, via the phone, told Pete that he only got five boxes of books at the recycling center.

We are not sure if books are being shredded at the recycling center or not. I am considering this to be just a lull.

A few people came by the hotel and talked my ear off. I then held it in my hand, wondering what to do with it. I finally put it in a small box for safe keeping.

After all this, Pete and I headed to the Fair. The signs that this was a large attendance year were quite evident. We got caught in traffic on Chugach Street. Then, once on Outer Springer Loop Road, we noted that all the Alaska State Fair parking lots were full to overflowing. Then once inside the fairgrounds, there was hardly any room to move.

We put books in the five newspaper boxes, then went and got carts so as to go out on the various trails and pick recyclable bottles and cans out of the green bins. The barrels were spaced an even distance apart; however, I still had to wade through near arm to arm fair goers. It worked best when I fell in behind Pete and he, like Moses (who parted the Red Sea), parted the crowd.

I focused as best I could on getting the cans and bottles out of the can in front of me. But when done, I again had to deal with the brain dead masses. I couldn’t help but wonder if Cherokee was right, and two out of three people at the fair are aliens. If she is right, then they are big time breeders because there were a lot of people pushing strollers around the fairgrounds. It could very well be that many do come to the fair because they like being surrounded by their own kind.

We wisely decided to eat dinner at a local restaurant because it was cheaper and better for us. Oddly enough, we would have spent more money for food at the fair and gotten less to eat.

Next: 241. 9/3/23: A True Story, Mostly