The first weekend

All over the north country, there appear to be lots of town and village festivals. I guess since there's not too much else to do, local chambers of commerce and the like get inventive. So my first weekend in my apartment, I experienced my village's very own summer festival.

And it was hilarious. Of course it had the necessary craft fair and a radio station was there. And it ended in fireworks and there was fried dough and a book sale at the library. But that can be found anywhere.

The highlight - and the only part I really got to see - involved bed races. Two gurney-looking things, teams of five, and a stretch of Main Street, which of course, had been closed down for the affair.

How it works:
Four people push the "bed" - one at each bedpost.
One person on top of the bed, holding on for dear life.
Oh, the bed has wheels.
The team pushes the bed down maybe 50 feet of Main Street.
They stop, the one on top has to get off and chug a small cup of beer.
Jump back on and away they race to the top.

It was done in heats - two teams at a time. Until of course, one of the wheels broke off one of the beds and snapped in half because of the massive cracks on one side of the street. Then they did it one at a time, but the one team that went fastest of the two paired together advanced to the next heat. Obviously, it was sponsored by the biker bar across the street from my apartment. That's key.

It was awesome. The street was packed with people watching, the team member on top got progressively more drunk as the heats went on, and at one point, one of the beds actually flipped over. That was fantastic. Thankfully, no one was hurt. Ironically, that was not when the wheel snapped in half, though it may have compromised its structural integrity.

At first I thought it was absolutely the stupidest thing I've ever seen. Then, to my surprise, I got totally into it and was rooting for a team or two - cheering them on and everything. Granted, I was cheering quietly - I wasn't whooping or anything. And one of the teams I was rooting for actually won, so that was even cooler.

Then there were the duck races. I had to leave before they started, but I heard about them. It involved plastic ducks - think rubber ducks but not squeezable. The woman who owns the hardware store, and is great, went around in a ridiculous hat that looked like a duck's head - complete with beak in place of the rim and a tuft of feather at the crown. This is a 50+ year old woman, by the way. She was selling the ducks to residents, along with plastic quackers to "cheer on" your not-quite-sentient duck.

There's nothing funnier than seeing grown men and women with quackers around their necks, blowing them - they sounded kind of like kazoos as blown by a duck - in each other's faces. And precious little more annoying after the first 15 minutes when you have neither your own quacker nor a beer - or five - in your hand.

The race part, which I didn't see, apparently had to do with the plastic ducks being released down a short, netted, stretch of the river to float down to the finish line. I'm not sure how they could tell the ducks apart, but I wouldn't put it past some people to decorate theirs with glitter, or at least sharpies. I would have.