Tis the Season Folks...

The sugary smell of cotton candy tempting you.  The clanking metal and bright strobe lights on carnival rides.  The distinctive sound of the booth operators heckling those who walk by to get you to win a prize.  The whiff of barn yard animals.  Yes folks!  It's that time of year again.  Imagine the biggest, booming, bass voice:

WELCOME TO THE COUNTY FAIR!!!!

A group of us (me, Suzanne, Dustin, Mike and Jaime) headed out to the Montgomery County Fair, in Gaithersburg, MD, last weekend.  It was the final weekend of the fair.  The lure of metal on metal mayhem was too inviting.  You guessed it!!  It was demolition derby time.  After the long trek, we made it just in time.  A couple of us stopped for food while the others went and got tickets to the grandstand.  We got pretty decent seats for being so close on time.  We sat and chowed down on smoked turkey leg, sausage sandwiches and gyros.

The festivities started with a recording of the National Anthem.  During which, Suzanne leaned over and said, "I feel weird holding a giant turkey leg while this is playing."  I stifled my laugh with a big smile.  We sat down and the destruction began.  Dustin asks me if why I didn't enter my Trans Am in the derby.  I laughed and almost pushed him off the seat.  The first two heats where the full size, V8 cars.  They took the last three cars running to enter the main event.  There was one V6 engine heat.  A woman from that class made it to the main event.  At this time we noticed a running theme.  There was a group/ team of eight cars all painted the same and in different heats.  We noticed that these "team" cars weren't hitting each other.  It worked out in the end.  I think there was one in the main event.  Then there were two 4 cylinder engine heats.  By this time the track was drying out and these front wheel drive cars were able to pick up some decent speed.  None of these winners were allowed to enter the main event due to the size of the cars.  There were a couple fire, which I missed getting pictures of.  There were lots of hard hits, blown tires, ruptured radiators and parts flying.  The overall winner was a guy in a Cadillac.  Here are some pictures of the carnage.

The final event of the night was the trailer race.  I'm not sure what the rules were for this event were, but usually the competitors try to knock the trailer off the hitch.  The last one with a trailer on wins.  Well, a couple people lost theirs and still kept going which was fun.  One guy had his trailer rigged to catch fire.  We noticed that his started smoking.  Then a side panel fell off and we saw that it was packed with hay.  Then the fire really got going.  The officials stopped the race after a couple more laps.  Here are some pictures.