Overhead view of the rides at the Lodi Grape Festival
Taken from the top of the main Ferris Wheel
Nestled between all the food vendors selling treats that are impossibly bad for you (but calories don’t count, right? Its a fair!), all the games that fill you with the unbeatable urge to spend $20 to win that knockoff Care Bear or Spongebob, all the vendors selling little knick knacks and trinkets that you know you don’t need but the fair always makes you want – the ferris wheel.
Sitting high above the rest, filling you with apprehension and fear.
I shouldn’t be this high! Does each car have to rock while the wheel is going around?
But once you start to move…that feeling. You are going higher, higher, higher! You’re sitting high above everything and everyone else. And while it is a bit scary it is exhilarating.
Climbing above it all and then for that moment you’re sitting on top, when you can see it all, you feel like you’re on top of the world.
You can see it all.
The funnel cake stand, the petting zoo, the pig races, the water games! The little kids eating corndogs just about as big as they are. The little boy pulling his dad toward the reptile exhibit. The little girl begging for the pink cotton candy or maybe some ice cream! The high school kids strolling the fair feeling oh so cool.
And then just as suddenly as you went up, you’re coming back down. Heading back down toward earth. To join the other fair goers. To choose your next adventure.
You’re off the wheel and you’re giddy. Ready to conquer the next thing at the fair. Win a prize, see the exhibits, eat some cotton candy. Maybe just walk around wide eyed like a little kid going to the fair for the first time.
You can’t help but wonder whether other countries do fairs the way we do. In my heart I feel the answer is no. The American fair – with all its safety problems, its obvious contributions to our obesity problem, with its kitsch, the overpriced everything, and the inevitable cast of characters – is something only we could do.
I wouldn’t have it any other way.
AAAAAAAAAHHHHH ferris wheels give me the heebs!
I am always afraid those first few minutes on the ferris wheel when they are just slowly inching you upward as they fill the other cars. After that I am ok. Which makes no sense because it is moving faster then. And I am afraid of heights but I’m ok on rides.
Weird, right?
When I suggested we go on the fair rides Joe refused as first because apparently he was raised to never go on fair rides because they’re dangerous. I was never given that warning by my parents. haha!
Sure enough as we were getting off the ferris wheel, Joe’s brother pointed out a huge bolt sitting under it. I probably didn’t need to see that.