GOAT DAY ADDENDUM

I didn't want to ruin the spirit of the event by adding this to Monday's description of the Goat races, but it needs to be said for the sake of providing a full and unbiased appraisal of the event.

The Bockfest/Goat Race was a lot of fun - and overall, an uplifting day. But just like any event that has 2,000 people standing around drinking beer for several hours, it can start to get testy.

Now I will say that for a long time, everything was fine but then it started. At first slowly, but before long, many words were being exchanged between people standing near me and some other people - special people - who thought they could have a better look at the goats if they crossed over the perimeter line and stood in front of all of us. Lets call them interlopers as it sounds like a word that is appropriate to a goat race. One woman next to me was giving it to this other guy non stop. And in fact, I had to do my own share of crowd control by providing certain advice to an oblivious husband and wife pair - let's call them morons - who decided they could stand in front of me. My initial advice was to inform them that if they did not have a goat in the race, they should not be standing there. That didn't work through, so my next comment was something restrained but more pointed like, "Excuse me, are you so clueless that you think I can see through your umbrella?". This seemed to work very well.

It could have gotten out of hand but thanks largely to the fact that I was taller than most and have a reduced level of testosterone in my system (often confused for "wisdom" in older men), I not only held my own but did it with decorum. In fact, I was able to keep the areas in front of Sue and me clear while others were not so successful.

But then came the pushing -- which you can only ignore for so long. Pushing will cause even a reduced amount of testosterone in a man to induce a flow of adrenaline into his mature system. I heard someone say something to one of the pushers like, "You can't stand past that line", and the pusher (or as we also refer to him, the idiot) posed his own question - something like, "well, where is the line?".

That's when I felt I just had to inform the idiot that "it's under your fuckin' foot !".

Yes, we were about 5 minutes from "go time". And as much fun as that might have been, it would have tainted an otherwise charming day. Luckily, as I looked up, the last goat race was finishing with little Dax being pulled over the line to victory. And with that, Sue and I decided to leave - with all our positive outlook and fond goat memories still intact.