Equine Affaire

Posted on November 10, 2013November 10, 2013 by Dusty Roads

I finally got myself out the door to DO SOMETHING. I’ve been sitting at home watching my pennies because we are in the last quarter of the year and I have a bunch of annual bills that come due. I was in pretty good shape with money in the bank to cover them but my car had other ideas.

After several pricey repairs my formerly comfortable bank balance is back to it’s normal level of no reserve. At least I got one of the 3 bills paid (2 more to go ) and my mechanic says my car should last at least until I hit 300,000 miles.

My former job had overtime during the holidays so I usually worked the extra to plug the shortfall but my new job doesn’t have that. Don’t get me wrong, I love not having to “kill myself” and my new job pays about the same as my old job…just no OT which is hitting my purse strings now.

That said I have been playing the hermit, trying not to drive too much (Gas), making a grocery list and sticking to it, cutting coupons etc.; being a good budget minded person (Not my normal way of operating). But eventually that had to give and it did in a sort of big way.

I kept seeing an add on Facebook for Equine Affaire. It was being held at the fairgrounds in Springfield where they hold the “Big E”, Eastern States Exposition . The Big E is a very Big deal out here in the east even though I still haven’t been but a Horsey event… well I might be interested in that so I counted my pennies and bought a ticket for the day and since I was going to be out there anyway…I bought a box seat to the Fantasia Show that evening. (At that point I had no idea what the show would be like but I figured in for a penny in for a pound)

I hadn’t been to a horse show in years and never to one like this. I took over 400 pictures. Not all are worth the paper it would take to print them but there are a few “keepers”. The photography part was challenging because everything was indoors and I was trying not to use the flash. (More on that later). It took me quite awhile to “sort of” figure it out. I never did get the result I wanted but I had fun and over the next few days I want to share my experience and some of the pictures (not all 400).

I was pretty amazed. When I pulled into the parking “field” (Only $5.00 for the whole day) one of the attendants said the event had sold over 6000 tickets each day. (A 4 day run!) (That’s $30,000 per day in parking fees only) There were cars from all over… New York, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Canada, Georgia, New Hampshire, Maine, Rhode Island and of course, Massachusetts.

So welcome to Equine Affaire!

Bucket List of the States

Posted on November 9, 2013November 9, 2013 by Dusty Roads

Well my little exercise of reviewing the 50 states was interesting. It took so many posts and so much research that I think it needs a summary list just so it’s all in one place.

Visited To Be Visited

Alaska Alabama

Arizona Arkansas

California Colorado

Connecticut Delaware

Florida Idaho

Georgia Illinois

Hawaii Indiana

Maine Iowa

Massachusetts Kansas

Nevada Kentucky

New Hampshire Louisiana

New Jersey Maryland

New York Michigan

Rhode Island Minnesota

South Carolina Mississippi

South Dakota Missouri

Texas Montana

Vermont Nebraska

Virginia New Mexico

Washington North Carolina

Wisconsin North Dakota

. Ohio

. Oklahoma

. Oregon

. Pennsylvania

. South Carolina

. Tennessee

. Utah

. West Virginia

. Wyoming

So there’s the bucket list. I will be in San Diego, CA for a few days in January for a business meeting so I’ll have another notch on the California side but that doesn’t work off the pending list.

I was thinking about a visit to Williamsburgh, VA for my vacation in 2014 but now I wonder if I should “rethink” that and aim to go to one of the remaining states. I will have to think on this .

Thanks for taking this journey through the States with me. 🙂

Quick Trip to The Massachusetts Registry

Posted on November 8, 2013November 8, 2013 by Dusty Roads

Mass Pass, Easy Pass, Fast Pass….all names for the High speed , don’t stop, toll lane. You all know the one, it’s supposed to be more efficient, no need for humans and you can’t avoid paying the toll with this system.

On my last vacation in Florida I ran afoul of the Sun Pass lane.

I was in a rental and didn’t have a transponder. My GPS was repeating keep right, keep right so I was hugging the right hand lane…oops, that was a little too far right. I was stuck in the Sun Pass lane. This happened a few times and when I reported it to the car rental company they just laughed. I was assured that I would get a bill. Well, no bill just a series of automatic charges to my credit card, each one carrying an additional “administrative fee”.

I don’t drive too many toll roads. Except for mishaps like in Florida I seldom have a need to pay tolls. I bet I don’t spend $10 on tolls in any given year so I just pay the old fashioned way, with cash. Well Massachusetts announced it is taking down the toll booths. Everyone needs a transponder because paying cash will soon be obsolete. Without a transponder you will have your license plate photographed and run through the registry so they can bill you, after adding on that pesky administration fee. If they think you are trying to be a “Toll Evader” the fine can get hefty.

Needless to say, I found this incentive enough to decide to bite the bullet and get a transponder. The equipment is free but you have to set up an account so they can automatically take the toll out of your bank account or charge a credit card. You can enroll online and they will mail you a transponder or you can pick one up at designated locations and registries.

Silly me. I thought that I could just drop in and get my transponder, like a store. Ha! I was handed paperwork to fill out about me, about my car. When I returned the paperwork I was given a number. It said only 19 ahead of me. Since the registry was filled to overflowing I was directed to the “overflow” waiting room. It was only 49 degrees outside and the registry didn’t bother to turn on the heat. That might be ok for a short wait but as 15 minutes turned to 20 and then 30 I began to get a little chilled. Worse, I was in “A” queue and that wasn’t being called at all.

I sat next to a young man from the “I” queue and we began a friendly competition to see who would get called first. We were “neck and neck” as the elapsed time rolled into the 2nd hour. Finally I was 1 number away. I moved into the main room where there was wonderful heat. My number came up right after that. As I was standing at the window going through all the information on the form for the clerk I heard the “I” numbers get called and there was my young friend. He’d made it to the window next to me.

Total time at the registry to pick up a transponder….2 hours and 28 minutes. Next time I’m signing up online.

See You Later Alligator

Posted on November 7, 2013November 7, 2013 by Dusty Roads

Recently alligators have been making the news and not just on Animal Planet’s Gator Boys show.

I told you about the gator that went shopping at a Walmart in Apopka, Florida.

Well now we get word that one turned up in Chicago, in the airport no less. It must have missed it’s flight and gotten lost in the terminal. A maintenance worker discovered the alligator, which is about a foot long, on Friday in Terminal 3.

With all this attention to the scaly reptiles I thought I’d see just how often they turn up in the news. Quite a lot it seems and going back a number of years.

A couple of really interesting articles that caught my eye were a bit older. This first one concerns a 66 year old retiree that may have a new career as an alligator wrestler.

In some crazy alternate universe called “Florida,” a mild-mannered retiree dived into a pond and fought a 7-foot gator that was making off with his terrier—and the retiree won. Seems 66-year-old Steve Gustafson was trimming an oak tree at his home in a retirement community when he heard what the Orlando Sentinel calls a “blood curdling yelp.” He turned and saw the gator snatch his dog from the shore of a nearby pond. Gustafson then kind of wigged out.

“For whatever reason, I don’t know, I just yelled, ‘You’re not going to get her!’ and just leaped on the gator—just like you do some silly belly flop in a pool,” he recalls. “The only difference was I landed on top of a gator.” They wrestled, and Gustafson won. At one point, he tossed the gator deeper into the pond to enable him and little Bounce to make it to shore. Both are fine. The gator, however, was later trapped and is bound for Gustafson’s mantel.

For years it’s been said that there are alligators in the sewer in New York City. It’s debunked periodically as Urban Myth but in searching for interesting Alligator stories I found this blurb–
Hold the phone: it’s not a croc; there are alligators in the New York City sewer
system—at least in Queens. The alleged urban legend turned out to be the real
thing when Joyce Hackett pulled over to find a group of passers-by and a cop
staring, agog, at a 2-foot-long young alligator tucked beneath a car at an
intersection curb. “It was like the urban legend washes up from the sewer and
says, ‘What the heck am I doing here?’ and hides under a Datsun,” Hackett
quipped to the New York Times.