Mixed Feelings

As many of you know, we spent the weekend in Pittsburg NH, Colebrook NH and Canaan VT for the Moose Festival. This has always been one of our favorites.

This year had a damper put on it, in more ways than one.

The Friday cruise, parade and street fair in Colebrook was great, as usual. And we ran into the Peacocks, from Dresden (where men are men and sheep are nervous). We also had the opportunity to visit with old friends and cruise Moose Alley to see the moosie-moosies (I almost hit one, but thanks to Jim Peacock's timely warning, it was avoided).

But the show in Canaan on Saturday had its problems, which we had never experienced at their show before.

Sure, the weather was not great - drizzly and cold in the early morning, then just plain cold the rest of the day. But the weather is not what put a damper on things.

Although the show was very well organized, as usual, it did not take long for the problems to show up. First, one entrant, after the voting had already begun, was forced to change his number because of a "clerical error", mistake #1. This certainly cost him some votes, but the organizers chose to ignore that, which was mistake #2.

And a group of about a half dozen locals was seen voting in a bloc - and they only voted for other locals. The Moose Festival has tried hard to eliminate this problem, using split ballots, but this crew figured a way around that, to tilt the results in 5 classes. Because of this, several top cars lost out to a few clunkers - literally.

To top things off, the announcer had a small cheapie amp, so anyone more than 50 feet from him could not hear a word he was saying. And when he announced the winners, he only announced the registration numbers - not the make/model, and not the owners, as had been the norm at this show.

For a kicker, he then asked the winners to go get their cars and drive by to pick up their trophies. Many winners were several hundred feet away, and had a hard time driving through the crowd. So the ceremony lasted forever as we all stood around in the raw, cold mountain wind.

In previous years, they would place a colored ribbon on the winners' cars, and ask them to drive up close to the grandstand in advance of the ceremony so they could drive by for their trophy. That saved a lot of time.

All in all, while we had a good time with old friends, and fun at the fair, eating moose burgers and enjoying all the contests, it seems the organizers this year were new at this, and the old crew did not pass on the methods that worked. I sincerely hope they get it together for next year, because there was just too much that went bad this year.

Meanwhile, we have decided to once again float on over to Shaw's Ridge again this year. Though Frank gets all worked up into a lather, he does put on a pretty good show. If you have not been to this show before, it would be a good idea to expect something a bit different - Frank's show is more of an ART show than a car show. Think of it as a giant cruise-in, where the classes are almost strictly by decade and trophies are awarded. If you understand this, you will have a great time.

And I have it on good authority that the weather will be near perfect for the cruises tomorrow evening. Our fave is C.H.O.P. in Cumberland, and we'll be there as usual. This cruise has never disappointed us. But wherever you choose to cruise, have a good time!

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