Abe's Amble and the Illinois State Fair

Where have you gone Rod Blagojevich? The Governor's Tent just isn't the same without your luxuriously coiffed do. Hurry back!

Okay, so we made the trek up to Springfield, Illinois for three things this weekend:

1. To find and scan Simpson and Storch family photos for the ancestry deal. Check.
2. To attend, if only for a minute, the Illinois State Fair. It's a fair. There's livestock, country music, a butter cow, walking tacos and mullets and Springer guests galore. Why wouldn't I go? Check.
3. To cheer Mama Tiern (aka Betty, Elizabeth or Julia's mom), who happens to be 72, as she "race walked" Abe's Amble. What's Abe's Amble you ask? It's a 10K done in the name of our sixteenth and Springfield-forever interred president. Yeah, the guy on the penny and the even much more sought after fiver. And for those of you who may NOT be Canadian, European or pretty much every other country in the world who uses measurements of tens instead of the super awesome foot/inch/mile/pound system (or FIMP), a 6.2 mile "race walk." If you don't know what .2 equals, then just shut up. Cheer Mama Tiern...Check.

In fact, we were able to kill two birds with one stone as the Abe's Amble start/finish line was near the race track and the Avenue of Flags at the State Fairgrounds. Julia and MT got up at 5 in the a.m. for a 7:30 a.m. start. 2 1/2 hours? I'm not sure either. Brother Simpson and I left the house at 7:30 and made our way to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial at Oakridge Cemetery, which was the halfway point of the Amble to wait for Betty. Oh, here comes Betty now in the pink wife-beater and white hat...

...and here as she passes us and mocks us for not race walking...

Once she passed, we jumped in the car - yep, no race walking or any other sort of activity that requires more than five continuous steps strung together that early in the morn on a weekend day. We jumped in the car and headed to the fairgrounds for Betty's glorious finish.

See the little elfin figure in the pink on the right in the distance above the clapping hands of an adoring son? That's Betty.

And as we waited for Betty, this guy came running by with his t-shirt of mockery...

It's not funny, dude. I realize that you are old and just the very fact that you are running, makes you better than me. That's not the type of thing to throw in a person's face.

And here's Betty getting ever closer...

...and closer yet...

...and throws up her arms in victory...a very mocking gesture towards her children and her person, as I am affectionately known.

And Betty crosses the finish line in 1:26:41 or something like that. She came in first in her age group and won a major award, which was yet another shovelful of dirt on top of the already heaping pile atop my grave.

And it is for this reason, that I hate this woman. She beat runners. Yes, she was race walking and she beat runners...a bunch of them. So using my extremely awesome powers of deductive reasoning...if Betty beat runners and I wasn't even running, Betty would hand me my ass on a platter. Thus, I lose to Betty, who, might I remind you, is 72. I am not 72. I'm not even 42. And I would lose to this lady. Thus, I hate her. That works for me.

In a more serious and less self-loathing tone, we're proud of you Betty. If I make it to 72, which in my family is questionable at best, I'll run a marathon in your honor. Probably not, but who's going to hold me to it?

One final shot of an extremely satisfied Betty mocking us for our laziness and love of a McDonald's sausage and egg McMuffin with no cheese and a folded egg. Whatever lady. Enjoy your dry toast and two sips of coffee that you allot yourself per day.

Anyway, what's a visit to the Illinois State Fair without a few shots of the fairgrounds?

We stopped here to see the world-famous butter cow, a cow and other items, sculpted in good ole-fashioned butter. Unfortunately, the building was too humid and the glass on the butter cow case had too much condensation, thus obstructing our view of the buttery sculpture joy.

Just to give you an idea, here's a photo of the 2009 butter cow, complete with Honest Abe taking a rest from splitting logs and reading a printed version of Dave's blog. Yeah, he had a time machine. I heard about it on NPR today, so it's true. Plus, didn't you see Back to the Future with the guy who played Alex P. Keaton?

 The next three photos are dedicated to BZoll, my pork-loving friend. Enjoy Beez.

Brother Simpson commandeers the Pork Patrol golf cart and whisks us off to this awesome place...

 ...where we got to get up close and personal with Mr. Pork Rind!

Isn't he some pig? I didn't see Charlotte around, so I'm thinking that maybe Spider Pig here just might have consumed her along with his piggy gruel. Oh well, I want to eat his bacon. Is that bad? Mmmmm...bacon...

And a final bonus photo...

Really? Is this warning necessary? I think it's borderline offensive. It implies that the folks whose livelihood revolves around raising these animals are complete morons. It's almost as bad as the "Warning: Contents are HOT!" messages on coffee cups at McDonald's. But I guess someone, at some point, was VERY dumb, thus the sign was warranted. What a not-so-smart and litigious society we've become. Sigh.

That's it for our whirlwind tour of the Illinois State Fair. Jealous?