The virus that is Country Thunder descended on our little town again on Thursday. To be fair, I really shouldn’t call it a virus (not only becuase that is disrespectful to viruses either), since it really does pump a ton of money into the local economy. While the event is in town for those four days every single restaraunt in town is filled to capacity most all the time, every store that sells food, water, liquor, ice, sunscreen, etc. is frequented by hundreds of people who are all to willing to part with their money. I suppose it really is a good thing.
The real problem with the event, in my eyes, is that it runs 24 hours a day for those four days. There are not performers on stage all the time, but the event is set up as a four-day campout type thing. If you have paid for camping you get a wristband that lets you come and go as you please over the four days. If you just buy tickets for a single day you get a wristband that lets you come and go as you please for a single day. The astronomical prices that they charge for refreshments at the event leads the people to leave a couple of times to go get them at better prices, then return to the show. It is all good in theory.
The problem is that a lot of the people who are camping at the event (since they are allowed to have alcohol within their RV’s) wake up horribly hungover, then do the ‘hair of the dog’ thing to take the edge off. After they have finished yesterday’s alcohol supply, they drive into town to buy today’s alcohol supply. I am sure these are all seasoned drunks that can hold their liquor pretty well, but the last thing a town this size needs is a bunch of half drunk cowboys heading to town for more beer.
Thankfully there have not been any accidents resulting from this so far. I fear that there will be though. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but the festival has a twenty year lease on the venue and the odds will have to eventually catch up. Of course not everyone that attends the festival drinks liquor, many who do drink probably wouldn’t even consider driving after drinking, but there is gonna be that one guy…
My only point here is to say that there should be a rule about coming and going from the event. If you are camping there you should be able to come and go during the early morning hours, maybe even up to the time that the music starts playing. If you are not camping there you should not be able to enter until just before the music starts, then once you leave you can’t come back in (again, to be fair, they might have this stipulation already for people who only have day passes, I didn’t really research this extensively).
I have only noticed a couple of people coming into the store that had obviously been drinking, they did smell of alcohol yet seemed pretty coherent. The majority of the fans show up early in the morning and buy a lot of beer, one group bought 3 30packs of budweiser! They did have the four day wristbands though, so I can assume that they are gonna sleep it off out there. As it should be. I guess the folks out there are handling it pretty well.
I would just hate to see this financial windfall for the community destroyed by the one jack-ass that tries to drive home drunk and kills a minivan full of children. Note that I think a lot of people are driving home drunk, just none of them has yet to cause an accident. When that does happen (it will) there will be statewide news coverage, if not nationwide, since this event is also held in Wisconsin.
Upon further reflection about this issue I have found that I kind of like the way that they are handling it. The people who buy the four day camping passes are the ones that are likely to get horribly drunk every day of the event, they are also the ones that can sleep it off right there. The people who buy the day passes are more likely to be people/families that just want to see one particular band and that’s it. So, in the grand scheme of things, the day pass people are likely in no worse condition than the people who leave major sporting events, hell probably in better condition than most of them, since it is damn hot outside (94 fahrenheit today), and they are walking around all day. You would simply be amazed at the price a drunk will pay for a pint of water, after a few beers, on a very hot day.
…Yet…There will be that jack-ass…Eventually.
• Check out this Fun Test that my mother sent me. It is so deceptively simple that you may miss a couple.
In My last post, which did not display properly for the first couple of days due to missing html tags (so the top all looked the same if you had clicked to it again, but it would have been several paragraphs longer). I talked about the game Chuck, but I failed to link to the actual page, so there is your link.
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As I mentioned in the other post, the first and fourth events in the game I do not know how to do well. I can chuck the guy over 100meters nearly every time in the first event, and can get about 40 of 50 stars in the last event. The second and third events are the ones that I am really good at. The photo you see here is my best yet on the cannon stage.
The third event is also pretty simple since there is an actual goal. The fourth event you have to get all fifty stars to get a good score, so I understand that one at least. The first event, however, I really don’t know what is good on that one. My scores are in the 100-110meter range, I don’t see a way to improve on that score, and it doesn’t really tell you how far the best players are getting. Try that first event, let me know how you do, and tell me if you get an “incredible” dialogue when you make the throw. I am currently wondering how I can shave out 300,000 more points to get onto the leaderboard.