Festival

This weekend was Its Better in Mentor Days, a weekend festival held by the Mentor, Ohio suburb every year about this time. Its like most such late-summer, early-fall small festivals, serving mostly as a place to ride on cheap portable amusement park rides run by barely showered guys with mullets, or to get food from one of the many grease-filled food vendor trailers lined up near what passes for a midway. A large tent serves as shelter for local businesses and politicians to sell themselves to passersby.

Usually, the easiest way to remember what weekend this particular event is held is to look at the weather forecast for September. Generally, it rains or even snows during that weekend, but this time it was relatively decent, though cold.

Every year there are tens of thousands of such festivals taking up weekends, run by small towns, local curches or even large organisations. The last of them marks the end of summer, something which makes me very sad indeed.

When an SUV isn’t enough …

From CNN Money:

“The new CXT — short for commercial extreme truck and built from the same platform as the heavy-truck maker’s typical tow truck or cement mixer — will be sold starting this week by Navistar’s International Truck & Engine subsidiary.

At 258 inches, or 21-1/2 feet long, the CXT is about 4-1/2 feet longer than the new Hummer H2 pickup, and about 2 inches longer than the F-350 Crew Cab.”