Small town experiences

Yesterday we went to a blueberry pie eating contest in the local park of our little town. This was a real contest, featuring world championship eaters, a couple thousand dollars worth of prize money, and about 150 fresh blueberry pies. The stands were packed with fans, locals, and curious onlookers... seriously, in a town of 1500, there were close to 1000 people in attendance. This is no small thing!

This contest was actually sanctioned by the International Federation of Competitive Eating and featured several globally ranked professional eaters. These people have a history of setting records by eating, oh, 80 chicken nuggets in 5 minutes. Or 65 hard boiled eggs in less than 7 minutes. Or 97 Krystal burgers in 8 minutes.

The winner of the contest, Patrick Bertoletti, won by eating 9.17lbs of blueberry pie in 8 minutes. He did this without using his hands, otherwise I'm sure it would have been much more... and to be honest, they ran out of pies and had to cut the contest short. It was, for me, a surreal experience. Sitting among hundreds of people shouting for their favorite eater, hands waving, music blasting... the excitement was palpable. I'm having a hard time describing it simply because I've never seen anything like it before and was a little surprised to be there in the first place.

Dave was the one to convince me to go. Only a five minute walk away from our house, and right before dinner time, I just didn't think watching a bunch of guys stuff their faces with pie was all that interesting, but I have to say: I'd go again! It was fun and impressive. Just one of those things you don't see very many times in your life.

Of course we had talked about the contest and what it might be like and what to expect. So once we arrived at the stands and sat down I asked Annabelle if she knew what was going to happen. With wide eyes, she nodded, cupped her hands and pantomimed shovelling food into her mouth while smacking her lips and saying, "Yum! Yum! Yum!"

My favorite part was right before the contest started. After thirty minutes of playing games with Annabelle while saving our seats and waiting through all the announcements and introductions the crowd started to shout, in unison while beating their fists in the air, "Eat! Eat! Eat! Eat!" It caught Annabelle's attention and she stood up on the bench and started to throw her fist in the air, and shouted what she thought they were saying: "Bean! Bean! Bean! Bean!" Hilarious.