Now that the County Fair is here I'm looking forward to some hot air balloon competition at the annual Skyfest rally. Maybe crew with someone new. Maybe run into friends from out of town. Or so I thought.

Pay no attention to the cover page of today's edition of WaukeshaNOW paper. It was wrong. "THURSDAY  The sky will be adorned with color during the SKY FEST HOT AIR BALLOON COMPETITION at the Waukesha County Expo Center." I wish! Fourteen years of ballooning at the fair was put on hold this year as no corporate sponsors were located.

Before learning of it's fate, I wondered how the weather would affect Skyfest this year. The weather's been pretty poor for ballooning lately, and this week's forecast looked like it had a lot of possible thunderstorms. Indeed, the first day of the fair saw a severe storm. Might not have had a lot of flight time anyway.

So we made the best of opening day at the fair by watching the tractor pulls - the lawn tractor pulls - for a few hours. The rain cooled things off but it also made a mess of the track. The competition got a late start because the mud had to be scraped off and the track smoothed out. I've never seen the competition before and was pretty amazed at some of the machines. Was surprised to see 8 year olds steer modified 10 hp, 900 lb machines 130 or more feet while dragging a weighted sled.

Stayed long enough, and when the expensive-looking dragster style tractors still hadn't run by 10:30 we knew it was time to leave. We got our dollar's worth.