This weekend was a hell of a lot of fun, but also pretty exhausting. It’s Tuesday and I’m still beat.

Friday evening, Jenn and I went down to The Bite of Salem to help out on their fireworks show. Apparently one of the previous shows we had done wouldn’t qualify for our pyrotechnician license application because the show was all multi-shot boxes rather than individual mortars, so we had to get another show in that had mortars.

Traffic was terrible, and we got there later than we hoped, but it was a good show and a lot of fun. Met a bunch of cool new people on that crew, some of whom I recognized from the pyro training course we took last year.

Saturday we went with Tif and Stu to the Washington County Fair to check things out. Admission this year was free so they could boost attendance, and it seemed to have worked because it was pretty packed. We walked around, saw some animals, ate some fair food (the whole reason I go to the fair involves some complex logic surrounding funnel cake), and watched a very cool demonstration by the Washington County Sheriff’s Office on their K-9 patrol unit. That was actually really slick - showing how highly trained the dogs are and such.

The fair took a lot out of me. There wasn’t a lot of shade, and there was a lot of walking around, so by the time we got home that night I was absolutely beat. We ate and went to bed by about 11:00p in anticipation of leaving for the beach around 10:00a the next morning from our place.

I think I woke up around 7:00a the next morning and promptly rolled over and went back to sleep. Maybe 9:15a I woke up again and realized that Stu and Tif were supposed to be there in 45 minutes so we could go. We rolled out of bed and started getting things together when I got a message that they, too, were running late. Fine.

Made it to Seaside by lunchtime. Walked around to the various shops (nothing new there) and visited more than our fair share of candy stores. Of course, visited the Seaside Candyman and bought some stuff there (how can you not?).

After we did all that (and ate) we rented a four-person surrey to pedal around the town from Wheel Fun Rentals.

Pedaling a surrey around is not as easy as you might think.

See, on any modern bike, there’s sort of a transmission, where you can start out on a low gear and spead up as needed. Not these bad boys - direct drive. That makes starting out a little hard since there’s a lot of weight you have to get moving. Those smiles you see on the surrey riders? Grimaces of pain.

Now, that said, we had a frickin’ blast on the thing. Stu tried to pick up a passing volleyball player (which got him punched by the other three folks on the cart simultaneously) and we made a fantastic last-minute tour through the Shilo Inn parking lot that was more like surrey rally racing than anything else.

We had the rental for an hour and I think we returned it after 45 minutes. We were all worn out and it was time to move on.

We stopped on the way home at the nearby factory outlet mall, where I purchased nothing, and then took forever to get home due to some pretty terrible traffic and an accident blocking the only route. Another late night, then back to work Monday.

Like I said, I’m exhausted today. Here’s hoping I can make up some of that sleep soon.