The "Great" New York State Fair Debacle

I was going to watch the Republican Nat'l Convention again on Tuesday, but I ended up going to the Great New York State Fair instead after work. Naturally, the traffic was a zoo going there, but not really so bad considering all the cars. I parked in the most remote part of the Exit 6 parking lot you could imagine.

Anyway, the fair was fun. Got to see some people from work, got to hang out, and so on and so forth and whatnot. Okay, so about 9PM rolls around and I had already had about 4 beers a gyro and some fried dough (I'm on the eat like a fat bastard diet). I'm getting ready to leave, but I'm on the far side of the park. So I begin to head toward the entrance I came in.

(As an aside, I think I have some sort of a learning disability that I was never diagnosed with as a kid. I'm serious. I realize now that I have a lot of trouble with directions, with orienting myself, and with spatial relationships. I'm terrible about which way is north and south. I'm even worse about distances, such as how far away things are. If I see a crowd of people, I have no concept of whether there are 1,000 or 10,000 of them. I simply don't have that part of my brain functioning. You'll start to believe me in a few minutes.)

Okay, so the second I think to myself, "Hey, maybe I should leave" this mass of cowboy hat-wearin' and country music-singin' humanity comes out of this Kenny Chesney concert and starts moving exactly the opposite way I'm going. I feel like a salmon floating upstream. It's like the Battle for Helms Deep in there.

Okay long story short (too late, I know) I finally escape the park and get a ride to what I think is the entrance to my lot. Turns out it's a completely different lot, yet like a friggin' jackass I still walk around for 45 minutes thinking I'm in my correct parking lot. It never occurs to me that I've been all over the goddamn lot 3 times, doubling back, looking around as if my car was right there in front of me but I just wasn't looking at it. Finally, I got the brilliant idea. I said to myself, "Idiot, didn't you get dropped off right dead-center in front of the fair? And aren't you now so far west of the fair that there is no longer any sidewalk?"

I walked what seemed like 10 miles, but was probably closer to 1.5, back to the fair, up the goddamn steps, over the bridges, across the muddy parking lot, only to walk to section 22 where my car was (when I got to the parking lot, I was at section 7). Oh! Did I mention my cell phone was completely dead and I was out of gas?

So, from the moment I left the fair (I looked at my watch, it was 10:01 PM) to the time I pulled in my driveway was 2 hours. It generally takes 15 mins, but I'm a jackass who can't tell the brown lot from the orange lot. Don't tell anyone about it, it's too embarrassing.