Memories: Trip to Pie Town

In the newspaper a couple of days ago I saw an article about a contact-tracing app from NMT. It reminded me of my first days there. With on-campus housing and dining, plenty of student activities, a good library, and rigorous studies, I could be on-campus for long stretches of time.

And then I saw it was 3/14 or Pi(e) Day, as it's known by some, after the infinite irrational number π which starts off as 3.1415.... 

This reminded me of my trip to the Pie Festival in Pie Town, NM, with my roommates Ryan and Will. I keep thinking it happened on Pi(e) Day, because of pie and because the weather was spring-ish. But it was actually in the fall. If my camera's date is correct it was on 9/10/11! 

I think I found out about it through Will, who drove me down there with a friend of his. It was a pleasant drive, neither too short nor too long. One of them had pointed out that a town we passed through, Magdalena, was so-named because you could the face of a woman (Mary Magdalene) on a hill, and we drove past it at just the right time of day that I think I saw it.

Will had entered a pie, shown below as #86. My notes say that it was named:

The Rusty Galactic Blueberry Pie. (Rusty, b/c it had been a year since Will made one; Galactic, because the MacGuyver paperclip turned out looking like a galaxy.) 

Ryan, an expert in the kitchen who made soufflé one time (if I remember correctly), may have baked one too. It might be in these images (contest entries were in the firehouse), about which I wrote:

There were four categories (from furthest to closest): Other (chocolate was a favorite), nuts, fruit, and youth.

Some other creative pies I saw were:

• An apple and chile pie
• An upside-down Reese's cup pie
• A cake pie

I was with a group of people who helped fill water balloons before the festivities.

There were also booths open with crafts for sale, like miniatures, award-winning jewelry, and boomerangs.

There was a balloon toss

Sack races and three-legged races and egg races 

And, of course, pie-eating contests! (My notes say the rules were that kids couldn't use their hands.)

We had a little bit of inclement weather later in the day (hail, looks like), so some events moved to indoors or under pavilions

We left in the afternoon to return to our studies. On the way back Will and I listened to some music he brought along. At the house we listened to his vinyl records -- many of which I listen to today but as computer files -- like Paul Simon and Dire Straits, as well as some he found through swing-dancing. I think Will also told me about watching The Wizard of Oz to Pink Floyd, which I've been meaning to try, as well as re-listen to Alice's Restaurant. One of the ones we heard on the way back was Brett Dennen's Loverboy, which I really liked and should grab a copy sometime.

I have had a lot of great roommates, but especially Ryan and Will, who both knew how to keep busy and have fun doing it. Will was good about inviting me along to things, like running from one end of town to another with an American flag on 9/11, or helping him with a project at a local mission, or showing me his latest invention of a Dilbert tie fresh from the freezer. (Otherwise I probably would have just spent the time online or reading or something.)