Chelsea Fair: 21 August 2013

The Chelsea Fair has always included plenty of livestock, but a relatively new offering at the fair is a barn that features both recently born animals and live births (if the timing is right). When I visited the barn, I found a crowd around the piglets.

Elsewhere, there were rabbits. Lots and lots of rabbits. I found one rabbit that was having an especially relaxing afternoon.

When I was browsing the craft barn, I found a craft with a familiar face on it:

Those are newspaper flowers in a newspaper bag, and as you can see, the newspaper she used for the front of the bag is the front page from the week I was named Chelsea citizen of the year. Kira, the cheerful young Chelsea resident who made that craft, told me she used that page on purpose and asked them to be sure it was visible. Thank you, Kira!

CHS Marching Band: 30 August 2013

As a football fan I tend to highlight the football itself, but there are people beyond the football team working to make Friday nights at Jerry Niehaus Field what they are. One example is the CHS marching band, a (large!) group that works hard to provide a fun soundtrack to every home football game. When I processed the photos from Friday’s game, I realized I had enough band photos for a separate post, so…here they are!

Thanks to the band for all its hard work. And if you haven’t noticed band director Rick Catherman during the band’s halftime performance…well, you’ve been missing out. I have no idea where he gets all that energy!

Chelsea Football vs Lansing Sexton: 30 August 2013

Chelsea football opened its season at home against Lansing Sexton.

Pregame:

Do you see the smile on Coach Lindauer’s face?

That smile means FOOTBALL.

Last year the banner was facing the crowd, so the players were running under a banner that said AESLEHC SGODLLUB. As you can see from the above photo, now the crowd is cheering for the AESLEHC SGODLLUB. #OgSgodllub

The game started with an unusual tactic: After receiving the kickoff and before running a single play, Sexton took a timeout. As we on the sideline were saying we hadn’t seen that and were wondering why on earth a coach would burn a timeout before the first play of the first game, Sexton proceeded to score an 89-yard touchdown. So…first-play timeouts for everyone! You get a timeout! You get a timeout! And YOU get a timeout!

Sexton scored again shortly after its first touchdown, but the game settled down after that and the score stayed 15-0 until late in the second quarter, when Chelsea put together a drive. On a third down deep in Sexton territory, quarterback Scott Crews took off running…

…and scored to cut Sexton’s lead to 15-7.

The weather was generally pleasant most of the evening, but with 8:46 to go in the fourth quarter the officials spotted lightning, forcing the teams to vacate the field to wait for the lightning to go bother someone else (like Dexter or whatever). The rule requires officials to suspend the game until 30 minutes after the last lightning they see. Sometimes lightning moves out of an area quickly and games are resumed before too long; other times lightning sticks around long enough that the coaches decide to finish the game on Saturday. On this strange Friday, neither was true.

We waited…and waited…and waited…and the lightning was making itself at home. The fly in the ointment was this: Sexton had to travel to Chelsea from the Lansing area — about an hour away — and understandably, they weren’t too keen on making a second trip to Chelsea on Saturday. Chelsea was open to waiting as long as necessary to resume the game, so we waited…and waited…and waited some more. Finally (FINALLY), after more than two and a half hours — the length of a typical high school football game — the officials allowed the teams to resume the game. The teams took the field to warm up at 11:32pm.

Most of the crowd had gone home by then, but a dedicated set of fans remained.

As the game resumed, I took a picture of this creature on the Chelsea sideline:

Looks friendly, don’t you think?

Before the delay, Chelsea had been wearing down the very talented but relatively thin Sexton roster. However, the delay gave Sexton plenty of rest, so shortly after the game resumed, Chelsea punted and (a few plays later) Sexton scored. Chelsea added a late touchdown to make it close, but the onside kick went out of bounds, and that was that. The game ended right around midnight.

Next game:
The Chelsea Bulldogs will face Belleville. The game will be at Belleville on Friday at 7pm.

Chelsea Fair: Demolition Derby: 20 August 2013

Tuesday night at the fair is one of three demolition derby nights. The derbies are a longstanding feature of the fair, and they tend to draw large crowds of people like me — people who enjoy watching battered old cars smash into each other. Hey, don’t judge us. It’s FUN!

The Tuesday and Wednesday night derbies are all about being the last car that can move. Or, as the longtime announcer whose tenure ended a couple years ago would have said, “TOTAL DESTRUCTION!” (Does anyone know his name? I grew up listening to his calls of the derbies, but I never knew his name.) As long as your car can move and you’re making contact with another action automobile, you’re in.

In preparation for the derby, everything that isn’t integral to the basic operation of the car is removed. You may note that you can see THROUGH this car:

The trunk lid is still there, but a whole lot of other stuff isn’t. Like the back seat, and the front passenger seat, and…

Sometimes the way cars get…uh…altered in the derby results in some fun collisions:

The back end of the car on the left was like that to some degree before the derby started, so chances are good it had run in a previous year’s derby. Cars of that era are getting hard to find, so more and more cars are being reused if possible. Others appear to be new to the derby:

Sometimes a car gets pushed up on the wall early:

That leaves the unfortunate driver to watch the rest of that heat in a car that (probably) runs fine but can’t move.

Some cars are dedicated to family or friends. This car was for grandma:

Here’s a better look:

Here’s another look at the 3277 car you saw in the second photo:

We took to calling it the ramp. The shape of its back end and and the earlier photo should make clear our reason for choosing that name.

As the cars get more and more battered, they can start losing parts. This car got its bumper hooked onto another car due to a collision:

Officials won’t stop the derby for a lot of loose parts, but when something potentially dangerous like a bumper is loose on the track, they’ll stop everyone so they can clear it. The announcer explained it by saying they’ll stop the derby if there’s a loose part that could potentially poke through a floorboard and injure a driver.

SCENERY BREAK: there was a beautiful moon Tuesday evening.

Okay, back to the vehicular violence.

Radiators seldom fare well in a derby:

For us spectators, some of the enjoyable derby moments happen when someone hits a radiator just right, or when a radiator decides it just can’t go on. There’s a loud POP and a huge cloud of steam (and usually some laughter and cheering from the crowd). Sadly, I don’t have any such photos like that in this set.

As I said, this was the first of three nights of derbies at the fair. I attended all three derbies, so be sure to come back! (Don’t worry: there will be photos of other events, too.)

Chelsea Fair Kids’ Parade: 20 August 2013

Without a doubt, one of the best events in town is the Chelsea Fair. I grew up going to the fair, and I still look forward to fair week every year.

The 76th Chelsea Community Fair kicked off on Tuesday with the kids parade.

The parade ends at the fairgrounds, where there were games for the kids to play. While the kids were waiting for the games to start, a gentleman near me noticed that a certain group of kids had full signal.

One of the games had kids searching through wood shavings for change.

Nearby was a tricycle pull.

There were sack races, too.

The fair continued through Saturday. Stay tuned for a whole bunch of photos from fair week in Chelsea!

Sounds & Sights: 15 August 2013

The final Sounds & Sights of 2013 happened on another beautiful Thursday evening. Now that I think about it, Sounds & Sights had good weather pretty much every week this year! Good job, everyone.

Trio Tumbao was on the library lawn.

CrossBow was by the courthouse. Like the North Creek Fiddlers the previous week, CrossBow had an enthusiastic set of young fans.

Yes, yes, I took photos of CrossBow, too.

Ian Stewart was in the alley.

If you look closely at this next photo, you’ll be able to see me taking the photo.

I know, it’s hard to see. Here’s a closer look:

The Dorkestra was on Middle. There were drums and dancers, too. The drums were left too close to the spectators, so a few kids decided to give them a try.

After a while the drums were taken out of public circulation. Here are the drums being played by the drummers.

Here’s the dancing.

Appleseed Collective was at the Sylvan Courtyard.

The Bluesmatics were at the Glazier Building.

Blue Seven was at the Clocktower Gazebo.

Sounds & Sights is all done for 2013, but it’ll be back next summer. In the meantime, go ahead and explore everything else Chelsea has to offer!

FOOTBALL FOOTBALL FOOTBALL: 15 August 2013

If you know ANYTHING about me, you know I am unwavering in my belief that football season is the REAL most wonderful time of the year. You probably also know I look forward to fall Friday nights all year. Well, you don’t get to Friday nights without a couple weeks of preseason practices, and Chelsea’s practices started last week. I made it out to Thursday’s practice.

Sometimes helmets need a little adjustment. Here, Coach Lindauer — who also happens to be the mayor of this fine city — takes care of that.

Though there has been talk of (finally) installing a new scoreboard, the old Jerry Niehaus Field scoreboard is still there.

Being a football coach is hard work, y’know?

Sounds & Sights: 8 August 2013

Another week, another party downtown. Isosceles was on the library lawn.

Creole du Norde was by the courthouse.

The Sarah Swanson Band was on Middle.

EBB Tide was at the Sylvan building.

The North Creek Fiddlers were at the Glazier building. They had an enthusiastic audience.

They also had Scottish dancers.

The New Blues Street Project was at the clocktower gazebo.

The last Sounds & Sights of 2013 is 6:30-8:30 tonight! Come on out to downtown Chelsea and check it out. You’ll have fun. Trust me.

Monitor BBC: 4 August 2013

The Monitor Base Ball Club of Chelsea welcomed the Union Base Ball Club of Dexter and the Welkin Base Ball Club of Port Huron to town for a three-team Gatling gun match. I know that sounds violent and potentially harmful, but it doesn’t involve any guns. Just three teams playing base ball.

As usual, the captains addressed the cranks before the match.

Port Huron brought a young Japanese team member who had arrived in the country just a week earlier.

Every ballist has a nickname, and his should come as no surprise: Samurai. He seemed to be having a great deal of fun — he had a smile on his face almost every time I spotted him.

One of the fun things about photographing sports is the potential of catching things you won’t see in real time, like the compression of the ball on the bat.

Sports: fun with physics!

Midway through the match I noticed Honest Jon showing a bat to the crowd. It turns out the bat had cracked during his last at-bat.

Hey look! It’s Mike and Bethany!

Okay, enough of that. Back to base ball.

I just can’t take the next picture seriously.

Great timing; not such a great angle. It’s funny, though, so I’m keeping it.

You can go ahead and caption the next photo yourself if you’d like.

(Don’t worry: he was just throwing to first.)

The Welkins were the last to bat, and they found themselves facing a deficit. Samurai decided to don the rally cap in an effort to bring his team back.

Was the rally cap was part of base ball in the 1860s? Let’s pretend it was.

Here’s a look at the final score:

And here are the clubs:

The Monitors’ final home match of 2013 is on Saturday, August 24. Don’t worry: it’s after the fair parade. Go watch the parade and then head to Timbertown to enjoy some base ball! You’ll be glad you did.