Red Rally/State Fair

Hi again. I realise its been a little while since I last posted but nothing too interesting has happened in the intervening time and I presume most people don't want to hear about what I'm studying in my modules and researching for my masters project. Anyway this post covers the last couple of days. Hit the jump to read more.



An annual tradition of UNM is the red rally. This happens on the thursday before the game against NMSU (New Mexico State University) which is on today. To motivate the football team to do well the previous week a giant Aggie (their mascot) effigy is constructed on the center of the sports field. The entire university then gathers around in red and they then set fire to it whilst everyone cheers. Also the university votes on who is the craziest lobo (our mascot). This year it was won by a guy dressed up in a deadpool mask and wearing a kilt. What then follows is a short disco while the Aggie continues to burn and until the fire marshalls tell everyone to leave.

The Aggie pre-lit

The Aggie burning

Yesterday afternoon a group of us headed off to the state fair just up the road. This was what seemed to be a celebration american culture: deep fried food, fair grounds and farming. It was a lot of fun we rode on the ferris wheel which gave us a brilliant view over the entire fair and the surrounding landscape. This was the only ride that we did though as they were all very expensive costing about $5 each for a short ride. The amount of food available was phenomenal the number of things you could buy on a stick would make even C.M.O.T Dibbler feel inadequate. There was also many varieties of deep fried food it was almost unbelievable.  To name but a few you could get the following fried for you:

• Hot dogs
• Oreos
• Cheesecake
• Poptarts
• Cereal
• Moon Pies 
• Candy Bars
• Beer (non-alcoholic unfortunately)

Fried Cheesecake

Fried Beer sign

Between the group of us we tried the hot dogs, oreos and cheesecake. All were good the cheese in the cheesecake had melted giving an interesting texture to each bit. The hot dog also came with pineapple which was surprisingly good. This wasn't the oddest thing we ate though. For dinner me and Matt had shared one of the hotdogs and also one of the strangest burgers I have ever had. The actual burger itself was pretty standard topped with bacon and cheese but that was were the normality ended. Instead of having a bun around the burger there were two grilled frosted donuts. And as if it couldn't get any weirder the top donut had a balsamic glaze on top of it. Despite this it was surprisingly good although probably ridiculously unhealthy but we thought we had to try it. After dinner we continued around the fair looking at more exhibits and watched a show on Native American dancing (video below).

Bacon Cheese Donut Burger with Balsamic glaze

Fried Hawaiian Pineapple Dog

Carved eagle statue

Ferris wheel

Matt learnt about dairy today

Anyway this concludes this post hopefully I will write again soon but what with work picking up I'm not quite sure when I will get the chance. I hope you enjoyed this post.

Thanks for reading  

Sam