Empire state of mind

I really do enjoy being at alpaca shows once we’re there at a given event, all setup and actually doing our thing. Not only is showing alpacas perhaps the easiest marketing exposure one can get but the opportunities to hang out with friends and network with other breeders, both new and experienced alike, are really unmatched. The stuff on either side of the show I have to say I’m not so fond of though. The travel to and from the venue and especially the packing up at the end of a long weekend is undeniably a complete and utter pain in the ass. Sorry. I always fantasize about how great it would be to just walk out of the last class, hand the lead line to someone and say “I’m done baby, have fun packing up all of our stuff and we’ll see you at home,” like some obnoxious alpaca-breeding diva. Probably not in this lifetime though. Plus, anyone that lives like that is usually an insufferable nit wit and I’ve got enough marks against me as it is.

This past weekend we were at the Empire Extravaganza in Syracuse, a show which has produced some of our most memorable results over the years. I also seem to remember waking up a time or two when staying at the motel adjacent to the fairgrounds with some hellacious headaches. I of course blame my friends (that means you Badger) and the delicious Guinness(es) on draught for those past physical ailments. I was an innocent, I swear.

This year’s Empire show for us was an animal of a different sort altogether though. For one, with the economy not exactly lighting the world on fire — news flash, I know — the show was considerably smaller than in prior years (just a mouse’s hair over 400 huacayas). That didn’t necessarily equate to easier competition though, just more of the top animals crammed into fewer classes. The other big difference for us from years past was that as with the previous weekend at the Vermont show we also had our sons, Sam and Max, along for the ride and playing integral parts in the show team. That has made a huge difference over the past two weeks. I don’t think we have ever set up as quickly for a show as we did this past Friday. By 3:30 that afternoon things were so under control that Sammy and I had already made a run to get food for lunch an hour or so earlier (insert Ode to Wegmans here: why the heck don’t we have supermarkets like that?) and then checked us into our hotel which was a solid 20 minutes away in Liverpool, NY. By the time our buddies at Tripping Gnome arrived from Maine around 5:30 or so we were officially goofing off and were able to help them unload quickly too.

Saturday and Sunday of course brought full days of action in the show ring though with a bit of a twist. Unable to show in front of judge Jude Anderson because of a prior business relationship, we had agreed with TGF ahead of time that we would just trade off: they would, whenever possible, take all of our boys in front of Jude in ring #1 and we would in turn show the vast majority of their females in front of the other judge, Jill MacLeod, in ring #2. With Jen, Sam, myself, Ryen Munro and his daughter Isabella (Ursula, as a member of the judging fraternity, doesn’t go in the ring) all handling, we had most of the roster of 33 critters covered. Yes, two farms brought that many animals. We really are that numb. Many many thanks to all of the other folks that helped us out of jams (“Hey you! Yeah you…wanna hold an alpaca?”) over the course of the show with a special bow to Ann Young, Bob Regier, Ed Bratton, and Ronny Miller for bailing us out on those occasions when we couldn’t spare a handler of our own to actually go into the ring itself. We couldn’t have done it without you guys! While I’ll touch more on individual results later, suffice it to say we all came home happy, particularly Sam who was on the lead line of three Championship winning animals. I think we’ve got him solidly hooked on this whole show thing now.

One of the more hilarious and, it must be said ingenious, aspects of the weekend was the egg and spoon race held on Sunday afternoon. Our friend Scott Young came up with the idea of using it to raise funds for the Empire Alpaca Association by allowing people to nominate other breeders and an alpaca of their choosing to race through the obstacle course (while balancing an egg in a spoon in one hand) for the cost of $15. The human/alpaca combo to either get farthest or complete the entire course in the fastest time without dropping their egg would win half of the total pot. Kind of a cool concept. Granted I probably thought it was a lot cooler before I was nominated myself! If you were nominated but didn’t want to participate — and to my knowledge no one wimped out — that was fine but you would then have had to pay an additional $15 to get out of it. Needless to say you should never underestimate the attraction of humiliating your friends in public and I think the EAA was at least a couple of hundred bucks wealthier at the end of the day! Alas, my moment of egg and spoon fame was not meant to be as I failed to even get past the darn entry gate without dropping my egg. I was sure I could hear my older sibling wisecracking about a lack of fine motor coordination from hundreds of miles away. Is that what Howard Cosell meant by the agony of defeat? While my shell didn’t break I still don’t think I’ll be looking to make a living off of egg and spoon races anytime soon.