Send in the cows!

I've been in Macon for 3 Cherry Blossom Festivals now and this was my first time getting up early enough to attend the ribbon-cutting ceremony. It was about as exciting as I expected it would be with a bunch of officials and special festival guests sitting up on the stage being trotted out one after the other. Even sponsors, such as the Nextel guy, were invited to get up and speak. Yawn. After 30 minutes of introductions, a few words by the mayor and others, the ceremonial ribbon was cut. The best part of the ceremony was listening to members of the crowd talk about how excited and star-struck they were to see CNN anchor Nancy Grace up on stage. I also have never seen all the infamous pink coats in person and it was a real treat seeing all of the men decked out in their pink garb, though someone obviously forgot to give Bibb Commission Chairman Charlie Bishop (far right in the photo) the memo that today is St. Patty's Day because he was wearing a really bright blue shirt under that pink coat, with no green to be seen. I'm sending the word out now Charlie: Put that blue shirt back in the closet and pull out the green. (Plus, that blue just really doesn't match your pink - not that green really would either, but at least people would understand why you were wearing it - it's festive.)
After the ceremony, I wondered around, caught the tigers taking a nap, ate my first festival food (gotta love those corndogs), and went in search of the mobile dairy classroom for the cow-milking demonstrations. For those of you who don’t know me, I find cows inexplicably cute. I have some on my desk at work and little cows can even be found decorating the tables and kitchen of my apartment. Needless to say, I have been very excited ever since I learned there was going to be dairy classroom with milking demonstrations. But those cows where absolutely nowhere to be found. I walked around the park several times trying to find them thinking that cows are fairly big enough that they should stand out on their own. They weren’t where the map said they would be near the round building, and they weren’t anywhere else. When I finally asked where the classroom was, I was told the cows had not shown up yet. What a letdown. I guess I’ll have to wait another day to see the cows, if they ever show up.