charlene winfred

There’s a little place in New Mexico called Pie Town. Every year, they have a pie festival.

(Didn’t see that one coming did you?)

All sorts of things went on at the pie festival, but the highlight had to be its pie eating contest. My exposure to pie eating contests is limited only to the barf-o-rama scenes in the movie Stand By Me, so I came to this one (with Brian, and met up with Flemming, Dan and Dan’s wife Amy) sincerely hoping that what people say about not believing everything you see on tv, held true.

Thankfully, the contest was a barrel of laughs, and no barfs.

(edit: I have it on good authority that the lady in the above picture, with the long blonde hair leaning to the left, was this year’s Pie Queen)

What it did have in Hollywood-production scale, was a brilliant crowd. The hooting, hollering, good-natured taunts, cheers, random advice and everything else meant that I and lots of other people were cracking up from the start of the contest, right to the end. This was a crowd that knew what it was there for!

If you’ve never been to/heard of them, the basis of pie eating contests, as you can imagine, is simple: (s)he who eats the most pies, wins.

So what happens when you get a three way tie at the end of the first round?

A pie-off!

Where contestants get passionately stuck into it…

…but only one emerges victorious.

He was from out of state too.

Gotta love it.

Another great New Mexico experience!