Running of the Balls

One last thing from the Labor Day weekend. Park City does a fund raiser for the local cancer center. They do this with the Running of the Balls. People "sponsor" 2000 tennis balls for about $5 each. They set up a course down the hill on Main Street. The course is two long pipes of 3" PVC pipe. First, people dressed in white with red sashes start running down the street from the balls.



Then they release the 2000 balls. Some small set of them seem to get a good head start and come zipping down the hill.



Then more and more balls start rolling down.



Eventually jillions of them come rolling down.



Once the mass of balls comes down, they start catching along the side of the pipes. They let the kids get involved by letting them heard the slow balls down the hill.



The winner is the first ball across the finish line. Someone (not us) got two free tickets on Delta, anywhere in the U.S..

Perhaps the real winner was Jasper. Every morning he and I go up the hill behind our house and play fetch with a tennis ball. He went with us to the running of the balls and somehow managed to watch 2000 tennis balls roll by without stealing any. It was fun watching his head go back and forth as he kept watching them go past. We were astounded at how well he behaved. Add into this the fact that any event in Park City is always full of dogs. Jasper did well with the 1000+ people and 100+ dogs wandering around. One dog was a golden retriever with a captured tennis ball in his mouth. The guy described it as an unfortunate victim.

Local silliness, but quite fun. It was followed by a parade that was not worth the bits it would have required to take digital photographs.