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Entry Date
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Nick Name
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Location
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Saturday, September 26, 2020
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LJ
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South Dakota
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Entry 168 of 178 |
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I have never seen a more poorly run weigh off in my life than today at The Great Downtown Pumpkin Festival in Rapid City, SD. The site crew had three drops. they dropped Plains and Rocky Mountain Region GPC Representative, Andy Corbin's 11?? lb pumpkin twice from 8-10 inches before getting it on the scale, cracking the pumpkin to leakage. The next dropped pumpkin up was mine, 963 lb Howard Dill winning pumpkin, dropped onto the scale from a height of about two feet leaving two cracks through into the middle and surface damage from hitting the fork lift on the way down. The site crew was not done yet, we had two broken pumpkin necks that got weighed with the pumpkin, indicating it was site staff that broke it. I don't think there was even going to be a HD award, because there was never any ballots passed out to the contestants like in other years. After no more ceremony than hollering at the top of their lungs your name and to come get your ribbon was completed with the handing out of only 5 places of site ribbons and top three cash, I asked about the HD award and was told "Oh, ah, you won that. After a three stooges routine pointing fingers, I was told they had no HD plaque nor ribbon. I don't think they intended to have HD until they dropped my, only orange pumpkin at the weigh off, and was trying to cover for that??? It doesn't end there. Once the fork lift accidently pushed the scale platform nearly a foot, the answer was just pick up the platform and put it back in the general area, no relevel involved. After dropping Andy's pumpkin twice, and mine once, directly onto the platform, no rebalance or releveling of the scale. I looked, and truly could not find any type of certification sticker on any of the equipment which appears to be the exact same scale system used at that event for years. I really question the charterability of this weigh off site. Old unsafe equipment and unexperienced, untrain.ed site personell, This was a true debacle. The true bummer was I got no sorry, if feel bad, how's your mother or shit. They acted as though nothing at all happened and did not even acknowledge that they damaged the pumpkins. Accidents can happen, but most are avoidable and this certainly should have been. I don't know what to think, all that work, time, money, and pride all down the shitter in one big avoidable drop by the site weigh off crew. There were only 11 AG's there, 25 percent drop rate, I think a new site record. I have video of them dropping my pumpkin but don't know how/where to ;post online, send me an email and send you a copy.
I got home and put sulfer in the cracks and silicon to fill in, here is before pics of the damage followed by "fixed" damage.
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