Bow Before My Pasty Cranium!!!

I had to rush off so fast on the morning of my shearing that I couldn't find my real before pic so here I present for you, in all its glory, my shearing ready form. I also forgot to spellcheck, creating a fantastic new weight loss location known as the paring lot (sounds sort of painful though)

I got down to the event around 9:40 and helped to set up the gear. I cursed the existence of wireless networking, threw the notebook in the trunk with my trademark disregard for safety and grabbed my camera. While we waited for people to start arriving we got everything sorted out, lost power, got power back, couldn't find a till and then found a till and had a canopy try to blow away.

Once all that was sorted out it was time to go. We got a few people out of the way as I waited for my Rainy specific onlookers to land. I was spotted by a team consisting of some associates, the Bard and Jodster who, as you can see above, had noticed me and were headed my way. I had my pre-shear interrogation by Jodster the videographer and after finding a standby photographer, my lovely and photo handy wife, they plopped me in the chair and began mowing away. I have to say I was relieved to see actual hair clippers on site. For those not familiar, Home Depot is a large renovation and do-it yourself type retailer. There was serious concern that they would be employing their cutting devices, such as lawnmowers, hedge clippers and the like.

My contributors, being the creative souls the were, had put more conditions on the monies collected than I think I've ever seen before. The first condition was from my parents that their contribution required a photograph of Rainy Pete and Rainy Dad with a fairly impressive and radically unusual hairstyle. I chose a mohawk and we had to pause in mid shear to take care of this. Another condition came in the form of my new, very short lived, hair colour which is most obvious in the before picture. My employer put up a large amount of money to see me keep the beard. Apparently he wanted to see what I would look like as a professional wrestler, so ladies and gentlemen I will herefore be known as "The Pasty Avenger"

After the remaining shearing by the Bard it was on to the official shaving portion of the day. I had words with him over the quality of his clipping job as he seemed to have missed a spot (though this seemed quite intentional as can be seen by his reaction).

Once we had that rectified it was time to move on. I got my head lathered up like a dessert dish and they proceeded to scrape the remaining hair from my scalp, and in one instance the remaining scalp from my scalp too. Talk about give till it hurts!!

With that out of the way it was back to being the event photographer. I had some fun with my wandering nose (see the bottom) to the point that our official Music Man tried to make a grab for it. I felt bad that he didn't have his own and loaned him mine for a bit. The rest of the day went like a party at a sheep shearing plant. We enjoyed the tunes and the stunt grilling by Walker and managed to make a helluva mess including a bucket of hair, a cup of scalp swill and a fairly shaggy parking lot. There was even a disheveled looking bird in a box that had been rescued from the lumberyard.

There were many memorable moments across the day, but none as powerful as a moment before 12:00. Two girls were out with their Dad and he figured he would grab them burgers at the barbecue. They had a look around and figured out what the event was and asked their father if they could take part. It turns out that their grandmother had died not a week previous because of cancer. They wanted their beautiful long brown hair taken off so that somebody could have wigs during their treatment. He couldn't say no and everybody around had to dry their eyes or try repeatedly to swallow a lumps in their throats that just wouldn't go away. The cheers were thunderous and almost as exuberant as the grins on these two girls' faces.

All in all it was a rousing success. I managed to scrape together over $600 and the whole event made well over $5,000 for cancer research (I'll get an accurate figure later on), as well as a fair collection of ponytail hair for making wigs. Thanks to all those that contributed both locals and bloggers alike, and if you are looking for a fun way to raise some coins for a charity, this is a great, hilarious way to do it. Cheering people, loud music and funny hairstyles, what else could you ask for entertainment and aid.

As a side note, if you have trouble getting people to commit to it, do it in weather when the temperature is well over 30C (86F) plus extreme humidity. It was a refreshing and invigorating feeling to have the wind whistle across my scalp instead of just through my ears as usual.

Well I'm off to rub my head some more. I can't decide if my hand or my head is having more fun with it. My daughter just giggles wildly she touches it so maybe she is.

Mmmmm grungy water

Hair and food, luckily separated some geography.

The Bard had as much fun with it as I did!