A fairly daunting task

Young Chang

When you shade your eyes to glimpse the top of La Grande Wheel on

Friday, when you’re marveling at how tall and big everything is and

wondering just when this microcosm of fun sprouted in your own backyard,

also remember this:

The Orange County Fair folds up into crates.

Via five forklifts, four cranes, countless trailers, two miles of

electrical cords and nine generators, it unfolds onto the Orange County

Fairgrounds in Costa Mesa every year for 17 days before packing up again

and baring the grounds until the next time July rolls around.

Yes, even that enormous wheel you can spot from the end of the Costa

Mesa Freeway detaches into small chunks and fits onto 16 trailers.

“It’s almost like constructing a small city,” said Steve Beazley,

deputy general manager of the fair.

A city that travels, that is, and whose tenants have made up an Orange

County tradition for more than 100 years.

“There’s a busy kind of hum on the fairgrounds,” said Becky

Bailey-Findley, general manager of the fair, last week. “The setup begins

about the first of June, and it starts to take on a different feel

outside.”

Exactly 59 fair rides, more than 40 game booths and countless food

vendors moved onto the Orange County Fairgrounds in recent weeks for the

109th annual Orange County Fair, which runs Friday through July 29 for an

anticipated 800,000-plus crowd.

Pregnant pigs, miniature citrus groves and even works of fine art made

their way in too, transforming the once vacant lot -- used on the

weekends for the Orange County Market Place -- into a fleeting 17 days of

tradition come alive.

“The fair is the one event every year that is kind of like a grand

reunion for the county and Southern California,” Bailey-Findley said. “We

want it to be very festive and exhibit this feeling of summertime fun.”

Themed “Twist & Shout -- Celebrate Citrus & Sun,” this year’s features

include an “I Love Lucy” exhibit celebrating the show’s 50th anniversary,

two new rides, juice contests, citrus exhibits, Kids Park activities,

collections and memorabilia displays and newborn animals in the livestock

area.

Beazley added that work crews have been working “fast and furious” to

set up the rides and booths.

La Grande Wheel, a replica of the Millennium Wheel from Paris, would

easily be this quasi-city’s largest tenant. At 160 feet tall, more than

15 stories high, with 36 gondolas and more than 50,000 lights, a seat on

this ride guarantees a view as far as Long Beach on a clear, blue day.

“This ride is so smooth you won’t even believe it,” said Tony Fiore,

corporate marketing director of Ray Cammack Shows.

Fiore and his crews brought in the Grande Wheel two weeks ago using a

Liebherr Crane purchased in Germany for its 18-foot reaching capacity.

The 58 other fair rides, 40 game booths, 12 food vendors and more than

500 crew members associated with Ray Cammack Shows were also brought in

last week. Thirty-five trailers in which to rest and sleep, a barber shop

and a “general store” accompanied them to ensure employees feel at home

even while away from home.

On Tuesday, amid a sea of partly assembled rides, a partly wet

Euroslide and hundreds of thousands of lights that didn’t yet quite

twinkle in the afternoon light, Fiore said he was confident the show

would be running by Friday.

Walkie-talkie in hand and smiling steady, he shared a fair veteran’s

insights.

“Three days to us is a lot of time,” he said.