Look, In the Sky: It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s a Sky Ride Gondola Painted Like a Cow!

Last year, the owners of the State Fair Skyride experimented with some fancy painting on four of their gondolas.

One of the enclosed cabs was painted with cow spots, another like flames, one like a pronto pup and one with psychedelic waves. These special cars, interspersed amongst the dozens of regular cars, created some buzz, with people pointing at them as the passed overhead, and some waiting several extras minutes in line to get one of the cool cars.

I thought this year they might expand the painted line-up, but apparently the painter was very busy, so we’ve got only those four wacky originals.

Skyride workers said the cow is the biggest hit. Some of the ticket takers tell people they have to say “Moo” before they get in. And some riders do.

“Today we had some people really disappointed that they didn’t get the flames car,” said one attendant.

Cool skyride fact: They operate a professional weather station on the Heritage Square side of the ride, so they have advance warning of winds and stormy conditions that might force the ride to close. You can never be too careful with a cow and flames passing above thousands.

Jason Schulbert, who’s worked at the Skyride for five years (it was actually built in 1964) watched a colorful front heading for the fair about noon today, but said it appeared to be breaking up. I’m still gonna keep the umbrella handy.

Jason said they’ve got a very sophisticated wind gauge mounted on one of the giant poles halfway between the Skyride stations. “That would be a really cool photo,” he said.

I’ll let you be the judge.

I’m writing each of these items as I come across them at the fair, but I consider each to be part of a bigger whole. So you can follow along by reading all of my State Fair posts when you click here