Pancakes, pancakes, pancakes!
Last Saturday, 9 February 2008 it was pancakes galore at the 50th annual Kiwanis Club Pancake Karnival in Fargo, North Dakota, USA. The event is held every year by the club to raise money for various charities.
Kristian had the pleasure of personally attending their attempt to break the record of ‘most pancakes made in 8 hours’.
‘Winter’ in Fargo truly deserves the name what with blizzards and arctic temperatures, without a coat, even things like going from the Hotel to your car parked in front of the door were frosty challenges!
Arday Ardayfio, one of the clubs organisers of the Karnival, and the driving force behind the record attempt did a good job in planning the event and working out all the logistics required.
Despite earlier worries of low attendance due to a small blizzard on Saturday morning and continuous sub zero temperatures of around -25ºC altogether 10,198 people attended the Karnival.
All pancakes were made by members of the Kiwanis Club Fargo together with over 400 volunteers who all worked in shifts on the different stations to make batter, grill pancakes, serve pancakes, sausages and drinks, collect rubbish or to manage the large numbers of visitors that kept coming in.
Although the record attempt lasted only from 7am to 3pm, the serving continued as in all previous years until 7pm.
The excitement built up the closer we got to 3 pm, with Arday announcing the running total every half hour and was repeatedly asking all visitors to eat even more pancakes.
However, at 2.15pm, with still another 45 minutes to go Kristian was able to announce that the Kiwanis had set a new record.
When the counting finally ended, the club, together with their volunteers, had made a whooping total of 34,818 pancakes.
Kristian confirmed that “this number is impressive also because the Club insisted that the pancakes were counted as they were served, not as they were made. All the pancakes counted were actually served to and consumed by the visitors.”
All in all, 192 bottles of sugar-free syrup, 936 bottles of regular syrup, 1,800 pounds (816 kg) of sausage, 10,000 cartons of milk, 11,000 cartons of orange juice and 34,818 pancakes (officials stopped counting after 3 pm) were served during the event.
Despite the Arctic temperatures, Kristian was thrilled to be at the attempt and will miss all the friendly people whom he met in Fargo: “If there are any more (hopefully summer time) record attempts in Fargo in the future I would love to go back there.”
18 February 2008