Meaning, is it played out? Is it yesterday's news? Can we extinct it now that we've gamely suffered through it for the past 39 years? Can we Roe v. Wade it? If the Rotary had video monitors to chart the ducks' progress down the Fall River, or a melty section of the course where the unfortunate ducks got gooed if they came too close to the edges, it might be marginally interesting. But to sit around waiting for a loudspeaker update every 10 minutes while people mill about looking forlornly at the water seems antiquated. Could there be an instant announcement of the winner with scanned UPC codes instead of numbers? Is the whole thing just a silly form of juvenile legalized gambling anyway, with a 1/10,000 chance of winning? The remaining prizes beyond the five major prizes are kind of like "winning" a chance to put your head in a septic tank. They are generally gift certificates to places you never shop or eat, and activities you rarely engage in. Why not just allow people to pick from a list if they finish in 50th through 300th places until the prizes are exhausted? Why not just admit, while this does bring some people downtown on a shoulder-season weekend, it mostly benefits the Wheel Bar, as people are not in the mood to stick around and shop outside the "core" start and finish lines after they learn what the duck race actually is. And forcing a duck to wander around on a poop pad in the hot sun is just cruel.
Of course, outsiders suggesting tired events be eliminated or spruced up in Estes Park is ananthema to the 90-year-olds who spend their entire lives preparing for these events. And far be it from me to say it would be simpler and less wasteful to just extort money from the participating businesses and hand it directly to the beneficiaries. To say anything other than "Estes Park is the best place in the whole wide world, and everything everyone decides to do and make an annual event of because it was oddball or enthusiastically received by its six original organizers at the time is wonderful and cannot be improved upon" is to invite being told to go elsewhere. And, with the Duck Race at least, it provides a timeframe for unrecognized volunteers to go around the week before and pick up the garbage around local businesses that their Rotary and Chamber business owners are too lazy to pick up themselves, because they are out kibbitzing and selling $22 raffle ducks to folks who have a 99/100 chance of winning nothing, and a 0.99/100 chance of "winning" a prize they will immediately regift to their toothless Ozark cousins in Arkansas.
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