EricHolsinger.com

I went to the 7th Annual North American Wife Carrying Championship at Sunday River Ski Resort, in Bethel, Maine. I shot photos of the event for the MaineToday.com Seen photoblog. I took my family with me and we had a blast.

First of all, the event itself is a riot. The race is a team sprint over a short obstacle course. The team consists of a man and a woman and one person carries the other. The man usually carries the woman, but I guess that is not required. The obstacles were a couple of logs and a water pit.

The prizes for the winners are pretty cool. You get your wife’s weight in beer, pepsi, granola bars etc. Plus, the winners got five times the wife’s weight in cash. I assume it’s in dollars not quarters or pennies or something. There is also up to $1000 allowance for travel to the international wife carrying championships.

The race is a spectacle, but it’s all part of a bigger Fall Festival. The day we were there, it was beautiful. The mountains were all in Autumn glory and the day was probably one of the last really warm days we’ll have this year. There were vendors, cookouts, and kids games sponsored by a local high school.

Allow for travel time

Unfortunately, I had also planned on shooting the Raging Bulls Championship play-offs at Fitzpatrick Stadium in Portland, Maine, the same day. I had not accounted for the amount of traffic that would be out “leaf peeping” on a Saturday. I should have known better, but I didn’t. Consequently, we got hung up in long lines of traffic on the way South and didn’t make it to the game.