The countdown is down to two - as in two days until the start of the Minnesota State Fair.
The fair's website has a time that counts down in days, hours, and minutes if you really are ready for the Great Minnesota Get-Together and want to track it in real-time.
But for Ballpark Café owner Dave Tyson? Well, he has mixed feelings about it.
"The countdown is great, but the countdown lets you know that your summer is coming to an end," say Tyson, probably echoing the thoughts of many a Minnesotan.
"so I, you know, we all love our summers and we know they're short enough," he continues. "So I don't like the countdown. I mean, the countdown is good though. It makes you be ready for it at that time."
Tyson and his crew are putting the finishing touches on the Ballpark Café, which is marking its 27th year located on Underwood Street.
And while the fair's gates don't open until early Thursday morning, there's already plenty of cleanup and prep work going on within the booths and buildings at the fairgrounds.
Brent Walesheck will be flipping steaks at Mancini's and tells WCCO's Susie Jones he wouldn't have it any other way.
"Yeah, I love the fair," says Walesheck. "I've been coming out here since I was a kid. My dad worked up on machinery hill for a lot of years for Reed Sales and Service. I flip steaks and whatever they ask me to do. Whatever they ask me to do, I say yes sir, no sir."
For those working at the fairgrounds, or anyone that just wants to get a peek at all the set-up before the fair opens, you can get a special preview of one of the oldest attractions at the fair.
"Two days before the fair starts, we just invite anybody that wants to come out to come help break in the slide," says Sammy Clifton who helps run the Giant Slide. "So you can ride the slide for free and just help us get it going. So when the fair starts, it's ready to go."
Clifton says the Giant Slide may be more than fifty years old, but it's still solid, swift, and safe.
"We end up putting the canopy on, which takes three or four hours, with the red sides on," Clifton adds. "We wash the slide. There's a lot that goes into it. It's always in good shape. We take very good care of it during the year. There's a lot we do to it."
The five-story slide is smack-dab in the middle of the fairgrounds, where it was first put up in 1969. It was built by Fred Pitroff, who still owns it, and says it's pretty much unchanged over those 56 years.
Running for 12 days starting Thursday, wrapping up on Labor Day, it is one of the nation's largest state fairs, perhaps only rivaled by Texas. USA Today recently named Minnesota's the best in the nation, which in Minnesota is already a foregone conclusion. Sorry Iowa and Wisconsin.
Last year, 1.9 million people traveled through the fairgrounds, the most attendees since a record 2.1 million in 2019.
Of course as part of your fair visit, we hope you'll pay us a visit and watch some of our live broadcasts at the WCCO Radio booth on Carnes and Underwood. As always, we'll have free water powered by Livea so you can fill up water bottles and stay hydrated while you munch on cheese curds or one of the 33 new foods/drinks.
We'll also have a limited number of our 100th Anniversary record albums available for purchase in case you didn't get one in 2024.
See our broadcast calendar here.