MISQUAH — The State Fair ride sheet at the Daybreak Café began as one piece of yellow legal paper taped beside the register.

It is now three pages.

Twenty-seven people have written their names on it for trips to St. Paul between Thursday and Labor Day. Nine drivers have volunteered vehicles. Four people have offered to drive but not park. Two have offered to park but not drive, an arrangement Pat Reinholt has not attempted to understand.

The system started after three customers discovered last Thursday that they had independently planned to drive alone to the same dairy show. Reinholt put a legal pad by the register and wrote STATE FAIR RIDES across the top. By breakfast Friday it needed a second sheet.

The Tuesday group left at 6 a.m. this morning.

A second Tuesday group left at 8:15 after somebody wrote NOT THE 6 A.M. GROUP in the margin and three people moved their names to it.

“The six o’clock people know who they are,” Reinholt said. “The eight-fifteen people also know who they are, mostly because they are still eating at seven.”

The point of the sheet is not merely gasoline. The point is that nobody from Misquah should arrive at the State Fair and discover everybody else came on a different day.

It also ensures that if somebody wants to leave at three, somebody in the car will want to leave at six.

Eunice Dahlquist has added a small pencil column labeled RETURN EXPECTATION. Nobody is required to fill it out. Everybody has an opinion about it.

The sheet comes down Labor Day. Reinholt says she will keep it one week in case somebody needs to remember who has whose cooler.

There is already a note on the bottom asking whether the same system could be used for the Spelldown.

The answer is no.