It was like wandering through a desert, with only oases of milk and sugar to keep me alive.

Hold on, let me catch you up on the narrative. Each year in their home city of Battle Creek, Michigan, Kellogg’s and Post temporally set their cereal aisle rivalry aside to put on an annual Cereal City Festival, complete with entertainment, vendors, and most importantly, unlimited free cereal and Pop-Tarts!

As a Michigan native and cereal zealot, I make the pilgrimage every year. While most just come for a free breakfast, I bop and bounce around the streets like an excited anthropomorphized pinball, annoying all passerby with my unexpected enthusiasm for cereal.

But back to the desert of thinly disguised desserts. While last year’s Cereal City Festival was overcast, drizzly, and cold, Cereal City Festival 2016 promised nothing but blue skies and temperatures so sweltering that I nearly melted into my leather seats and became a horrifying half-man, half-seat monster.

They would have called me “Helter Swelter” on the news.

In spite of the warbling heat, my eagerness never wavered. A long stretch of beautiful Battle Creek road was closed off for the event, and before I even made it to the Festival proper, I got to snap a photo with Toucan Sam and my favorite cereal mascot of all time: Mr. Julius Pringles.

Ahh, what child doesn’t look back fondly to eating salty, milky bowls of Pringles Cereal?

I was lucky I caught them when I did, because a nearby Mascot Usher™ notified me that Sam and Jules were leaving the premises due to the excessive heat. I don’t blame them—I’ve had my hand stuck in a Pringles can on a hot day before, and that was bad enough. I can’t imagine having to do that awkward pageant queen wave all day while I liquefy inside a massive potato crisp.

The heart of every Cereal City Festival is the line of cereal tents, all flanked by lines of endless picnic tables that just keep coming and coming as if they’re straight line blocks in the world’s easiest game of Tetris.

The tents are where the real magic happens, as patient volunteers—both civilians and Kellogg’s/Post employees—pour bowl after bowl after bowl after (fast forward sixteen boxes) bowl for hungry passerby.

From Honeycomb and Fruity Pebbles to Apple Jacks and Frosted Flakes, every Post or Kellogg’s classic was available this year. There were even some 2016 newcomers like JIF PB&J and Finding Dory, though I was disappointed that Kellogg’s didn’t give us a sneak peek at a new cereal like they did during Cereal City Festivals of yore.

Ralston—everyone’s favorite “wait, they still make cereal?” cereal maker—was there, too. Countless bowls of Ralston Corn Biscuits sat in the sun, consistently overlooked by Froot Loop-enticed children who didn’t know that they were missing out on sweet golden tortilla chips in cereal form. Oh well: more for me.

Even Malt-O-Meal showed up for the party with their Colossal Crunch and Marshmallow Mateys, probably because if there wasn’t some rendition of Cap’n Crunch or Lucky Charms available, there would be a riotous mutiny of cereal fans.

The oddest part of any Cereal City Festival is approaching the various milk maestros to have them pour your milk for you. Getting the right cereal to milk ratio this way is difficult, but it makes every bowl feel like an exercise in teamwork. Despite this, every milk pourer still rejected my attempts at a high-five.

Speaking of milk, only Prairie Farms 2% was available, but like a scene from a heist movie, it was all hauled out in massive crates directly from a truck. Plus, the mountains of plastic milk caps left behind could easily be repurposed as a postmodern art installation.

And how could I forget the Pop-Tarts? Kellogg’s only had Brown Sugar Cinnamon available this year, but I’m not going to complain since they were as free and numerous as skeevy promotional leaflets on the Las Vegas Strip.

I could have taken enough to build a Guinness World Record-breaking “House of Pop-Tart Cards” and I’ll eternally regret not making that my legacy.

Once my stomach swelled, I took a break by admiring the vendor tents and listening to the band play bizarre country twang remixes of The Beatles.

The vendor annex had it all: weirdly vascular cow statues, evangelists from religions I didn’t know existed outside of RPG video games, and even food carts offering all manner of greasy carnival food on the off-chance you weren’t feeling queasy enough already.

I’m proud to say that I stopped at cereal and Pop-Tarts.

Okay fine, I had one sample of pecan coffee cake and I regret nothing. Not even the second coffee cake sample.

Conspicuously absent was the Kellogg’s merchandise tent, which meant I wasn’t able to blow my latest paycheck on overstock Cheez-It shirts from 2012.

However, I was redeemed by scoring the above Cereal Fest shirt. Usually they only give these to volunteers, and I’m just a non-volunteer who has been repeatedly denied by aviator-wearing volunteer captains when asking for a shirt.

This year, though, an endlessly nice volunteer woman listened to my plight and offered me hers. My momma always said not to accept clothes from strangers, but hey: c’ereal la vie.

If you’re reading this, wonderful volunteer lady, I’m sending you virtual fist bumps through my computer screen.

Though I wore my Cerealously shirt all day, I’m not surprised no one recognized me. I did get the chance to talk with many nice Kellogg’s and Post staff workers, though, and they kindly humored me as I babbled between mouthfuls of Mini-Wheats.

Most notable was what the Kellogg’s food safety worker—who was in charge of the whole free cereal smorgasbord—told me about why he loved Cereal City Festival. He wanted me to remember that the Festival was kept alive by three things:

1: Passionate Kellogg’s volunteers

2: Companies working together to give back to the community

3: People who love cereal

And there’s no joke to be made there, because Cereal City Festival is just that: good, crunchy fun. Even though I practically sweated 2% all the way home, it was all for the love of breakfast.

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*For more information on the Battle Creek Cereal City Festival, check out its site here. I look forward to next year’s!

**If you somehow aren’t tired of reading my cereal ramblings, you can try listening to them, too! I recently appeared on CJAD 800 Montreal to talk about the evolution of socioeconomic policy in…just kidding! I talked about cereal! Check out the full interview here.