When attending fun events like conventions or car races or festivals, it's best to go with a clear goal in mind. Not only will you have a better time, but you'll have a better time than most of the people around you.

You see, most people attend conventions or car races or festivals with only the vague plan of "having fun", figuring they can work out the details after they pass through the gates. These people end up wasting hours and dollars trying to "wing it". By the time they leave, all they have to show for their winging is a tacky souvenir t-shirt, a belly full of fried food, and an unshakable feeling of dissatisfaction.

The best way to avoid that fate (especially the tacky souvenir t-shirt) is to have a clear goal in mind.

For example, if one is attending Comic-Con, one might say, "I plan to photograph a minimum of thirty caped crusaders." Not only is the goal measurable, but it's achievable, since there won't be a shortage of cape-wearing attendees. To make it more challenging (and more satisfying as a result), one might increase the specificity of the goal by making a Comic-Con photo checklist.

Or if one is attending a car race in a metropolitan area, one might say, "I plan to drink beer until the cars stand still and the buildings go speeding by." While this goal doesn't state a specific number of beers, the likelihood that the necessary quantity of beer will be on tap to achieve the goal is extremely high.

Those are two hypothetical examples. Let's take a look at an actual case study - this weekend's Gilroy Garlic Festival.

Like most people, I could have attended with the hazy notion of "eating lots of garlic", but that felt too ambiguous, so I set a clearly defined goal: to eat at least three garlic items. I know, it wasn't a very creative goal, but in all honesty, I wasn't feeling very garlicky yesterday.

Armed with my goal, I attended the festival with a sense of purpose. After surveying the food booths, I picked my first item - beer-battered garlic fries ($5). They were delicious appetizers.

From there, I ventured over to the famous Gourmet Alley and ate a garlic sausage sandwich ($5). Both items had been heavy on garlic and I was nearly over my clove limit, but I still had one item to go.

I was just about to give up hope when I spotted the booth offering free garlic ice cream. The line stretched for a hundred feet, but I endured the wait and the heat to eat two cones of cold garlic goodness.

As a reward for achieving my goal, I watched the festival's first professional chef cooking competition, which featured four prominent Bay Area chefs competing for a prize of $5,000 and 1,000 pounds of garlic. Just so it's written somewhere, Tony Baker, the executive chef of Montrio Bistro in Monterey, won the competition. (We might have to dine there the next time we're in the area.)

While watching people prepare improvised dishes might not seem like the most exciting thing in the world, it certainly beats watching cars (or buildings) racing around in loops.

Anyway, the point is that my festival experience was better because I had a goal in mind beforehand. At least I think it was better. I might have to attend the festival next year with the only aim of "eating lots of garlic" or "having fun" to compare and confirm.