Meeting smile after smile

[austin_dern]

Just going to jump ahead in time here to last Friday. I'll get back to August shortly. I need to catch the moment while it's fresh and timely though.

We went to the Silver Bells in the City after-dark parade and tree-lighting ceremony and all that. We do that most years now. It's traditionally held on the coldest day of the winter, the Friday before Thanksgiving. This time it was a warm day, about 70 degrees by 6 pm when things started. It didn't stay warm.

I've got some pictures on my humor blog because goodness but it was that funny. About an hour into the parade it began to drizzle. We knew there was a chance. Then it started to rain. People around us started clearing out and we could feel not so bad about opening up our umbrellas. There'd been warnings of the chance of rain from 7:45; so it was a half-hour early.

Then the skies really opened up, lightning flashed, winds kicked way up. Parade marchers started being parade runners instead. The trucks pulling floats went from the normal sedate pace to gunning it. Then, after a couple clowns tried to go on waving to and hugging kids, the squall really broke out. We heard someone shouting about how everything was cancelled. The rain got penetrating. bunny_hugger's umbrella turned inside-out. Unknown to us the Silver Bells social media person posted to Facebook and Twitter that all outdoor events were cancelled and people should ``Please get to safety''. We ran for it.

Ran for where? No idea. Anywhere would do. We were near City Hall and raced for that. bunny_hugger saw a lost single shoe. We got separated a couple times, but somehow, never seriously. A hundred thousand people or so were at the event and we evacuated in short order and somehow the two of us didn't lose one another.

So this was the first time we'd seen or heard of Silver Bells getting smashed like this in severe weather. It even knocked over the topper on the state tree. After the squall moved through and the rain was back to a steady, reasonably normal drizzle we got photos of that, and of some people in reindeer costumes photographing the aftermath. And since everything seemed to be over we went back to the car to drive home. It took about a half-hour to get out of the parking garage, although with the hindsight that there were something like a hundred thousand people downtown all trying to get out that really isn't so bad a wait. And we could blast the car's heater on our poor, soaked, saturated feet.

Trivia: In early 1812 the United States Senate killed a $450,000 appropriation to repair six Navy frigates, though the work had already begun and half the allocation already been spent. Source: Union 1812: The Americans Who Fought The Second War of Independence, A J Langguth.

Currently Reading: The Bestseller Code: Anatomy of the Blockbuster Novel, Jodie Archer, Matthew L Jockers.

PS: The End 2016 Mathematics A To Z: Image, featuring a photograph of our pet rabbit for absolutely no justifiable reason. You're welcome.

Comments

[moxie_man]

I've had this happen to me once in the past. Except it was in July at the Moxie Festival, Lisbon Falls, Maine, so little danger of hypothermia. I was participating in the parade as part of the The New England Moxie Congress contingent, members of which own various Moxie vehicles, including a reproduction Horsemobile. Our group was close to the middle of the line of parade participants. Just as we finished the 1.5 mile long parade route, a thunderstorm passed over the town. And not just any thunderstorm. This one had downpours like what I use to encounter storm chasing and "core punching" through a storm. The sort of storm where it's raining so hard, you turn off your useless windshield wipers. The sort of storm that makes you think, you're standing under a waterfall. It only last 15 minutes or so, but by the time it let up enough to be able to see more than 15 ft again, the parade and festival were over. There were no participants behind us, no watchers. All of the festival booths were empty. Said festival attracts close to 50,000 people each year.

As I walked back to my car, several blocks away, I could feel the water squishing in my shoes. And I laughed. What else could one do? When I got to my car, I took my shoes off and dumped-them out, just like in a cartoon, and laughed some more.

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

I did the exact same thing with my shoes!

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

My boots were still damp two days later!

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Yes, this is precisely the kind of storm we got and it was staggering. And magnificent. ... And no danger of hypothermia here, since the weather was uncannily warm. It was about 70 degrees when the parade started and even afterwards it only dropped to about 60. bunny_hugger was worried she'd worn too much. I figured it would get chillier the later we got after sunset, but not like that.

And yes, we did a lot of laughing. Many people did. There's nothing else to do when it gets that brilliantly soaked.