As I’ve written about before, I’m a member of the Keller CERT.  While our primary mission is disaster preparedness, we also do community service.  Generally this service is in furtherance of the mission of preparedness, but we also do other things just to stay busy.  Which is why we are often called upon to help out by staffing barricades during parades.  Some of us have had some traffic control training (primary rule: never turn your back on traffic) and even those who haven’t can at least stand at a barricade and tell people to go elsewhere. 

Yesterday afternoon was the annual Lion’s Club parade, and I ended up on the barricade on Bear Creek at Pate Orr.  Which means that I got to inconvenience a whole lot of people who hadn’t gotten the message about the parade.  I know it was published in the paper on Friday, but I’m guessing a lot of people must not be reading the paper, given the number who were surprised to find the barricade.

Most people took it in stride, though, especially those who live in the area, since they already know alternate routes to get around the parade.  But I did have a few who tried to drive around the barricade and keep going West on Bear Creek.  Or they did so until I flagged them down and made them turn back. 

The problem was that from their vantage point it looks like nothing is going on and that the barricade shouldn’t be there.  Further, it was probably confusing because some East-bound traffic was being allowed through (mainly people departing the school or from neighborhoods after the parade had passed).  But what they can’t see from there is where the tail of the parade is once it’s left Bear Creek Intermediate.  That tail can take up to 30 minutes from its departure to make its way down to Elm.  We couldn’t take the barricades down on Bear Creek until the parade had completed its trip to Elm, so to a lot of people it just looked like the road was closed for no reason.

Fortunately, no one got too upset and no one degenerated into yelling (at least at my location), although I did get one exasperated eye-roll from a woman in a small SUV. 

For those who are interested (and for future reference), here’s the parade route:

As you can see from the map, there are various ways in and out of almost all the neighborhoods that were affected, it just required some thinking to work around the route.  And for those that may be annoyed by the road closures, just be glad that they’re no longer marching down Keller Parkway like they used to do a few years ago.  That would have been a real mess.