Last week the PD put out a request to CERT for volunteers to help with barricades for the KHS homecoming parade. Qualms about whether 9/11 was an appropriate date for a parade aside, a number of us were available to help.

It seemed like an easy enough task:  Put up the barricade when requested, keep people from driving through, then take down the barricade when the parade was over.  What could possibly go wrong?   

Other than dealing with a couple of people who felt they should be important enough for me to move the barricade so they could barge into a PARADE ROUTE, rather than finding an alternate, things were going well. At least until about 30 minutes into the parade, when the sky suddenly became quite threatening. The floodgates let loose a few minutes after that. It was as if Mother Nature was trying to make up the entire rain deficit in one fell swoop. If you imagine having a barrel of cold water poured over your head about once per minute, you would just about approximate the rain’s intensity.

I did learn a few things, though. I learned that my FT 60-R really is waterproof, although the sound gets a bit strange when it’s wet (not that the Skywarn net I was listening to was much good, as they only declared the net in operation AFTER the rain had hit in Keller). My phone and pager seem to be fairly water resistant. They weren’t exposed directly, but they were in my pockets and survived with no ill effects. My wallet, however, is not in the least water resistant. Oh well… I was thinking of getting a new one anyway. Most things in it, like the driver’s license and credit cards are fairly easy to dry, but the mass of receipts in there became a single sodden mass. Getting them apart was akin to separating the remains of an underwater archaeological find. As to why I might still be holding a receipt from a May trip to Minnesota, I have no answer…

Better luck with the next parade, folks.