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Monday, July 29, 2013

July 29th

Hi, it’s Christina –
 

That’s it, I give up! It has got to be a sign that I am not meant to go to the Balloon Festival. We were caught in a monsoon!


 

After the concert, which was pretty dang good, I headed back to the van to get rid of my chair. My hubby, our friend and her boyfriend, his son, her sons and my daughter were about five minutes behind me. (We had the better parking spot, so we took all the chairs, blankets and coolers.) Anyway, when I see the group coming, I hop out of the van and start taking the chairs they were carrying over the fence so they wouldn’t have to carry them all the way around, and I toss them in the trunk. As I’m doing this it starts to rain a little.


My girlfriend, no longer burdened with a chair, has made it to my van. It starts raining a little harder. That’s when everyone decides they are going to take refuge in my van until the storm passes. I have fifteen chairs, two coolers, all the bags filled with the free-bees they give you at the festival, plus the bags of snacks we brought from home; and now eight people are expected to ride out the storm in the van as well. YIKES!

 


 

We decide the chairs have been wet before, they can get wet again, and it was perfectly fine for coolers to be out in the rain, so we pull everything water safe out of the trunk. Now it’s raining hard. Our crew starts running to the car. One by one they make it. At this point, it’s pouring and everyone is soaked to the bone.


I do a head count; two in the front, three in the middle (it’s a two-seater with a consul between the seats), and three in the trunk. I’m short one kid! My youngest daughter did not make it back. Apparently she had gone off with her cousin to find a friend. I manage to get a hold of her, her and her cousin are taking shelter under one of the tents. My sister-in-law and two of her kids are under another tent, and my in-laws have safely made it to a third tent. The family is riding out the storm in four separate locations. My concern is for the fourteen and thirteen year old who have no adult with them.


I want to go and find them, but they can’t tell me exactly where they are, and the rain is coming down in sheets. My baby’s out there cold and wet and scared; I’m starting to panic. She was fine. Cold and wet, yes, but much more annoyed than scared. She was going to stay put until the rain let up.


Forty-five minutes or so later, the rain lets up considerably. They all find each other and make it back to the bus that gets them to their car. We, on the other hand, are blocked in by, not one, but two balloon trucks which are stuck rim deep in the mud. There were cars and trucks stuck all over the lot where we were parked, everyone waiting for the backhoe to come around and pull them out. We decide to take a chance and see if we can get out. I make everyone pile out of the car so it has less weight. We survey the area to find a small patch of higher ground. That was the spot my husband was to shoot for; he was not to stop until he reached it. The rest of us would walk to the van and get in there. With my hubby’s fancy maneuvering and all hands on van to push the second wheels started to spin, he was able to reach the Promised Land.


Getting our friends back to where their car was parked was another ordeal but half an hour later, we managed to get them safely to their car. Another Balloon Festival weather disaster, another time the balloon launch gets cancelled; yeah, I’m really thinking I’m not supposed to go to these things.

 
Oh goodness, I just saw the time. We are supposed to be leaving for the beach in less than an hour and I don’t have anything done yet. Bye, have a great day. We’ll do the writing challenges tomorrow.

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