Baking away in Fort Wayne

Megan and I had the chance to attend the various Three Rivers Festival events this weekend--specifically Saturday. A highlight of the day was watching members of the Red Hat club (a group of 55+ year old women who get together on weekends wearing red hats and purple clothes and descend upon various stores at Glenbrook Square, our shopping mall . . . it looks even wierder than it sounds) ride with the local Harley Davidson appreciation chapter here in Fort Wayne in the kickoff parade. My father in law remarked--"I don't know if there's a better way to keep those bikers under control than by having an old lady riding along behind them." He was rewarded with an eye roll from my mother in law, and a chuckle from me. Some of those old ladies (no disrespect intended) actually looked pretty tough. One of them, instead of wearing a red hat, had a red bandana tied around her head. I immediately identified her as Tony's grandmother.

This parade is known as the Three Rivers Invitational, and is the same one that some of you may have heard me talk about in previous years. Usually, I'm running around like a madman trying to get everything in order for the parade for the two weeks before, then on the day of I had to get up around o'dark forty and listen to cheerleaders complain about the fact that we didn't make enough small and medium-sized t-shirts. Then, I sit in the back of a pickup truck for hours, passing out water and drinks, after which I ride in the parade in the back of the truck, hunched down because we're only allowed 35 people on the float, and I would disqualify us as the 36th person. After that is the nerve-wracking drive back to campus, where I watch the float that we painstakingly built over the last 48 hours disintegrate owing to the bumps and potholes of Fort Wayne's streets, and the speedy driving of the man in the pickup truck. We would then tear the float down, put away the artificial flowers for use next year, and I would head home to sleep for four or five hours.

It sounds like as much fun as it was.

This year, I actually missed seeing the USF float entirely, and instead was treated to old women riding around on the backs of Harley Davidson motorcycles. Sometimes it pays to move up in the company.

BillG