Soggy Day

• Fortunately the day began beautifully. I took a nice walk and then prepared to head out to the Great Miami River Days Festival in Hamilton, Ohio. I staffed a booth at the festival for TriState Habitat for Humanity.
• Unfortunately right before I arrived at the event site, it started to rain really hard.
• Fortunately I had my GPS device with me to direct me to the event site.
• Unfortunately I missed a turn and could not drive in the direction the GPS wanted to send me because several roads were blocked off because of the festival.
• Fortunately I eventually found the event site entrance.
• Unfortunately I had no idea where I was going once I got into the festival area and my windows started to fog up as the rain came down harder and made it really difficult to see.
• Fortunately I made my way back to the booth area.
• Unfortunately the booth numbers had been painted on the grass behind each booth and the rain had washed the paint away.
• Fortunately I found some people setting up their booths to ask where the Habitat booth might be located.
• Unfortunately none of the people knew how the booths were numbered and then started to complain to me how they had to move to three different booths in the pouring rain because the event organizers were not so organized.
• Fortunately I found a very nice woman who was selling crafts and jewelry who asked me if I needed help.
• Unfortunately when I walked over her tent to talk with her I bumped her tent with my umbrella and water poured all over her display table and onto the wares she was selling.
• Fortunately I found a really nice man to talk to and who let me stand under the tent in his booth while it rained even harder than it had been raining.
• Unfortunately this very nice man was there to teach children about beavers and otters through story telling and decided to try out his presentation on me.
• Fortunately a man drove up on a golf cart and was able to leave the beaver man behind in the hopes of getting directions to the Habitat booth.
• Unfortunately the man didn't have a clue what was going on and told me just to ask others in the booths. I had already done this and this is how I ended up learning about beavers.
• Fortunately the man on the golf cart had a cell phone and called one of the event organizers.
• Unfortunately when the organizer came over to where I was, he was really not all that organized and had no clue where the Habitat booth might be.
• Fortunately he invited me to hop into his golf cart and we rode down the row of booths trying to search for the Habitat booth.
• Unfortunately someone must have taken the sign off our assigned booth and took it for their own.
• Fortunately the event organizer told me that Habitat could use the booth that they were going to use for the information booth.
• Unfortunately it was at the far end from where I had parked.
• Fortunately I was able to find a parking space a little closer to our new booth.
• Unfortunately it was very muddy where I had to park.
• Fortunately the rain let up.
• Unfortunately about a thousand event information brochures that had been left under the "information" tent were soaked.
• Fortunately we were able to easily remove the big signs that read "information" on them.
• Unfortunately we didn't remove them before people started coming up to us and asking us where their booths were thinking that we were the information booth.
• Fortunately we were right on the end of the row of booths.
• Unfortunately were right next to the "World's Largest Pinball Machine" arcade game. The game was staffed by a woman whose voice could have caused paint to peel off the wall. She talked through a speaker system non-stop for nine hours trying to coax people to play her stupid game.
• Fortunately the rain let up for a few hours.
• Unfortunately we got more rain later in the day.
• Fortunately the Habitat booth is near the portable toilets.
• Unfortunately the Habitat booth is near the portable toilets.
• Fortunately the long day is nearly over and I can rest for the evening.
• Unfortunately I've got to go back to the festival tomorrow and staff the booth for another seven hours.

 

Thanks for being a part of my journey!