Day 53: Hiker Parade

Hiked 0.0 miles, staying at Auntie's Cottage in Damascus.

After a great nights sleep and a big bowl of cereal I spent the morning wandering around the festival.  Like yesterday there was some live music going on in various places.  The Kelty booth had large tents set up with chairs set up in them and a bunch of hikers that I know including Goatman, Candypants, Mooch and Animal were chilling there chatting away so I joined them for a while.  The morning was rainy and we were all content to relax under a tent roof and people watch.  I did go check out the performance of a clogging team at the pavilion, it was pretty interesting to see and they were quite good.

View of the vendor area from one side of the park

Clogging team performance

After lunch we all headed downtown to line up for the hiker parade.  Many people that thru hiked in previous years come back for trail days and also walk in the parade along with current thru hikers.  Traditionally people watching the parade throw water balloons and shoot water guns at the parade walkers to "wash off" the dirty thru hikers and of course the parade participants respond in kind.  As such the parade can really be described as more of a roving water gun and balloon fight than your typical parade.  Of course the current class of thru hikers takes the brunt of the water balloons.

Lining up for the parade

People line up by class year

Lots of crazy costumes and water gun contraptions

The parade turns onto the main street

Looking back as the parade turns onto the main street

This year did not go quite as smoothly as usual.  Before I talk about the hiker parade let me assure everyone that we are all ok.   We had just turned onto main street and were crossing over the bridge towards downtown when a car plowed through the parade and came to rest about 20 feet behind me.  The old man driving the car had a stroke or heart attack and lost control of the car.  Unfortunately it was at the turn onto Main Street so instead of going across the parade he went down the street in the same direction as the parade and from behind so nobody could see him coming and went right through the bulk of the class of 2013.

Miraculously nobody was fatally wounded.  With how tightly packed people in the parade were many couldn't get out of the way.   Rainbow Bright, a really nice hiker who we have seen off and on a number of times, got pinned under the car as it came to a rest.  Somehow she managed to come out of it with only a broken pinky toe.  Once again the hiking community showed it's incredible support for one another as the car had barely come to a rest when it was already being physically lifted off of Rainbow Bright by everyone around it.

I have to also commend highly the response of the emergency services to the incident.  Within minutes helicopters were already on site to airlift the three people who were in urgent need of care.  With hundreds of people milling about trying to figure out what happened it could have been a nightmare for the EMTs to get to the scene, but the police cleared the roads quickly and handled things exceptionally well for the rest of the day.

I had originally started out walking in the back end of the group when we lined up but had worked my way forward because I saw Donnie and wanted to say hello and catch up with him.  Why Not was in the same boat having seen Shady ahead of her.  If not for that random thing that moved us ahead 20 feet or so we would have been right in the middle of the car's path.  It was very sobering to think about for both of us.
I know this event made front page on at least CNN so I apologize for not getting a message up sooner that we are all ok.  I just didn't want to sit down and write or talk about it right off the bat.  Sorry to have worried anyone that saw the news and didn't hear from me.

As you might imagine the rest of the afternoon was a bit more somber.  Dip'n'sip and I were cooking tonight so we had to get to the grocery store and in the process missed the talent show which was apparently very good.  The winner did an interpretive dance to a Katy Perry song finishing her act by mooning the crowd.  Everyone was doubled over laughing at that apparently.

By evening we had heard that everyone from the parade was ok and people were back in better spirits.  We hung out in Tent City and enjoyed ourselves until well into the morning with a large bonfire and drum circle and a few beverages.