Marched in Machester, NH’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade with the Light Brigade yesterday. We managed to convince the parade staff to let us use our car as a courtesy vehicle. Glenn was supposed to hand out water, but Cathy and I removed the pile of coats that had made themselves at homein our “hatchback” just prior to stepping off, we discovered it was just too damn cold (27 degrees plus wind chill) to think about water.

Luckily we were in Divsion 2, so we only had to huddle together for an hour. The colorguard (all five of us) were hovering around SUVs to block the wind. Unfortunately the pickings started getting slim as the parade staff started ordering folks to remove their cars from the set up area.

When it was time to remove my jacket, I thanked the Lord and Lady, as I felt much warmer than I thought I would be. This lasted all of five minutes when the Gods apparently high-tailed it for warmer surroundings. My feet and face were both numb, and my fingers weren’t too far behind them. It’s very difficult to spin a flag with frozen fingers. Damn near impossible to do when it’s windy, too.

I suppose it could’ve been worse. We could’ve been the group of baton twirlers who had to strip down to what was basically a leotard and pantyhose (and not even the thick kind!). Glenn said he overheard someone from that group call out “chicken’s done!” *laughs*