Saturday, December 3, 2022 (No Play)

Today was parade day. Rain was predicted, but it would be light and the parade would be held “rain or shine” and only canceled for safety concerns like dangerous conditions such as hail or high winds.

The parade staging time began at 8:30 a.m., and every group had to be checked in with the registration booth and in place ready to go by 9:30 a.m.

Calm Before the Storm

I parked near my work and walked the length of the parade route from the finish to the start. It was like a ghost town along the way with me only seeing a smattering of volunteers wearing reflective safety vests, plus some local transients. With the light rain and the cool temperatures, a lot of the groups decided to wait until closer to 9:30 before appearing.

Since last night, I’d been texting back-and-forth with Dan Bliss trying to make arrangements for when and where and how to get his temporary portable net and the club banner to our designated staging spot and have them be supervised. Dan and I met on a side street at his truck and carried the items a few blocks to where we would be waiting. Then I kept and eye on them and Dan moved his truck to the end of the route. (He parked right next to my car actually, at my suggestion.)

Gradually, people began to trickle in and by 9:30, we had about a dozen of our people. Maia had arranged for her and several friends to dress up in pickle outfits—absolutely awesome!

Staging near us were representatives of a local pizza place and also a restaurant.

That’s Dave Allenbaugh on the right, former SCPC webmaster and long-time local pickleball advocate.
Linda W., Linda E., Barb G. and Terry.
Ellen, Maia, Linda E. and Pam (new webmaster) in their festive pickle outfits.

By 9:45 a.m., we were closer to 15 people. A nice surprise, shortly before 10 a.m., Matt Babb and his young son Lucas appeared. They’d been watching World Cup soccer earlier but the game finished and when Matt asked Lucas if he wanted to the parade, Lucas said yes. I loaned them my paddle and ball since I’d start the parade by carrying the banner and wouldn’t need them.

Creeping up to the start, me on the left and Barb on the right.

There is a bit of an issue as our location in the parade ended up behind a truck built in 1935 and that truck had some pretty smelly exhaust. Maia was particularly unhappy about it. When I talked to the block supervisor, she said we could switch in front of the truck, but unfortunately, another supervisor further up the block later switched us back. As we would progress down the actual parade route, we left an abnormally generous space between us and the truck fumes.

Eric goofs around with Linda and Maia, while Dan and Anne (Eric’s wife) supervise the net.
Just about ready in the staging area, I’m flexing the PVC so the banner doesn’t sink to the middle.

While the parade kicked off at 10 a.m., since we were closer to the end than the beginning, it was at least half an hour before we’d step onto the actual parade route lined with people.

Matt B. and Dan B. get a last minute hang of Dan’s net creation just before we step into the parade.

Once we started, the parade progressed quickly.

We demonstrated dinking on the route and Matt’s son Lucas did one of the better jobs getting the ball back over the net!

Partway, Mark Dettle offered to carry the banner and gave me his paddle to use. (Lucas or Matt still had mine.) I told Mark that I was bending the PVC pipe up using my left arm as a fulcrum otherwise the banner would bunch up in the middle. (The pipe needs to be a bit thicker since it was sagging significantly.) At some point, Maia took over for Barb then Maia and Mark would finish out the parade leading the way.

About halfway, Maia and club president Mark Dettle now in the lead with the banner.

As we made our way down the route, people—especially kids—would call out that they have played pickleball. Errant balls made for good crowd interaction too since we had to chance them down and retrieve them from helpful bystanders.

That’s Lucas in red between Mark and Pam! And you can see me and Dave in the back.

Along the route, we got nice shout-outs from the three spaced announcer booths. Later on, we were one of the groups featured on the Downtown Association social media feed.

We had a number of people ask about where and how to play and gave a whole lot of families a very happy exposure to pickleball.

Afterward, Dan and I walked his rigged-up net and the club banner the two blocks back to his truck and called it a day for the parade. I drove home, showered, and head to work.

Video

The downtown association made a video of the parade available to the public:

It was a fun event. Maia was asking Mark whose great idea it was for us to participate. Yep, that was me with my USA Pickleball Ambassador “hat” on. I think I earned my stripes for the year in that role.

Number of days on a court: 564 (No change)
Number of total hours: 2,530.5 (No change)

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