Happy 4th of… April, maybe?

Posted by Hollyann

We really had no plans in advance for the 4th of July this year.  In fact around 5pm on the 3rd of July, I came down with what I am now assuming was a nasty case of food poisoning or something and ended up calling my mother, who lives an hour away, and making her come down here to clean the broken glass out of my kitchen and feed my children, because I couldn’t even get out of bed, so even had we had plans they may have ended up getting canceled.  At any rate, it turned out that a lot of the big celebrations around town were actually done on the 3rd, so we ended up with limited options… namely, go get some illegal fireworks outside of town and set them off ourselves, or go to the Air Force Academy for concerts, food, fireworks, all that good stuff.  We decided on both, and went to go get fireworks to set off after we got back from the Academy.

Now, a little background if you are not local.  The Air Force Academy is built sort of into and up the side of what we call here a large hill.  If you are not in a mountainous state (shoutout!) this is a mountain to you.  Because of this, the weather in town, even though ‘town’ is all of 5 minutes from the south gate, can be completely different from the weather at the Academy, because it’s higher up and closer to real mountains.  I’m sure you all see where that is going.  Also, the Academy is large and consists of many different buildings, only 2 of which (the stadium and Arnold Hall) have any sort of large parking lots.  These buildings are kind of clumped together here and there and are separated by large stretches of athletic fields or mountainous scrubland, and you get from one clump of buildings to another on a bunch of hilly, winding roads.  You probably see where that is going as well.  But I’m gonna tell you about it anyway.

I had read online that the festivities would start up there at 4, so we planned to leave around then and see what was what.  There were concerts scheduled for some orchestra or symphony at 730 and the Air Force Academy band at 815, with fireworks at 930.  We figured we would get some food, play some games, catch the concerts, and take advantage of good parking by getting there early.

So, at like 5:30 or so, we finally got out the door.  As we were pulling out, I said to the kids, “keep an eye out for a gas station or bank on our way, momma needs an ATM”.  15 minutes later, we were driving through light rain on base up the hill towards the parking at Arnold Hall.  We got fabulous parking!  Yay!  It wasn’t raining all that hard, so we got out, trekked across the lot, down a big hill towards the giant athletic field we needed to get across, when suddenly, downpour.  We were just passing the baseball fields, so we took refuge under the bleachers.  Good thing, because there was a little bit of hail too.

Ok, I had a stunning picture of the kids under the bleachers looking sad because of rain somewhere, but it seems to be lost in cyberspace.  You’ll just have to imagine it I guess.  Ooops.

The rain slowed down so we ventured out across to the first food tent we could find.  Yay, we are starving!  Wait.  Remember when I said “ATM”?  Yea.  Forgot about that.  No cash in my wallet, no credit cards at the food stands. Wait, another downpour.  We take refuge under the beer tent this time… so now I am under a beer tent in the rain with no money to buy beer.  I should have taken a picture of myself at that point, talk about sad.

Rain stops, out we go to find an ATM.  We ask some people where the easiest one is, they tell us there is one on base.  Score!  Wait, the directions are confusing me.  Hilly winding roads, remember.  Directions sound like go back the way you came, take a right at the B-52, go past the stadium, then turn right at the street where you can only turn right, only because of fireworks you may not be able to, so if you can’t, just turn right at the next street, and the ATM is by the Burger King.  So we start off to do that.  Only when we get to the stadium, it’s all blocked off because they are now parking fireworks people there and having them ride shuttles up to Arnold Hall.  So we detour through the stadium parking lot.  Sure enough, once we get back on track, can’t turn where we are supposed to turn.  So we turn at the next street.  Where a helpful MP promptly tells us we can’t go up the hill to the ATM that I CAN NOW SEE because we don’t have a military ID.  So we’ve driven clean to the other side of the base by now, so I just whip out the south gate and get money at the mall.  Then back on the highway and back in the north gate hoping we can still park at Arnold Hall.  Wait, more downpour.  And hold up, why are they routing my lane to the stadium and the other lane to Arnold Hall?  I am turning around and going back and getting in that lane.  When I get back to where they were splitting lanes, I have to explain to the MP there that I want to go up, not over.  He’s just shut down the Arnold Hall lane, he says.  I don’t care, my… other kids are up there, that’s it, I need to go up there.  So he moves cones and lets me through.  Score, no shuttle bus.    Still downpour.

We now are routed to a lot below Arnold Hall, in fact a lot below the one below Arnold Hall, so we have to trek up the hill then back down to the field.  It’s been almost exactly an hour and a half since I asked the food stand dude if any of the stands were taking credit cards.  We are sitting in the car waiting for it to stop raining.  Finally it does, so we get out, and it promptly starts again, so we get in.  I have to hand it to my kiddos, through all of this they are looking at it as an adventure, never once did they whine or complain.  Finally we get out, taking my sort of plastic windshield sun cover thingy with us for use as an emergency umbrella should we need it.

We made it to the food stand without any more rain, and got some hot dogs and this marvelous funnel cake.

It started sprinkling a bit when we finished eating, but the Air Force Academy Band had started playing across the field, so we started off that way anyways.  On the way, Kayla saw this in the parking lot and said “Take a picture, Mommy, it’s Hurley’s van!”  That’s my girl. We were far away and only my phone was working for pictures at this point, so it’s hard to see, but I told her I would put it up, so here it is.

The Air Force Academy Band was phenomenal.  They had a bunch of very talented soloists, whose names I will now butcher… Technical Sergeant Chrissy something sang a beautiful version of “Get Your Kicks on Route 66″.  Technical Sergeant Marcel Marketti played “La Virgin De La Macarena” on the trumpet both wonderfully and LOUD.  And I-forget-his-rank Tim Allums is one of the more entertaining Elvis impersonators I have ever seen.

That’s a crappy picture of the band.  I put it in so you can see *behind* the band… The sky is ominous.  I kept trying to get a picture of the band while the lightning was going off, but no luck.  At this point, my other camera was finally not being a brat, though, so here are some better ones.  The whole band:

Marcel:

Elvis:

The band stopped a bit early and announced that they were going to start fireworks a bit early as well, since we were catching a ‘break in the weather’.  We discovered they were shooting them off from about 50 yards from where we were, so we just moved on over to the grass and copped a seat… on top of the windshield sun cover thingy.  Brilliant!  First there was a 21 gun salute from about 30 feet to our left, which we were not expecting, but was cool.  Impossible to even see the cannons in the dark over there, so definitely a bit shocking at that first volley, but we got over it quick.

Right after the fireworks started it began to rain a bit more… but not too bad.  Here’s what we looked like, slightly damp, slightly chilly, but still having a good time.

Charlie isn’t as tired as he looks there, it was just a flash issue. 

Here is my best shot of the fireworks, I wasn’t really trying cause I was watching.  The flamage at the bottom is from them shooting it off, so you can see how close we ended up.

Just as the fireworks ended, on purpose, I figure, based on the fact that the music kept playing after the fireworks stopped, it started REALLY raining.  Again.  Only now the only place we had to go was to the car.  Which at this point was about a mile and a half away on the other side of a large hill.  Then the wind picked up.  This is where we became absolutely miserable.  Kayla has issues with her ankles on the best of days, both kids were wearing shorts, and Charlie and I were wearing Crocs, which while cold, turned out probably better than Kayla’s tennis shoes, which got soaked and heavy in a hurry.  So picture us, me carrying a backpack holding both kids hands, Kayla with a blanket over her head, wind going at about 30mph in a torrential downpour while we go as fast as Kayla can across a football field.  Then another one, then up a hill and through two parking lots.  At the top of the hill simultaneously both Charlie and I are so soaked we now have to hold our pants up because they are so heavy they are falling off, and it starts hailing.  Now we are walking through traffic and parking lots and we honestly can hardly see.  Kayla is crying because the lightning is so close.  I am having a panic attack.  Charlie is going ‘Ohmygoshohmygoshohmygoshmommyareweatthecaryet’ over and over.  We had to do the push the panic button thing on the car because we could. not. see. where it was.  It was a little scary to say the least.  Right before we found the car, Kayla stopped crying long enough to say ‘At least it’s a refreshing drink!’ and laugh like a maniac, at which point I decided she had simply gone round the bend.   Once we got in the car, Kayla took my picture… it was dark, so I don’t think you can really get a sense of how wet we all were.  That hat is STILL wet, 3 days later.

Once we got home, it was too wet and cold to set off the fireworks we had bought earlier.  So for the last couple days we have been doing them after dinner a little at a time.  Happy 4th of spring, everyone.