Peach Festival

      “Be there at 7:30,” the message said.

     But the race doesn’t start until 8 a.m.  Then we recalled last year.  The 5K run started at 8 a.m. last year, too.  Our quartet was supposed to kick the race off by singing “The Star Spangled Banner.”

     We had met at “our” church before 7:30 to warm up.  We took off before 7:45 in three cars, because two of the guys are Rotarians who had to work after we sang.  (The Rotarians of Fort Collins run the Peach Festival as a fund-raiser.)  Normally, we would have taken one car.  And got lost together.

     The first Peach Festival we participated in was held at the now-defunct Hughes Stadium.  It was a perfect place with plenty of parking.  Last year, and this year, the festival was held in downtown Fort Collins.  With difficulty parking.  Plenty of difficulty.

     We had given ourselves enough time to get to the general area where were to sing, but not enough time to deal with parking problems.  Rex found his way into a parking garage where the lady wearing a Rotary vest let us park free when we told her our mission.  We took off at a brisk walk for the race starting line.

     When we got there, Ted and Dick were there, too—on the other side of a six-foot chain link fence that enclosed about four city blocks.  It was 7:55.  The race manager said he would not delay the race for any reason.

     We tried valiantly to find a way over around or through the fence.  By the time we all four were standing near the microphones,  on the same side of the fence, the Master of Ceremonies was getting ready to do his ten-second countdown that started the race.

      “Five, four, three, two, one, go!”  A hundred or so runners passed through the archway that doubled as the finish line.  There we stood, dressed in our white pants, white shirts, red suspenders, white shoes, red bow ties, red-and-white striped vests, and our tin-pan-alley straw hats.  All dressed up and nowhere to sing.  At least two people rolled out of bed to get there at 8 a.m. to hear us sing.  We even had a fair-sized audience of runner-relatives besides the runners themselves.  How embarrassing! 

     The race manager apologized, saying he had promised not to delay the race for any reason, but we told him we should be the ones apologizing.  We were the ones who couldn’t tell time.

     All this came flooding back as we ruminated over the “7:30” message.  I guess we earned that early notice.  The race managers figured if they told us 7:30, we would be there by 7:45.

     This year had a little excitement, too.  I was just a little tardy for my 6:45 pickup of Rex.  We pulled into Fort Collins before seven.  There just happened to be a convenient parking spot right next to the chain link fence on the southern border of the festival area.

     I pulled in and parked.  We got out in time to hear the security man by the fence explaining to a couple of ladies wanting to enter the race that they would have to follow the fence around until they could find the opening to get inside.  Déjà vu all over again.

      We set off walking.  The security guard took three or four quick steps towards us and said, “Sir, if you park there, you’ll get towed.  They are towing everything in this block.”  Not until then had we seen the No-Parking sign.

      We thanked the guard profusely.  I could just imagine coming back after walking around and singing all morning to find my pickup gone.  Rex took off to find the other two and I turned the pickup around and began searching for another place to park.  This time, I checked out the signs carefully. 

    Three of us were there before 7:25, the fourth arrived right at 7:30.  We gave the Anthem a quiet run-through while standing behind the speakers that belted out some recorded rock of some kind.  Then we waited.

     The race manager, the same guy from last year, asked what we were singing, and how long would it last.  Ted estimated 2 minutes.  The manager said we would be on at 7:56.

      With about fifteen minutes to go, the MC started lining up runners, fastest (most serious runners) to the front, with the slower folks farther back, on back to the parents with children in strollers and the wheelchair pushers last.  

     We stepped up to the table with the microphone at five ‘till.  At 7:56, the MC introduced us and handed Rex the mic.  We belted out “The Star Spangled Banner” at decibels matching the rock music that had preceded us.

       Rex surrendered the mic.   The MC asked the front tier of runners to move up a few steps to the starting line.  “One minute to race start!”  A pregnant pause.  The countdown.  Go!

       A whole herd of runners passed through the start-finish archway.  We were in the clear.  Progress is important.  We had done ourselves one better than last year, anyway.

     As in the past two Peach Festivals, we wandered around the area, stopping here and there to sing a song or two, sometimes to a person we knew, or one who had requested a song.  We avoided the stage in the park area where there were musicians performing.  They were amplified and we were no match for that.

      This year was different in one respect:  It was partly cloudy and cool.  No need to hunt a shady place to sing.       

     We stood right in the middle of an intersection and sang two songs. We sang to some people running various booths.  We nearly always attracted a few onlookers.

       Everything was near-perfect until about 12:30 when it began to rain, catching many a festival-goer standing in line in front of one of the many food vendors.  The rain passed on, the sun came out, and altogether, it was a pleasant day.