Saratoga Splash was really a SPLASH!

My sister-in-law, Karley, and I decided to try out our craft skills and do a booth selling our good at this years Saratoga Splash carnival/festival. We had been preparing for this event for the last two months. We had a little bit of everything to sell. We did burp clothes, flower clips with head bands, tutu's, beaded spiders, glass etched candle holders, stroller blankets, and several other items.
The weather report for the day was thunderstorms. Well, usually out here we get dumped on for about 10 minutes or so then it goes away so we took precautions against the anticipated rain. Everything was going really well for the first few hours. We were doing pretty well with our sales. Considering it was very overcast and not that many people were wandering around. The carnival officially opened at 11:00am. By 1:00pm the sky started getting really dark. We prepared ourselves to sit out a rain storm. Within like 10 minutes the storm hit. We sat through about 10 minutes of down pouring rain just like everyone else around us. Then out of nowhere the wind picked up. I would say it got up to at least 40 mph. Disaster hit. The wind was so strong that it was trying to uproot our staked down canopy. Karley was on one side trying to hold it down and I was on the other side. Both of us decided it was time to try to pack it in. A hard feat to accomplish since both of us were busy trying to hold the canopy from flying away.
I tried to call Tom for help. But of course the electrical storm was interfering with my phones power and it would not stay on long enough for me to get a phone call out. I asked our neighboring tent dweller if I could use his cell phone. His worked, but unfortunately Tom could not hear a word I was saying. In desperation I was yelling HELP into the phone hoping he would at least hear a portion of what I was saying and get the point. Luckily he took my phone call as what it was intended for and was on his way to help. Now the bad part to our rescue. Due to the road construction and people trying to get out of the weather, it took him 20 minutes to get through the intersection so a whole 30 minutes before he made it to our aid. Our event was only a maximum of 10 minutes from our house.
In the mean time we were stuck. Everyone was scrambling to get their stuff cleaned up so basically everyone was on their own for the moment. While we were busy holding on to our booth, the next big catastrophe hit. The top frame of the canopy decided it was not going to hold under the stress anymore and bent, collapsing on our table and ruining several items we had set out on it. So now we have a collapsed canopy, rain and wind pouring in from all sides and little tutu's and stuff flying across the field. AAAHHHH! We had to try something so I was able to get the front two posts of the canopy down to their lowest level. Now that it was at an angle the wind wasn't as willing to carry it away. I ran to Karley to help her out.
Next problem, due to the fact that it was the back end that bent we couldn't get the pole straight enough to dislodge the peg and lower the back ends. Finally a man came up and offered to help us get unstuck. We were fighting with all our might to get the poles straight enough to get them down. Needless to say it eventually took 6 or 7 firefighters, 3 police officers, our good Samaritan and us two to get the thing down. At this point Tom was still stuck in traffic.
We started throwing things into boxes and the back of the car as quickly as possible. It was a real mad dash to get it done. With the help of all those involved we got everything but two items into the car by the time Tom showed up. Both Karley and I looked like drown rats. Just soaked from head to toe! All that was left to do now was drop off stuff and survey the damage. Karley told me she had burp clothes and tutu's all over the house trying to dry them out.
So our first entrepreneur adventure was just that. A real adventure!