'scuse me while I drown.

Much of the East Coast has been trapped under a stalled front for the past 5-6 days. It has pretty much rained, or tried to rain each and every one of those days. To add to the fun, we've also got thunderstorms between the rainshowers.

The front is stalled slightly to the West of Philadelphia, I think that it has rained constantly on Harrisburg for the past 96 hours. In Philly and New Jersey, the sun pops out just long enough to remind us that it exists, heats up all the moisture saturating the soil, and makes things extra-extra humid. Thanks Sun!

The Monmouth reenactment took place despite these conditions, at least on Saturday. It rained Friday night, drizzled all Saturday morning. When Bill and I arrived at the battlefield it had stopped. They almost delay the battle as a thunderstorm cell was being watched coming in. It was decided that the battle could beat it out. But of course in the calm before the storm the sun came out and heated up the moisture in the ground. It got extra-humid, extra-hot. Joy.

The battle took place. My unclean musket refused to fire at first, then when we got positioned behind a fence it started to blaze away...only to become too hot to handle. The heat must have had no place to go in this weather and several of us had a hard time holding onto the hot muskets.

The battle was too long, a syndrome of this site. It looks rather goofy given the limited numbers. I took a hit on the last Crown forces charge and nearly took a nap laying on the ground. After a few moments ( and the Continental charge going past us) I could hear the thunder getting louder. The announcer stated that the battle was over.

Which was fine. I rose from the dead and returned to my unit. We fixed bayonets and marched past the crowd. That was nice, but the thunder was louder and the dark clouds very visible, and with bayonets attached and muskets at the shoulder we all were especially lightning-roddy. This would have been tolerable had they made every effort to get us dismissed. But some freaks must stand on ceremony and we had the full march back to camp, along with the stupid cheers for the commanders (fine in good weather, bad when you are watching pure darkness approaching). We made our way to the cars and about 5 minutes after we got there the heavens opened up. By that time I was in Bill's car, but even then got a bit wet. We made out way back to a local friends place to stay the night as there is another battle the next day. But at this point we had our doubts, this battle was sparsely attended, it promised to rain all night (it did). We ended up bagging Sunday's battle and went home in the afternoon.

I actually had the energy to clean my musket when I got home. I managed to pull that off on the deck between rain showers.