Piping Parades - alot in July

We had a lot of gigs to do this summer... what was kind of nice was that some of them were 'multiples'.  So we really only had to leave town for 3 weekends, but we got like 7gigs done!

There was Hibbing at the end of June; Minocqua which consisted of Rhinelander, Three Lakes, Lake Tomahawk and Minocqua; Coleraine and Butternut.

Plus we had some grads and the summer in the parks to do too...

Minocqua was amazingly great as always.  They treat us right there... i mean it's the only parade we get to stay in a hotel for!!  And there's huge fireworks at night.  I can tell I'm getting old tho', as we went to the one bar and it got packed I started getting 'antsy' and annoyed.  I nearly started a fight trying to push my way out.

Coleraine and Butternut were funny... It was also Andrew's first band trip -- and I even had him play in the ranks!

Coleraine is where Lefty's from and that guy can throw a heck of a party, insanse! Funny part about that night is that after the street parade, Peter and the boys came back and were ready to party still.  Pete loves his new car's stereo and had it blasting at like 330am... it came to a point where I had to just go and turn it off.  I got up, walked outside, grabbed his keys out of the ignition (debated about just throwing them, but thought better) and walked inside with them.  The next morning Peter came up to me and said "thanks for being the voice of reason Ryan, I'm sorry"... however I believe this was before he looked at his vehicle.  See, he left all his windows open... and it rained alot last night.  Woops... felt bad, but he could have gotten the keys easily (just inside) and closed the windows himself before going to bed.

Butternut I ended up trapping my own keys in the car.  Shouldn't do that in a small hick town.  Nobody to help you out... eventually I was able to find some people.  Thank you the FD of Butternut.  Still have to send them something.  We ended up having to use Deb's car antennae to push the button to unlock the doors (she was surprised to hear that they came off... and went back on... I was somewhat surprised too).