So, Rory gets a call a while back from Jerry (sp?) from the Rittenhouse in Bayfield that a couple would like to get married in Bayfield and wouldl ike to have pipers. Rory throws some figures at him, and lo' and behold Steve, Rory and I are heading down to the states for a wedding.
The first 'fun' comes from the fact that we leave at like 8am. Have I told you all before that I'm not a morning person? I'm not. So, I'm ready for 8am, on the other hand, Steve is ready for 8am. Rory is ready for 8am... Bain time. So about near 9 Rory picks me up. After a quick McDick's breakfast we're off to south of the border.
The second 'fun' happens at the border. The border guys aren't believing us that we weren't getting paid [go figure] for this wedding. We go in and are questioned for a while. Finally we are let go, and we're off to the races. We stop (typically) at Hacienda del Sol. Yum, some good Mexican food. Then we visit downtown Duluth and head on out. Fast forward a few more hours and we're in Bayfield. We visit the Rittenhouse and told some of the general specifics and we scope out the landscape and head to our room. We're told our 'room' is attached to somebody's house. Ermm... doesn't sound good. Ever heard the expression, don't judge a book by it's cover? Well, this room attached to a house turns out to be a small condo-like apartment, and is quite spacious for the 3 of us [we later find out it is $150/night]. We head down to the Rum Line for a refreshment and meet a new bartender there. Amaris. Hot!
We have a quick change and we do the first of the gig. The first part is we do is for the reception [kinda backwards]. We play while people mill, and then play the bride and groom in. Turns out the family is authentically Scottish. From Aberdeen!
Now we have about 3 hours to kill before the actual ceremony. We pick up beer, and groceries and head off for the 2nd gig.
The second part is at the actual wedding ceremony outside, and it's starting to get a little dark out. Rory and Steve pipe down the bridesmaids and I pipe down the bride. We wait for the bride and talk with the family for a bit. After a pretty cermony we beat them all down to the Paviillion for the dance portion.
Final part of the gig. We pipe the newly pronounced couple into the Pavillion and they do the normal wedding cake ceremony. We play a little more [and faster too] while waiting for their DJ. We hang outside after with soem refreshments and cake. Chat up the family some more [it's always neat to hear the accent of authentic Scottish people]. Rory collects our fee and we head off to the hotel for a fun night. The Rum Line is dead, Morty's is (as always) a hick bar, so we call it an early bar night and decide to party it up ourselves. That doesn't last very long as we're VERY tired.
Morning wakes us up pretty early and we pack up and go, reflecting on how old we've all gotten [not having had a PARTY night]. We drive blearily on past most of the normal stops until Rory needs coffee, finally about Two Harbours. We drive more until Grand Marais [lasting almost 700km on a single tank of gas]. We stop and visit the town for a bit, going down to the waterfront and Trading post. Fast forward through driving and talking about band direction and tunes until we're home. Another gig done.
Fun!
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. Jarron and Regan said the portage they found last night [but was too dark to use] should work, just it'll be tricky [like anything vs. last day would be considered tricky]. So we give it a go. Dry socks go into semi-dried shoes & within seconds they're soaked again! The first portage is a KILLER. Not as bad as the previous day, but it'll rank up there. Just swampy areas. This leads to an area that we're still unsure about, but we meet a Wisconsin who tells us we're the first to come through the way we did, and how he came through Icarus (the portage that WE couldn't find - apparently we didn't look hard enough). He also tells us that if we had been there the previous day, another set of campers might have given US a case of beer that they gave to him. BURN. We take lunch on a rock with chicken fajitas which were supposed to be last night's dinner - if we had the time. We paddle on through what seems to be endless kilometres of swampy beaver areas and small low water rapids. As we're just about to give out from exhaustion, we come out on Granite Lake. A BEAUTIFUL pristine calm lake. We find THE campsite. nice beach, log benches around the fire pit, a cooking table, plenty of tenting sites, even a place to actually sit down to crap! Just a bit of garbage and lots of quad tracks. The night is nice, we make some sausages over the fire. Have a nice swim, Rory tips over in the canoe [trying to pump water from the lake]. The bugs get SUPER insane and we make an early night of it.
about that Erin. Almost that alone caused me to call it off. What did end it for me was the little prank/joke thing we had going rose [or fell is a better description] to outright theft. Not of my stuff, but of Jarron's too. And the manipulation to make people do the stealing too. To me that seemed really childish and that coupled with the accidental hurting of Erin caused me to just call it quits. I guess it was my lesson in maturity. For that I'm grateful, and if all it cost me was my skull [that I had since I was 8], then so be it. What else I enjoyed about the trip was that I got to use my Aztek tent again. That thing is SOO comfy [when there's only one person in it].
