Soooooo much to catch up on!!

My Lord am I behind in my blogging. Traveling 9 out of the last 12 days will do that to you. Let's back up first and then try to catch up.

First up, the Gay Pride Parade. Joisey Ken always talks about how he wants to come in for the parade and that he would do anything to march in it, but I don't have any ties in the gay parade world, so Ken hasn't made it out. Maybe next year Ken!

The parade was a week ago Sunday, so that tells you how far behind I am in blogging.



Yeah, there was a crowd. I heard close to 500,000. This pic is of "Dykes on Bikes". Always a hit at the parade...and loud.











The gay bars in the hood were insane. This year the parade folks put up railings all along the route to keep the crowds out of the street. One drunk lesbian gets run over by a float and they go overboard on security.











Not many attractive lesbians for my teammates to see and only one, that I saw, that was topless. Not a good showing from the lesbian crowd.











Crazy looking boots here though.













And I thought this was funny.










With any party, there is excess. This dude broke down early. Another woman was crying hysterically on my block. After some calming words, I found out she didn't have her asthma inhaler and was having an attack and just wanted to leave. Unfortunately, with the gates up, you couldn't cross the parade route to get to where her friends could drive and get her. Fortunately, the parade ended shortly thereafter and I told her to go west and have her friends meet her there. There's always drama.




And you always have a mess with a party. This is a mattress in the middle of the street outside my Starbucks. Not good. Next morning, all the garbage was gone. Everything just needed a good raining on to clean it.








So that was the first of three days at home, before I headed back north to Michigan. After spending the evening with my folks, I hit the links Thursday morning. The course I normally play, Treetops, raised their rates to $145!! Who increases their fees during a recession? When I played there earlier this year, it was part of a package and the two night stay plus four rounds of golf on various courses cost less than $300. Significantly cheaper.

So this time I went to play The Chief, near the Shanty Creek Resort if you know where that is.





















Each hole had a nice rock indicating the yardage, but there were no signs showing the layout of the hole. If not for the guys playing in my group, on many holes, I wouldn't have known where to hit the ball, sometimes even generally which direction!!






Of course, fog like this didn't help!! Granted, only a few of the holes were like this one. Most were clear, but a damp mist fell the entire round. I was able to find my drive on this hole!!










After golf, I headed to Higgins Lake, about 40 minutes from my folks place, and spent the night there with Lovely Laura and her family (mother, father, sister, brother and his family). The weather was that week was the worst they've experienced in their 30 years of going to the lake. With the weather so miserable, you basically had to stay inside all day and night. The cabin was not nearly big enough and didn't have nearly enough distractions (read tv's and computers) to make that anywhere near enjoyable in my opinion. LL and her family survived, but when the weather was again lousy on Friday, they opted to pack up and head home.

We left to spend the afternoon and night with my folks on Friday. Saturday we started the trip home by driving several hours down to Grand Rapids. In GR is my buddy's bar and we also got tickets to see the Western Michigan Whitecaps, one of the Detroit Tigers A league teams. This crazy chick was sitting directly in front of our second row seats, right by the dugout. Her name is Whitecap Wendy and she wears a shirt saying so. She also mentioned that she lives in the basement (apparently still with her parents??) and can't afford cable, but has a really nice camera and goes to almost all the Whitecap games. Very, very odd. She was born in Flint, which explains a lot.




After the game, it was fireworks!! It WAS the Fourth of July after all. Hanging around to see the stadium's fireworks meant that we would miss downtown GR's fireworks shows. No big deal, they should be comparable right? Nope. It's Amway's 50th anniversary and they started in GR so they sponsored the fireworks show which was tremendous. Yes, we did get to see about half of it still as we drove to our hotel and then from our hotel room itself. Very nice.














John and Kim (I think) our bartenders for the day (and night). Good folks.











We had brunch at the bar, Hopcat, on Sunday before heading home. Kim makes a great bloody mary and the food was really quite good. Afterwards though, we drove hope, made a quick pitstop at home and then headed out to Ribfest in Naperville. Yes, this was the fifth straight day of driving and traveling and yes it was a bit hectic. It was also fun though and nice to relax at Ribfest.


After reading my reviews from the past few years, we opted for Fast Freddy's ribs. An EXCELLENT choice to start with. Plus they only charged me for half a slab ($12) instead of a full slab ($20). Nice! Then we had a full slab of Desperado's ribs with both the sweety sauce and original. I'd have to recommend the original sauce for next year.


Huey Lewis and the News played starting at 8:30, which gave us two hours of eating and drinking in anticipation of the start. When that time came, Huey just started singing. No "Hello Naperville!!" or anything. AND he didn't even start with one of his original songs! He covered The Drifters 1961 hit, Some Kind of Wonderful. Good song, but what about all of his original songs?? Sure, he sung it on his 1994 album Four Chords and Several Years ago, but he's certainly not known for it. I didn't even know what the second song was that he sang. He did sing: Do you believe in Love, Workin' for a living, The Heart of Rock and Roll, Heart and Soul, I want a new drug, If this is it, Jacob's Ladder, Stuck on you, and Hip to be Square, among some others. Good stuff. Oh, and it was Huey's birthday!

Finally we drove home and hit the sack. It was nice to finally sleep in my own bed!!