Pride Roundup 2012!

Pride Roundup

Last weekend was Pride in my hometown.  Not that we’re not proud year-round…

Anyway, here’s how it went down.

Friday evening ~ hair cut.  Gotta look good for Pride, right?  T had a light trim and I had the clippers. 

Left side: shortish but swoopy

Right side: super short!

(I have a cowlick in front... can you tell?)

Saturday I had planned a busy but doable evening for us.  Before we could start on the gay fun, we had a backyard party for a friend to attend.  Got that done.  Then went home to don our gay apparel.

Next up was the Dyke March.  Now, let me give you a little history on that one.  Every year I say that I want to go to the Dyke March and every year T objects.  She used to say things like, “You just want to look at other women’s boobs.”  Or, “Why, are you looking for a new girlfriend?”  Yes, I know, she’s painfully insecure.  She doesn’t say that anymore, but this year it was, “It’s such a ridiculous spectacle.  I just hope the rest of the world doesn’t judge all lesbians by that.”  I mean, really.  I can’t spend the time going over these pointless arguments.  It’s …  never mind.

So, this year we were going.  A friend of mine was going to come with us.  My friend the jumper.  She needs to stay busy these days and I thought that our busy evening would be perfect for her.  We had a complicated arrangement logistically.  She met us at our house.  Then we took our car to the place where we would end the evening and parked it.  We got in her car and drove downtown to watch the March.  Only, when we got there, we discovered that we had missed it!  Argh!  Made T happy, though.

We went out for a bite of dinner.  There were two more things on our itinerary: the Hot Flash/Inferno Pride Party which was slated for 8pm to 4am.  No, we were not staying for the whole thing.  And the other entry on the itinerary was the World Naked Bike Ride.  We saw it last year and unbelievably T said, “Let’s do that next year!”  Of course she changed her mind, but still wanted to see it.

So, at this point, sitting in the café having dinner, I said “look, if this is too much for one evening, let’s skip the bike ride and just go to the Party.”  Yes, they agreed with that.  Fine.

So, we drive back across the river and arrive at the warehouse for the big Pride Party.  Holy smokes!  The place is teeming!  Teeming and Steaming!  We danced some, we had a drink or two.  We saw lots of friends, lots of gals who we typically only see on Pride weekend.  My fragile friend left after a couple of hours.  We stayed on a bit longer but eventually the heat and noise drove us out.  When we were leaving, maybe 11:00ish, there was a line down the block to get in.  I love that.

On the way home, we got up to 7^th and Burnside and found traffic at a standstill.  We drove up a few more blocks and parked the car and got out.  What do you know, we got to watch the Naked Bike Ride after all!  In fact, we couldn’t get across Burnside to go home for probably 45 minutes.  There are thousands, literally thousands of people participating in the ride.  Wow.

On Sunday, my fragile friend was picking us up to go to the Parade.  We got downtown in a timely manner and found a reasonably good spot along the route.  T and I nipped in to Hobo’s for a couple of quick mimosas.  We met up with another friend and the four of us watched the parade together.  Afterwards, we walked down to the Waterfront and strolled through the booths and enjoyed a couple of beers.  My fragile friend left and we caught a ride home with T’s friend Donna.  I would have liked to stay longer – the people watching is fantastic and we hadn’t seen some friends that we usually see there.  But, overall, we had a pretty good time.

Who else has a Pride story to tell?  I hope you are all out there waving your rainbow flags!