OK, the wedding and reception was over, and it was time to get on with my personal next leg of the tour. Dave was my dance partner at the reception, and he told me that Al's bubble machine had been in an accident before the Westbury show, so we collected the bottles of bubbles that were left over from the reception with the intent of replacing the bubble machine during the polka. I was carpooling with Dave and Christina for the weekend, so I followed Dave down to NJ, and we were all up fairly early the next morning to haul over to PA.
We met up with Sue and her friends Amy and Tara-Lyn. Allie and her Dad were also there. They were second in line, and we all took turns hitting rides, or getting food and standing in line. It was a pretty warm wait, and we entertained ourselves by taking goofy pictures. Dave peeled these little gold rose stickers off the bubble bottles and we all wore one the rest of the day. They managed to last through the show, and one hell of a log flume afterwards.
We managed to grab the front center bench for the show (despite this chick who cut in line in front of us. Some kid behind her threw up on her before the show. HA.) and had our bubbles ready for the polka. Al grinned at us, and the folks behind us thought it was cool. It did unnerve the security guard near us, who told us to knock it off right about when we were stopping anyway. Those wild Weird Al fans. You gotta watch em every second or one of them is going to open up a can of silly string or something...
The Hershey shows were the short 1 hour version that the band does at theme parks. I didn't have my big zoom lens with me (Dad borrowed it for the wedding and I forgot to get it back) but I was close enough that my regular 35mm lens was up to the task. During "Smells Like Nirvana" Al threw his entire cup of water right at Dave, soaking him. Al's got pretty good aim, because I was sitting next to Dave, and I didn't get a drop on me. Al then tossed Dave the cup, much to Dave's delight.
After the show, we dropped the cameras off at the car and went out to enjoy the park. We hit several coasters (the new racing one is COOL!) and almost drowned on a big log flume. We did dinner at the park and then went back to our hotel. The hotel pool and jacuzzi were closed by the time we got back, which was too bad since a swim and a soak were sounding pretty good about then...
Photos from the first show: Gump Pentiums Nirvana Amish Paradise Fat Saga/Yoda
DAY 2: We were at the gates right at 9:30 (a good half hour before the park opened) so we could get good seats again for the first show. Dave and Christina bolted through the gates at 10 and got our spot, while Sue and I took a more lesiurely walk to the auditorium. We saved spots for Allie, Amy and Tara-Lyn again. The wait wasn't as long this time, and we passed it by having Dave sign everyone's legs (I don't recall who started the "harem" jokes the day before.) We scored front and center again for the early show (no bubbles this time..we did not bring them, and that security guy was eyeballing us the entire polka.)
Post show, we bid farewell to Allie, since she had to go home, but not before posing for our own version of the shot on the "Its All About the Pentiums" single. We grabbed lunch, and met up with Jon behind the venue (and he recognized me! WOO!) and...eventually wandered back in for the second show since we saw some Amish people enter the theater. They left long before "Amish Paradise" though.
Did more rides afterwards, dinner happened at Wendy's...back to the hotel for the night. Some of us went swimming, which was fun until the entire state of Tennessee showed up in the pool and began doing cannonballs. We left kinda early the next day since I had to bolt off to work. Sue stayed later and went shopping.
Photos from the second show: Gump Pentiums Nirvana Amish/Fat Yoda
CAR RELATED MISHAP FOR THE TRIP: I had to work Tuesday night in White Plains, but I also had to get home to CT to make sure my pets had survived their weekend with the pet sitter and to change clothes. While I was on the Garden State Parkway, I heard a THUNK and suddenly my Pontiac was a Super Nitro Funny Car from the sound of it. I pulled over at a rest stop and discovered that my exhaust pipe had broken and my catalytic converter was now dragging on the ground. Lovely. I couldn't pull it off and I couldn't tie it up, so I ended up dragging it from NJ to CT to NY and back to CT. Catalytic converters don't like to be dragged for 250 miles, so I got to spend all day Wednesday at Midas having a new one put on. While I was there, I also discovered that the right front CV boot was torn again. Urgh.