I just got back from a weekend adventure to Blooming Prairie and then Le Sueur, Minnesota.

Minnesota Brass had a performance Saturday night in Blooming Prairie so I caught a ride down there with some friends in Minnesota Brass. I watched the Minnesota Brass rehearsal on Saturday afternoon and then they performed at nightfall as part of a a 100th year anniversary for the local bank. The Govenaires from St. Peter also performed their show. The event was finished with some fireworks that were “choreographed” to music, but the CD kept skipping so it was really quite terrible. The fireworks, however, were pretty awesome, especially for a small town like Blooming Prairie.

That evening almost a dozen of us crashed at Gary Tashima’s house. His mother was way too polite, going way out of her way to make sure everything was perfect. Gary’s younger brother looks just like Gary—it’s quite remarkable.

We sat and talked for a while, it was awesome to be able to reminisce with old band friends and meet some new people who will be joining the University of Minnesota’s Marching Band this fall. (Spat camp starts in under a month).

The weather during the night was quite nasty, lots of noisy thunder peals and bright flashes of lightning. I slept in a tent with Matt Beyer and Ryan (aka “That Guy”), but we didn’t stake out the corners—“Oh it won’t be windy or storm…” I had the joy of dashing out in the rain at 5am to grab tent stakes from the car and put stakes in the corners so that the tent wouldn’t try to blow over with us in it.

On Sunday we drove over to Le Sueur so Minnesota Brass could march in their parade. Sarah Henning and I helped distribute water to the corps members during the parade. Afterwards we enjoyed some overly buttered corn and other fair goodies.

The weekend was wonderful with the exception of the numerous down times that Sarah and I faced since we weren’t in Minnesota Brass like everybody else we were traveling with.

And if I have to eat Dairy Queen one more time this weekend…