OK, so it's
been a little over two months since our little get-together in San Antonio.
Time really flies when you're riding a runaway freight train. When we were a
bunch of carefree punks attending Zama High School, I could not have possibly
imagined that I'd be 35 years old, have a couple of kids, and that we'd have
to come up with a plan and rely on talented logistical field generals like Cherie
in order to hang out and drink beer. I would have sworn my fellow teenage alcohol
abusers to a solemn oath to euthanize me if I ever had to beg and bargain with
my wife/girlfriend to leave the house for 36 hours to go get a beer with my
friends. But here we are in the year 2001, and all that happened (gettin' older,
procreating and hanging out with my friends, not the mercy killing). I didn't
get authorization to go on Friday (see the Maggie section of my web site for
the main reason for this) so I missed out on the steak house phase of the reunion.
From what I hear, I missed out on a pretty good party on Friday:
I guess the adults got so tanked that they elected Cherie's kids, Colin and
Claire, to be the Designated Photographers. Here's the results (I just love
the different perspective!):
Pretty good shooting, eh?
So then I finally arrive at the hotel Saturday morning, and we get a pretty
good group shot. Of course, the poor parking valet guy ended up with about five
or six cameras looped around his arm as everybody asked him to take the shot
over and over. Captive photographers such as this and peace signs are standard
at Zama reunions.
Saturday was Seaworld day. Really, the coolest photos were the ones that we
bought from the photo booths at the ends of the rides. Since there wasn't much
of a crowd there, we were able to ride the rides over until we all got the hang
of when to pose for the camera. Who has those photos, anyway? Near the end of
the day some of us pitched in and had a group caricature made. Here we are waiting
patiently for our turn to pose:
Here's the group caricature. Actually, we were underwhelmed. I think Cherie
got the prize for the most inaccurate caricature. That's supposed to be Wayne
Cole, Rob Bishop, Cherie Cole, Scott Pilgrim, Willie Ross and Kevin Kobayashi.
Next up was dinner. We got an extra bonus when some more Zama alums showed up.
Namely, Michelle White (and family), Paul Lautenschlager and Florence (Ohori)
Lautenschlager, and Mike Honeycutt and his wife, Susan.
Next up, watching Wayne play a gig at a local cantina and of course more beer.
The inevitable result of drinking lots of beer and hanging out with your buds
til the wee hours.
It seemed as though I'd only been in SA for a few minutes and already I was
dragging a semi-conscious Wayne from his La-Zy-Boy so we could go get some breakfast
and say bye to everyone.
And then, we hung out at the Hard Rock Cafe as the reunion slowly thinned out.
By noonish it was already time for me to go home. I dropped off Kevin at the
airport on the way out.
That was a lot of fun! Thanks to all my good friends that showed up. I hope
we'll all meet again soon. For you folks who couldn't make it, we missed you,
and I sure hope we'll get another chance to hang out soon!