This Saturday is the Capitol Gay Pride Parade in Washington DC. It will be 14 years since I went to my first one. Let's review.
1998: Went with Ag, Carl and Harley (
and older couple we knew from Headquarters), and two other guys my age that were friends with them that I didn't know so well: Arnie and Jeff.
1999: Went with Ag, Amie (
on her only trip) and Johnnie (
on his first). Didn't actually get to the Parade, as I had car trouble on the way down, had to be towed back to Waynesboro and then we drove down in Ag's car. Made it in time for the Pride Festival (
which in those days immediately followed the Parade. Now it's the next day).
2000: Went with Ag, Johnnie (
again) and his friend Paul.
2001: Went with Ag, Johnnie (
his last time), Jen (
a girl I worked with at Borders), two guys we knew from Deer Park Randy and Brian. Met my friend Mark down there and he hung with us. Also met a college girl named Kendra on the metro. She was by herself and we kind of adopted her and she hung out with us the whole day.
2002: Went with Ag, met Mark down there and he hung with us again.
2003: Did not go, because I was in the wedding of Mr. And Mrs. A Local Celebrity, Mr. David ParisPeking.
2004: Went with Ag. Spent the weekend down there in a hotel right on DuPont Circle cause Saturday was the Parade, Sunday day was the Festival and Sunday night was a Madonna concert that Ag and I had tickets for. Could one HAVE a more gayer weekend (
even though it did not, unfortunately, include any of teh gay sechs).
2005: Went with Ag.
2006: Went with Ag, my friend Gar and his boyfriend at the time Troy (
you can find out all about him by going the Labels over in the sidebar and clicking on the first one "T").
2007: Went with Ag and that total loser she ended up marrying, Andrew. Yeah, what a fun time that was.
2008: Went with Michelle, her brother, his girlfriend at the time Kara, and the sexy, blonde, English Conrad.
2009: Went with StratCat (
her first time).
2010: Went by myself. Had a fun time, but it just wasn't the same without someone there to enjoy it with me. Right after the Parade ended, I did meet up with the FABulous VUBOQ for a few short minutes.
2011: Went with StratCat and her cousin CC. VUBOQ joined us and watched a good portion of the parade with us.
2012: And this year, I'll be going with StratCat and CC (
again) but this time with CC's son Josh, and "Viva-La-Swirl" Paul and his insanely cute boyfriend Travis! YAY!
Wow, I had no idea I took that many people with me over the years. By my count, I took 25 different people to the Parade over the years
(including this year's upcoming one). And of those 25, 11 were straight, 14 were gay and 5 of them I took multiple times. Hmm, interesting stats (
at least to me).
If I get up the motivation, I may scan a some photos from past trips for a post tomorrow night, who knows?
POLT