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racine holiday parade
Racine, WI
November 12, 2005
Marching in the Parade
I was recently given the assignment from the higher authorities to
attend a parade up in Racine, Wisconsin, and of course that meant I would
be wearing my sandtrooper armor for the very first time as a member of the
Midwest Garrison (and 501st Legion). No matter how small of an event this
might have turned out to be, this was going to be a most memorable
evening.
I picked up Chris Spice around 3:00pm at his house, and we headed up on
to Racine. The drive only took us about thirty minutes, and after we
arrived there we unloaded the car and headed on into the store we were
going to be working out of. When we were walking through a back alley to
go inside the back of the store, we noticed that Trent (who plays the role
of Darth Vader) locked his keys in his Hyundai. It took about twenty
minutes or so to get into his car, and thankfully Mike Washko was able to
get into it using a coat hanger.
 After
that was taken care of it was time to start suiting up for the big parade.
Spice and I were thinking it was going to be a small parade that would be
over in thirty minutes, but we were totally wrong. The parade ended up
being quite a long parade, especially for a small city such as Racine.
Walking down the streets, seeing all the great reactions from kids and
adults, was truly a wonderful experience to be a part of. Knowing that
they're so excited to see stormtroopers, sandtroopers and other Star Wars
characters walking through the streets of their town, must have been a
thrilling and exciting moment for them too. The only downfall of the
entire evening was actually two things... 1) we had to wait more than
thirty minutes in the parking lot before we started moving in the parade,
and 2) it was raining pretty much the entire evening. However, that didn't
stop any of us from having a good time.
Hanging Out at the Store
 Once
the parade was over we all headed back to the store, to help promote the
Star Wars items they had on sale. I couldn't believe how many people were
coming into the store! Yeah, they might have only wanted to get a closer
look at our costumes, but they were buying up all sorts of cool looking
Star Wars collectibles. I hope that having us hang out in their store
brought them a huge surge in store sales. Some of us hung outside in the
front of the store (on the sidewalk), and we were stopping all sorts of
people who were trying to get by the store. I was courageous and was right
on the street, waving people to "move along," and also sticking out my
thumb to see if anyone would stop and give me a lift somewhere (just for
fun of course).
In Summary
From what I had suspected would have been a so-so evening, it actually
turned out to be a great deal of fun for me. I had actually made it into
the local newspaper there, and you can see me
taking aim at some locals who were enjoying the parade. I was totally
surprised at how many people showed up with the cold rain that was coming
down on us. I know that people in my neighborhood would never even think
about standing outside in the cold rain like that. The citizens of Racine
sure do know how to have a good time.
Photo Gallery
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