June 28th, which was a Sunday, was the Riders last appearance here in the Keystone State for the year. The day was hot and muggy with chances of storms throughout the day.

Hershey Park is part of the home of the Hershey Corporation which makes the world famous chocolate bars and other goodies (including pasta, hot dogs, etc....) The Riders put on two one hour shows along with Cledus T. Judd at the ampitheatre towards the back end of the park. Unfortunately whomever the park designers were had a rather large lapse of common sense because the company built their brand new roller coaster right next to the performing stage of the ampitheatre. Go figure....

Anyway, Darrell and I scoped out the venue for seats, sales table, etc... and saw the guys tuning up. Ranger Doug waved to me from the stage when he saw me standing at the back of the seating area. Darrell and I then proceeded to take in a few of the more sedate rides until it was time to line up for seats.

We managed seats in the fourth row left side of the stage for both shows. I figured that if we sat there both times that the Riders would finally figure out that they had some honest to goodness Cyberpals in their midst. Well after screaming myself silly and hoarse for both hours they did.

Unfortunately for them the roller coaster did start to drown them out on some of the ballads. Since they really dont' plug any of their instruments in for sound it was difficult to dear some of hte softer music. And just about everytime the coaster came by you could see one of the guys kind of look up and behind with a grimace.

Great sets of songs though....a couple of Gene Autry tunes (You Are My Sunshine); Rawhide (and its bowling version); Surfin USA; Sidemeats version of Andrew Lloyd Webers musical numbers; plus my request shouted out when they asked for them during the show Riding The Winds Of The West. (Thank you Ranger Doug for recoginizing that we were there!). He also played Riding on the Rio from his solo album and said that Warner Records had actually released it as a single and that some radio stations were actually playing it. When I yelled hooray about that he look over and told everyone else that I was one of the three people who actully bought the album.

After all the great music came standing in line to see them. Joey was not there this time (he was touring Europe at the moment). But the minute Slim caught sight of us it was "Hey how are you and where's the ice cream?" I got a great hug and Darrell a good handshake. We chatted wth them a few minutes after each show. The second time they came out wearing Hershey bar T shirts and their cowboy hats and boots (What a combination!). We told them we would next see them in Blowing Rock NC at the Tweetsie RR in August. After that we had to leave for home.