Friday, June 22, 2007

High School Reunion: The final countdown!

Hello, everybody. There have been some great events happening in June so far as summer is officially underway: Paris Hilton back in jail...the disappointing "Sopranos" finale...the San Antonio Spurs winning their fourth NBA title by sweeping the Cleveland Cavaliers...

But we're now less than 48 hours away from the month's biggest event (well, to me), and that is the West Valley High School class of 1997 reunion on Saturday and Sunday! Many alums like myself who still reside in Alaska, as well as others from many parts of the country and the world have descended here to Fairbanks to take part in this.

Now it may be a two-day event with a get-together at The Annex on Saturday night followed by a picnic and BBQ at Pioneer Park on Sunday, but thanks to an e-mail invite I got from Averi Beckner (she was Averi Benson when we graduated), things will really get underway tomorrow night (Friday) with a pre-reunion party she's throwing at the Red Fox bar just a few blocks from my house.

For the last year now, fellow graduate Keely Buchanan has been busy as a bee planning every detail of the reunion as well as getting in touch with almost every one of us possible about this big weekend coming up. Unfortunately, only three people won't ever make it to this reunion or the 20-year one planned for 2017; Lyndsay Thomas, Matt Dullian, and Luke Sulkosky have all left us over the course of those ten years. But they will be there in spirit, and never be forgotten.

When we took the walk on May 28, 1997, things were completely different. "ER" was the #1 television show; high-speed Internet was expensive; DVDs were about to hit the market; iPod, TiVo, or YouTube weren't even in our vocabulary; and Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears, and Paris Hilton were all just innocent kids. And now this weekend, me and the rest of the class of '97 will be reliving and reminiscing about the good times we spent together at West Valley from when we came as freshmen in 1993 to when we got our diplomas.

Last year, it was me finally running the Midnight Sun Run; the summer before that, two weeks of beating the heat in the South; and in 2000, round two with Britney Spears in Los Angeles. This weekend, on June 23-24, 2007, another chapter will be written into the book of memorable summer events in my life with the class reunion that is a decade in the making.

Will some of the grads who never got the news about the reunion be coming in even at the last minute to join us? And most of all...what do we look like now? For the next 72 hours starting with the pre-party tomorrow, these questions and many more will be answered.

And of course, I'll have a complete recap of everything on Monday, as well as photos from that historic weekend. Till then, so long and stay strong!

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