Hey.. is anyone here a pipeliner by any chance?

[ADraeger]

I know it's a weird question... but I have an interesting story to go with it...

My first faire experience was at TRF when I was 13 (1999).  My parents took me.  Dad was a huge cowboy and, at the time, was a ROW boss on a huge pipeline project around Houston (Chief or Super Chief Inspector.. can't remember which...).  As we were walking up to the entrance, looks of shock and 'what in the heck?' expressions crossed over my Dad's face as he kept running into guys from the pipeline (mostly from the contractor's side, I believe) - all of them that we ran into were dressed in pretty elaborate garb from what I can remember, which added to the 'what the heck?' look on Dad's face (nevermind that he was in blue jeans, wrangler long sleeve shirt, cowboy boots and cowboy hat... all of which stuck out like a sore thumb there lol ).  I noticed that once we were inside, there were some more people in garb attempting to hide from Dad.  Others walked up with a smile to shake his hand, but still had the look of 'oh crap what's he doing here?' on their face. 

Point to all this - Dad and I were talking about this the other day.  I thought all this time that those guys were shocked to see Dad b/c the RenFaire was the last place they expected to see him (which is true) and b/c they didn't want him to see them in garb (he probably would've teased them about it if he hadn't run into so many) - which may be true as well.  But, I found out from Dad that the real kicker was the guys were supposed to be working on the pipeline.  As it was a renfaire day, however, the guys told the contractor to take a hike and skipped work to go to the faire. lol   ((You guys are my heroes, by the way. haha ) 

Anyways, just wanted to see if any of you guys might be on here by any chance.

[Celtic Lady]

  What a great story. I had a good chuckle from that. Thanks, I really needed it today.

[ADraeger]

You're more than welcome. lol  I've been laughing about it for two days now. 

[Joyce "Delfinia DuSwallow" Howard]

That indeed was a funny story,thanks.