After the Aires' epic Spring Tour to Hawaii last year, expectations for this year's California Tour were high. The 2002 Hawaii Tour was one of the greatest trips in recent memory-twelve days under the tropical sun with a few shows here and there. As a direct result of these weeks on our bank account, however, the California Tour Manager had quite a different task on his hands. Instead of two weeks in tropical paradise, the Aires would spend ten busy days traveling from one city to the next, with the hopes of making a few bucks, having a great time, and entertaining friends, family, and alumni.

The Aires landed in Los Angeles, California on March 15. After picking up their 15 passenger van and minivan, we drove an hour and a half to Tour Manager, Sean "Hilo" MacMannis' (son of Don MacMannis, Aires '70) house to spend the night. By noon the next day we were already well on our way to the San Francisco Bay Area. That night, after a barbecue at the beautiful Palo Alto home of Aires alumnus, Al Henning '77, we sang our first show for the Dartmouth Club of Silicon Valley. We sang next at Castilleja School, an all-girls high school down the road from the Hennings' place. After spending the day sightseeing in San Francisco, we sang one of our favorite shows of the tour for a very large and excited audience in the SALT Building for the Alumni Club of San Francisco. After this show, we drove over the Bay Bridge to party with the Golden Overtones, a girls' group from Berkeley. Thank god for short institutional memory...

The next day was spent driving back to Santa Barbara. We spent two more nights at Sean's house and sang two shows. The first was for Laguna Blanca School in an outdoor amphitheatre. The second show was at the beautiful Montecito Country Club for 100 or so of the MacMannis' closest friends, who made a fabulous audience. Next, the Aires were the VIP guests of Marc "Dojo" Bruni '99 at the taping of TV show, Everybody Loves Raymond. We performed for the audience and some of our freshmen humiliated themselves for fantastic Ray Romano related prizes! That night, we sang for our supper at this tasty fish restaurant that happened to have a bunch of models hanging out on the patio. Pausing only to down a round of free tequila shots, we got out back as soon as possible and shamelessly sang to as many beautiful women as we could find. We did three more shows in three nights, visiting Alumni in Pasadena, La Jolla, and Newport Beach. After all that driving, we were ready for a break. And by break, we mean paintball. We spent Monday shooting each other in the face with high velocity balls of paint--a great way to make sure none of us would forget this spring tour...at least not until the welts faded.

We'd like to thank everyone who put us up on tour and all those who helped us out in any way...Hope to see you again in 3 years!