Where to start?

I guess the Kentucky Derby would be a good place.

After a lot of traveling during the Winter and Spring to places like Las Vegas, Chicago, Vancouver, Nashville and LA (all to do different types of gigs) I thought it would be nice to have some sort of non-working getaway. As luck would have it, I received an invitation from Tricia Barnstable-Brown of Louisville to join a celebrity guest list for the Derby and surrounding fun-filled days. It was all expenses paid for me and one friend, so I offered this dream come true vaction to my dear friend Tracy Pucci. For those of you who do not know her, she has been stylist and close friend to both Nancy and I for seventeen years, beginning way back in the 'Heart' album days.

Tracy and I got really excited about the "girl" aspects of attending America's most famous horserace...things like our hats for Derby day, and our gowns for the black tie gala on Derby eve. We ordered our special hats six weeks in advance from a fine milliner named Jill Henning (you can find her website online if you're interested. She is truly an artist.) As the weekend drew close, the huge round boxes arrived...

My LORD we're actually going to wear these things!!

What if they don't fit in the airline overhead bin? Well, Tracy and I are nothing if not adventurers, so we blasted off from Seattle early one morning bound for Louisville KY...or as we came to find out "Loo-a-vull".

Yes the gigantic hatboxes did just barely fit in the overhead bins, and everywhere along our route people asked "going to the Derby?" When we got our connecting flight in Minneapolis/St. Paul suddenly we were swimming in a sea of hatboxes. There was real excitement in the air, and I noticed more that just a little bit of bourbon being ordered...

Ann