Day 37

Date: June 20, 2011

Time: 10:56pm (CST)

Playing on iTunes: "Etude Op. 10 No. 8" by Frédéric Chopin

Location: Lubbock, TX

Recent Trip: 370 miles

Look at how dry the ground is...

Welcome to more dry Texas!! The more west we get, the drier the air gets and the more sand we encounter. The pit set up today right outside of what looks like a desert. Throughout our entire rehearsal I was constantly spitting out dirt that was being blown in my face/mouth from the wind. It was getting all in my eyes and I was having trouble seeing for a small portion. Luckily our morning block was short. 

Today was our first laundry day. We were going to have a short morning block, lunch, then head off to the laundromats! Today the corps was also going to the movie theaters to see our performance of last night! A very exciting day ahead of us.

Where we rehearsed

Taylor took the morning block to tune his timapni

This was my first laundromat experience. Nothing out of the normal though, seemed to be pretty simple. I mean it’s not like I haven’t done laundry before. Just a little weird having to put money onto a card and swipe the card to get your washer to work. BUT the best part was that the drying was FREE!! Made me (and probably my dad) happy. I got to roam the streets of Lubbock while waiting for my laundry to finish. Myself along with a few others in the drum line went to Whataburger. I highly enjoyed this stop because I got a Whataburger Jr. and I “Whatasized” it for 79 cents more. Hahahaha I got a real chuckle out of it, because instead of “Supersizing” your meal from McDonalds, you “Whatasize” it from Whataburger. Just something about saying “Can I Whatasize that as well, please?” is just very entertaining.

After finishing with my laundry I went to go put it back in my luggage, but couldn’t find it on the truck...umm where is it? Well apparently when I put it outside of the drum bus, the horn line bus must have thought it was supposed to go on their bus so they put it on their bus. My fault, should have just put it on the bus instead of leaving it outside. Live and learn.

We’re off to the movies to watch our performance of the night before. I was very anxious because of the feeling I got from performing I wanted to see how it came out to the audience. After seeing all of the other corps before us (Cavaliers, Crown, Blue Devils) I was getting more excited about our show because they all had great shows and I felt that every corps is doing something different this year and we’re all very prepared from the start. Getting to see the Cadets from the audience perspective was great. There were a few things that we needed to fix but those had been addressed at rehearsal. I’m glad I could finally hear and see what the instructors are talking about in rehearsal all day. 


After seeing all 8 corps perform, I was very proud of all of them because of all the hard work they put into their show. Every single group had their ups and downs, but overall the majority of the corps had a very well performed show. And since it’s drum corps, there is scoring. I’m not very partial to competition but for anyone who would like to know he scores from the first two G8 shows, here they are:
(scores out of 100pts)

G8 Saginaw (1st night)

1) 74.65 - Carolina Crown 

2) 74.3 - Cavaliers 

3) 74.05 - Blue Devils 

4) 71.05 - Cadets 

5) 69.95 - Phantom Regiment 

6) 68.9 - Bluecoats 

7) 68.45 - Santa Clara Vanguard 

8) 64.75 - Blue Stars

G8 Round Rock (2nd night)

1) 74.35 - Cavaliers 

2) 72.6 - Cadets 

3) 72.55 - Blue Devils 

4) 70.6 - Carolina Crown 

5) 70.15 - Blue Coats 

6) 69.1 - Phantom Regiment

7) 67.5 - Santa Clara Vanguard 
8) 66.2 - Blue Stars

As I see it, our score went up by one point from the first night to the second night. What that means in terms of grading...I don’t know specifically. But the only thing we can really do is to take the critique from the judge tapes and fix what we need to fix to create a perfect show for our audience members as well as our corps members. That’s my goal, to put 100% into everything I do with this group to succeed as one unit. Not to beat the other corps, but to get better and better every night. I have a feeling with the passion this year’s corps has, we can easily do that.

Off to Rio Rancho, NM!! (more dry...)

Thought of the Day: “At the end of the day, it’s about how hard you worked, not how hard the others worked.”