Day 83

Date: August 5, 2011

Time: 11:02pm (EST)

Playing on iTunes: "Heysátan" by Sigur Rós

Location: Allendale, NJ

Recent Trip: 240 miles

We’re back at our old site here at Northern Highlands high school. We were back here on Day 28. It’s interesting coming back to the same place but much further along in the tour. This was our first full uniform performance for the public. Now we’re here again to rehearse before our Allentown regional. Some kids in the corps have told me that this show for them is bigger than finals! I cannot wait. It’s our home show at J. Birney Crum stadium in Allentown, PA. This is a huge venue especially for the marching music activity so we need to make sure we’re ready to give the crowd what they’ve been waiting for. An amazing show.

After we spent a good chunk of morning block working on our warm up pit tunes, we started to break down the pit feature. It was the first time we had really broken it down that much in a while. This was just to make sure we weren’t checking out on it and make sure it sounds perfect. Once we finished polishing the pit feature, we moved to the field for percussion ensemble. Percussion ensemble finished and we had a little over an hour to ourselves before we had to get together with the brass. So we decided to relax a bit and play some wiffle ball. Before we played, though, Iain had us all listen to the percussion judge’s tape from last night. It was great to hear a tape with the rest of the pit there. I haven’t really listened to any other tapes this season so it was also cool to hear what the judge had to say.

Our wiffle ball game went great!! I didn’t ruin the game this time. After a few rounds of back and forth runs between the teams, my team came up on top by 2 points and I was last at bat and gave us 2 more insurance runs...even though we had to finish the game. It was just a great time to relax and enjoy our time together with the pit outside of rehearsal.

Tonight we got an amazing dinner! When I walked to ensemble I smelled something I hadn’t smelled in a long time. That was the smell of charcoal!! A huge charcoal grill was set up and what were they going to grill other than STEAK!! I started watering at the mouth since I hadn’t had steak since I left for tour. I used to live off of it and it hasn’t been served on tour yet. So that was something to look forward too after our ensemble block. 

Ensemble went great since we got to do a practice push on the field followed by run through and practice push off the field. Again this is essential for the pit because although we’ve been doing this for 50 days of tour, there is still more to improve on and we definitely have gotten better at it.

The steak, must I say, was AMAZING. As you can see below, they gave us surf and turf with the seafood noodles. First gourmet meal in a long time. Tasted amazing!

So I cannot believe I did not blog about this when we received the shirts, it must have just slipped my mind. But back in Westchester, PA, we received our pit shirts for 2011! Every year the section leader of the pit creates a design for the shirts and the pit receives matching shirts so we have something that is meaningful for us as pit members. Here is the 2011 pit shirt: 

FRONT

BACK

The back side of the pit shirt says "Having more fun than your section since 1982".  This is on every pit shirt. The quote comes from the origin of the pit. Front ensembles in drum corps started in 1982 and they are usually known as the "fun" section of the drum corps.


Now we’re on our way tomorrow to the New Meadowlands Stadium to get in a few blocks of rehearsal before our Northeast Districts in Allentown, PA.

Thought of the Day: "You never achieve success unless you like what you are doing" - Dale Carnegie