Day 79

Date: August 1, 2011

Time: 11:49pm (EST)

Playing on iTunes: "I Gotta Feeling" by the Black Eyed Peas

Location: Salem, VA

Recent Trip: 190 miles

Hello August! I cannot believe it is finally August. Feels like it was just yesterday I was at spring training in Johnstown, PA learning the show music...well take advantage of  these last days.

Welcome to Virginia! I didn’t know it was so mountainess here. It’s very beautiful, and I’m absolutely loving the weather. We’re finally heading back north where it’s actually cold in the morning. Not 90 degrees at 7a like in Texas.

The pit got a prime zone today. We overlooked the town and mountains. Such a great view to see while rehearsing all day. There were a lot of interesting things here to see. Such as this praying mantis in the parking lot...HUGE bug. Also if you look below, you see this fish pond. The fish were very large for how big the little pond (or pool if you will) was. Not sure what kind of fish they were but they were very cool. 

While the acoustic keyboards were working on a few changes in the music, the rest of the pit was painting racks and gong/bass drum stands so that they look good. They’ve been loaded, unloaded, moved, etc everywhere for the past 80 days. They are going to get some nicks and scratches. It’s time to paint them so they look good. That was the goal for the rest of the pit today. Let me tell you, they look amazing. Good job pit!! 

There was some down time for the pit since we got everything done we needed to so we decided to play some wiffle ball. Wiffle ball is a past time in the CPit. There have been alumni visiting from the 90’s wondering why we didn’t have a wiffle ball bat and ball. So one rest stop I picked up a wiffleball batt and ball and we have now played since we had some extra time. Iain and Mike Zellers were team captains. The teams were perfect since we had 18 people to play. Perfect number for baseball. The game turned out to be 8 runs (the other team) and 4 runs (my team). The bases were loaded and I was up. Iain came over to me, rubbed my shoulders and said “This is your time. Don’t ruin it. This is your time. Let’s do it.” So the pitch comes in. Strike one. Pitch number two comes in. Ball. The last pitch, swing...and FOUL ONTO THE SCHOOL ROOF AND INTO THE GUTTER... Looks like I pulled a Sandlot on that (for any of you movie buffs). Guess we couldn’t play anymore. So I ended up ruining the game for us, but we still had fun and got the ball later on! Great past time for the pit. We all like to have some fun in the craziness of drum corps.

Thought of the Day: "It takes hard work to be great. As simple as that. No cutting corners."