Adventures Across the USA
Warning: college band geek-ness up ahead. These are the accounts of my travels across the United States these past few weeks with the California Aggie Marching Band, on a mission to support our rather unfortunate UC Davis football team against the universities of Central Arkansas, Montana, and Northeastern. I've written them in various degrees of effort, so if there's anything else you wanna know about, let me know. And you don't have to read them, that's why they're under cuts. I've got some pictures of Arkansas and Montana too; they're on my Facebook page.
Arkansas
What a trip this was! Left Davis and Northern California on a Thursday afternoon, went southward, fell asleep on the bus through Arizona, woke up in New Mexico, then continued through the Texas panhandle and had a good dinner in Oklahoma City (which was a slightly cooler city than I was aware of). Then shortly after that, the bus broke down, and we were stranded at a gas station for the night, with only four hours of driving to the host city of the football game! That was an interesting experience... We had to wait for a new bus to arrive in the morning to drive us, our uniforms and our instruments to Arkansas.
I had never been in the South before, so this was a new experience to me. I'll explain more on that if you want me to, but anyways... The game was at a nice-looking campus in a nice-looking small college town. Everyone there was really friendly to us. The other team's band gave us bottled water and a box of apples to eat in the stands! They were a fun group to hang around with too. After the game, we invited them to play a few songs with us and I think they enjoyed it. Yep...University of Central Arkansas Bear Marching Band...cool group of people.
Showers were provided for us on behalf of the university there. I guess that's just Southern hospitality for ya; we were treated very well by them (though their football team beat us in the final seconds). I think they were blown away by the fact that we would endure a 43-hour bus trip just to support our football team.
That same night, we drove back to Oklahoma City to rest in some motel rooms and wait for the original bus to be fixed. We checked in at about 5:00 a.m. and only got a few hours' sleep. We would get back on the fixed bus about 12 hours later, but in the time we were there, we resorted to wandering around the area then doing a spontaneous gig in front of a home improvement store (just 'cause we needed something to do and the owners didn't mind). It would take another day to get back to Davis and finish this epic trek across the USA, which would be the longest trip that the Cal Aggie Band has taken by bus.
Oh by the way: we walked by a Christian dance party in Oklahoma City the first night we were there. There was a minister/MC there who was like "We got twelve new people here tonight! IN YO' FACE, DEVIL!!" No offense to the Christians reading this, but that was one of the funniest things I heard on the trip.
Montana
I'm guessing that there's nothing else to do in the city of Missoula other than watch the U. Montana football team play whoever they're facing. Heck, I heard that when our bus rolled into town with the words "UC Davis" on the side, people said to each other:
"What's UC Davis??"
"That's the team we're playing today."
Seriously, practically everyone was wearing their school colors. That may have been because it was also their homecoming game, but still... I guess I wasn't surprised when we started being heckled by a lot of the fans there. I was sitting on the edge of the block of seats that we occupied, so I got to hear a lot of "We hate blue and gold teams!" a bit of "You guys are just the opening band, wait 'til the real band comes in the stands" and a "Shut up!" when we were yelling for our team. We didn't say anything to them; it was maddening but we avoided getting any real trouble. Our student director even made sure to pay little attention to the Montana mascot that was slapping him on the butt. But those Montana fans sure didn't seem too cocky when the Aggies took the lead with less than five minutes remaining! ...but then we lost the lead, we got heckled again, and a guy standing next to me told us to "get your gay asses back to California!" Bastard. He even tossed some torn-up newspaper at us, which reminds me of the crumpled-up napkin that was thrown at me earlier in the game.
But not everyone there was hostile towards us. After the game was over, we played bit more in the stands (long after Montana's band had left the stands) and a lot of spectators hanging out on the field gravitated towards us to listen a bit. And as we were marching out of the stadium towards our buses, we got a bit of applause and some free bratwurst, not to mention some showers provided by the university there. I distinctly remember hanging around outside the buses after our showers and this family of Montana fans walking by us. They told us that we were a better band than their own that day. Montana's band was okay, by the way. They were friendly enough and played some good songs though I think that my high school could have put on a better corps-style halftime show. (Granted, I had the privilege of being in one of the best high school bands anywhere...) So anyways...a lot of people there seemed to enjoy our playing a lot.
All the same, it still felt very good to leave later that night. I'm pretty sure that the waiters and gas-station attendants that I met in the evening had less-than-favorable opinions about Californians.
One more thing: the freeway we were taking on the way home was briefly closed in Nevada, due to a crazy truck accident. We were sitting on the buses in a tiny town that consisted of a few gas stations and motels for a long time until we decided to do a completely spontaneous performance. In ten minutes, we threw on our informal uniforms, whipped out our instruments, and played songs next to a gas station for twenty minutes, receiving enthusiastic applause and car horn blasts from the truckers and travelers who were wondering what the hell we were doing. The freeway had re-opened by then, and we thus headed off back home.
Boston
This trip was undertaken by plane. We flew first from Sacramento to Chicago, where a one-hour layover turned into a two-hour delay due to stormy weather in Boston. By the time we had flown in Boston and checked into our hotel it was midnight, but I had already gotten to see some of the city in the darkness. Boston is definitely one of the oldest cities I've ever seen. Everything's made of brick and all the houses and buildings are so close together. That's an interesting sight to someone who's lived his whole life in California.
We had a late dinner/very early breakfast at a restaurant near our hotel. That night (and next morning) we met a lot of people who were friendly enough to welcome us to the east coast. I had pancakes at the restaurant there; for some reason, I listened to the suggestions of my bandmates and in my finite wisdom drank a glass of maple syrup that resembled a shotglass and that was an incredibly dumb thing to do. I had to run to the bathroom and cough up all the syrup that was clogging my throat. What a fine representative of California and UC Davis I was. (That's sarcasm, by the way). 'twas a good laugh though.
Next day we drove in rented cars through downtown Boston (amazing city to look at, will tell more if you want) to the very small stadium owned by Northeastern University. It was smaller than my high school stadium. Granted, it was surrounded by houses, so there wasn't much space for it. There weren't very many people there either. It was kind of sad seeing so few students from Northeastern at the game. Maybe its just 'cause the stadium is far away from the actual campus, I think. What surprised me was that there were a lot of UC Davis fans there too. That was good to see, and they were glad to see us.
While warming up, we heard their pep band (who didn't really say much to us despite our "Hello"s when they first walked by us) play a song that we also play. This immediately prompted us to rush into the bleachers and start playing tunes back-and-forth across the field. A lot of their songs I recognized as having played in my high school pep band. We did this until the game started and continued during halftime. There was no halftime show from them, just a break in the game. There was also plenty of rain there. None of us really seemed to mind the rain, though, we were all having a good time even though the Aggies would eventually loose big time.
After playing more in the stands and chatting with the other UC Davis fans, we immediately went back to the airport since our flight was departing in a few hours. Our clothes were soaking wet so this was a good opportunity to change. After six hours and a drive from San Francisco's airport through the Bay Area we were back home, and it was still Saturday.
-------
All in all, I'm really glad I went on all these trips. It was exciting to see many places I had never seen before. America's such a big country, and a lot of people don't get to visit places outside their own state. And as corny as this will sound, I'm proud to be a part of my marching band. We received good compliments almost everywhere we played at, several of them coming from the other bands. And we stood our ground when we were being abused, both verbally and a little bit physically. This was all such a good experience and I'm all the better for having experienced it.
Arkansas
What a trip this was! Left Davis and Northern California on a Thursday afternoon, went southward, fell asleep on the bus through Arizona, woke up in New Mexico, then continued through the Texas panhandle and had a good dinner in Oklahoma City (which was a slightly cooler city than I was aware of). Then shortly after that, the bus broke down, and we were stranded at a gas station for the night, with only four hours of driving to the host city of the football game! That was an interesting experience... We had to wait for a new bus to arrive in the morning to drive us, our uniforms and our instruments to Arkansas.
I had never been in the South before, so this was a new experience to me. I'll explain more on that if you want me to, but anyways... The game was at a nice-looking campus in a nice-looking small college town. Everyone there was really friendly to us. The other team's band gave us bottled water and a box of apples to eat in the stands! They were a fun group to hang around with too. After the game, we invited them to play a few songs with us and I think they enjoyed it. Yep...University of Central Arkansas Bear Marching Band...cool group of people.
Showers were provided for us on behalf of the university there. I guess that's just Southern hospitality for ya; we were treated very well by them (though their football team beat us in the final seconds). I think they were blown away by the fact that we would endure a 43-hour bus trip just to support our football team.
That same night, we drove back to Oklahoma City to rest in some motel rooms and wait for the original bus to be fixed. We checked in at about 5:00 a.m. and only got a few hours' sleep. We would get back on the fixed bus about 12 hours later, but in the time we were there, we resorted to wandering around the area then doing a spontaneous gig in front of a home improvement store (just 'cause we needed something to do and the owners didn't mind). It would take another day to get back to Davis and finish this epic trek across the USA, which would be the longest trip that the Cal Aggie Band has taken by bus.
Oh by the way: we walked by a Christian dance party in Oklahoma City the first night we were there. There was a minister/MC there who was like "We got twelve new people here tonight! IN YO' FACE, DEVIL!!" No offense to the Christians reading this, but that was one of the funniest things I heard on the trip.
Montana
I'm guessing that there's nothing else to do in the city of Missoula other than watch the U. Montana football team play whoever they're facing. Heck, I heard that when our bus rolled into town with the words "UC Davis" on the side, people said to each other:
"What's UC Davis??"
"That's the team we're playing today."
Seriously, practically everyone was wearing their school colors. That may have been because it was also their homecoming game, but still... I guess I wasn't surprised when we started being heckled by a lot of the fans there. I was sitting on the edge of the block of seats that we occupied, so I got to hear a lot of "We hate blue and gold teams!" a bit of "You guys are just the opening band, wait 'til the real band comes in the stands" and a "Shut up!" when we were yelling for our team. We didn't say anything to them; it was maddening but we avoided getting any real trouble. Our student director even made sure to pay little attention to the Montana mascot that was slapping him on the butt. But those Montana fans sure didn't seem too cocky when the Aggies took the lead with less than five minutes remaining! ...but then we lost the lead, we got heckled again, and a guy standing next to me told us to "get your gay asses back to California!" Bastard. He even tossed some torn-up newspaper at us, which reminds me of the crumpled-up napkin that was thrown at me earlier in the game.
But not everyone there was hostile towards us. After the game was over, we played bit more in the stands (long after Montana's band had left the stands) and a lot of spectators hanging out on the field gravitated towards us to listen a bit. And as we were marching out of the stadium towards our buses, we got a bit of applause and some free bratwurst, not to mention some showers provided by the university there. I distinctly remember hanging around outside the buses after our showers and this family of Montana fans walking by us. They told us that we were a better band than their own that day. Montana's band was okay, by the way. They were friendly enough and played some good songs though I think that my high school could have put on a better corps-style halftime show. (Granted, I had the privilege of being in one of the best high school bands anywhere...) So anyways...a lot of people there seemed to enjoy our playing a lot.
All the same, it still felt very good to leave later that night. I'm pretty sure that the waiters and gas-station attendants that I met in the evening had less-than-favorable opinions about Californians.
One more thing: the freeway we were taking on the way home was briefly closed in Nevada, due to a crazy truck accident. We were sitting on the buses in a tiny town that consisted of a few gas stations and motels for a long time until we decided to do a completely spontaneous performance. In ten minutes, we threw on our informal uniforms, whipped out our instruments, and played songs next to a gas station for twenty minutes, receiving enthusiastic applause and car horn blasts from the truckers and travelers who were wondering what the hell we were doing. The freeway had re-opened by then, and we thus headed off back home.
Boston
This trip was undertaken by plane. We flew first from Sacramento to Chicago, where a one-hour layover turned into a two-hour delay due to stormy weather in Boston. By the time we had flown in Boston and checked into our hotel it was midnight, but I had already gotten to see some of the city in the darkness. Boston is definitely one of the oldest cities I've ever seen. Everything's made of brick and all the houses and buildings are so close together. That's an interesting sight to someone who's lived his whole life in California.
We had a late dinner/very early breakfast at a restaurant near our hotel. That night (and next morning) we met a lot of people who were friendly enough to welcome us to the east coast. I had pancakes at the restaurant there; for some reason, I listened to the suggestions of my bandmates and in my finite wisdom drank a glass of maple syrup that resembled a shotglass and that was an incredibly dumb thing to do. I had to run to the bathroom and cough up all the syrup that was clogging my throat. What a fine representative of California and UC Davis I was. (That's sarcasm, by the way). 'twas a good laugh though.
Next day we drove in rented cars through downtown Boston (amazing city to look at, will tell more if you want) to the very small stadium owned by Northeastern University. It was smaller than my high school stadium. Granted, it was surrounded by houses, so there wasn't much space for it. There weren't very many people there either. It was kind of sad seeing so few students from Northeastern at the game. Maybe its just 'cause the stadium is far away from the actual campus, I think. What surprised me was that there were a lot of UC Davis fans there too. That was good to see, and they were glad to see us.
While warming up, we heard their pep band (who didn't really say much to us despite our "Hello"s when they first walked by us) play a song that we also play. This immediately prompted us to rush into the bleachers and start playing tunes back-and-forth across the field. A lot of their songs I recognized as having played in my high school pep band. We did this until the game started and continued during halftime. There was no halftime show from them, just a break in the game. There was also plenty of rain there. None of us really seemed to mind the rain, though, we were all having a good time even though the Aggies would eventually loose big time.
After playing more in the stands and chatting with the other UC Davis fans, we immediately went back to the airport since our flight was departing in a few hours. Our clothes were soaking wet so this was a good opportunity to change. After six hours and a drive from San Francisco's airport through the Bay Area we were back home, and it was still Saturday.
-------
All in all, I'm really glad I went on all these trips. It was exciting to see many places I had never seen before. America's such a big country, and a lot of people don't get to visit places outside their own state. And as corny as this will sound, I'm proud to be a part of my marching band. We received good compliments almost everywhere we played at, several of them coming from the other bands. And we stood our ground when we were being abused, both verbally and a little bit physically. This was all such a good experience and I'm all the better for having experienced it.