HATTIESBURG, MISSISSIPPI

Happy Birthday DAD !!!

I haven't got a clue what time we got here this morning. I hardly ever wake up when we get to our destination. Breakfast was biscuits & Gravy (YUCK!) All of the mere love it. I don't think this would go so well when we take Jubal to the States. There's a lot of food we would eat, but this just wouldn't be our thing I guess!
The corps did a SYSTEM BLUE CLINIC today.

They have organized a series of three of these clinics throughout this year's tour. I attended the previous one in Tulsa (Oklahoma) briefly. It's pretty much an inside look at what Blue Devils is all about. Pat Seidling is brought in to coordinate the event and introduce the staff people, tell the attendees a little bit of background of the corps and gets to give away some free stuff such as caps, lanyards and drum sticks. Most attendees at the clinic are marching band students from regional high schools or college bands. All of them join the rehearsal segment of the section they like best for warm-ups and secional rehearsal. Some of the drummers even got to play in the lines. Today there were about 110 students present.

After sectional time everyone got together in the stadium for ensemble rehearsal and runthrough. It's all more like an open house rehearsal, where staff explain about how the corps works, whay they do and why they do it, where the members are from (there's only one member from the state of Mississippi in the corps). Some of the students got to run around in the field and get an up-close look at "their" line. The instructor stayed close to them to make sure they wouldn't get hit.

Getting an inside look at this organization is very interesting for the students. About half of them had never even seen a drumcorps perform or rehearse before at all. I got to see some runs of segments of the show that I hadn' seen before.
Fortunately we didn't have to feed these students this time like we had done in Tulsa. I think only at the show and clinic in Buffalo we're feeding them hotdogs and salads again.

The evening's show was very well attended for a show in this part of the country.
Last week Carolina Crown was struck with some virus in the corps and had to pull out of a show. Tonight both Mandarins and the Glassmen had to pull out. I text messaged to Marcel, but he's doing fine. It was mainly members from the brassbus and he's on the color guard bus (I wonder why...). Glassmen haven't had much time for visual rehearsal since San Antonio.

Other corps at the show were Boston Crusaders (they have a color guard to check out!!), Bluecoats (I think I know their show now,.. I have pretty much seen them at EVERY show so far), The Academy, the Crossmen (who have a long way to go, but are quite entertaining, Phantom Regiment (the defending World Champions (now struggling around seventh place), the Holy Name Cadets (I must admit,.. they're playing my favourite music: Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story), and of course the Blue Devils.
Scores went up again. BD are at 92.95 right now, Holy Name Cadets at 91.3 points. Still a decent lead! We're heading out to Antioch, Tennessee tonight. It's going to be a loooooooooooong drive of well over 420 miles!

Tomorrow morning we'll have another food order coming in. That should be fun! I will try and video-tape some of that so you get an idea. It's probably going to be about $ 5000 worth of stuff, which will have to get us through the next week!


Enjoy,

HK