MOSQUITO BITES

Oh my god… You won’t believe how many bugs we have out here in Kansas! It’s absolutely ridiculous! Thousands of mosquitos. It’s almost as if the state was hit by a plague. Every member got stung a lot on the field, and so did we! Tonight at the show it was even worse!

I was talking to SCV staff member (and former drum major) Stuart Shulman before their show and he said they had cancelled their rehearsal after lunch today. Their housing site was near a marsh, so their mosquito invasion was even worse than ours! They had called the show sponsor and claimed another rehearsal site, otherwise they wouldn’t have come to the show at all.

I stayed up way too late last night with Kelly (Ricky Odello’s fiancée) and Rudy Garcia (snare tech) and had a couple of drinks on our bus.
I missed breakfast. For some reason the ladies on Devils Food let me sleep in a bit. They probably know about my short nights. I’m better at cooking lunch and dinner anyways.

However… tomorrow we have Breakfast Pizza on the menu! MY FAVOURITE!!
So I will make sure I am up then! No problem,… because we’re having brunch at 11AM, so everyone gets to sleep in a little. You would expect this top-corps would be up early and out on the field by 9 every day, but it’s all really very relaxed out here. There are a lot of days on tour that we skip breakfast and go straight into brunch at 11 or even 12:30. It also depends on the miles we have driven overnight though. The long hauls of 500+ miles take well over 10 hours. It’s a good thing we usually get to stay at the same place for two days after such distances.

The upcoming days will be back to back shows and nights on the road, however. We’re on our way to Nebraska now, then South Dakota, and Minneapolis Minnesota afterwards.

Today there was construction work in some road in the part of town our host school “Valley Center High School” is situated in, and in the whole are the water was shut down. Fortunately it came back on before rehearsal was over, because in this heat a shower was an absolute MUST!
On Devils Food the temperatures rose to 100 degrees (Fahrenheit). That would be about 37 in Celsius.


This was one of the very few days that the corps did NOT do a full runthrough at the end of rehearsal. They did go over all segments, including the new uniform change for the color guard that was going to be done for the first time at the show tonight.




Dinner was chicken fritters and chicken & gravy with green beans and the daily salad bar. For the vegetarians we had something that looked like spare ribs (or like our Dutch snacks: Mexicanos).
Apparently very tasty, because they loved them.




The showsite in Hutchinson was about 45 minutes away. We stayed there for the same show last year. I remember going to that air & space museum they have behind the stadium.
There were only 6 corps at the show. Ross Viner (the show coordinator) said that even though they had spent an extra $3000 on advertising, they simply couldn’t fill the stands. In fact there were a lot fewer people here than at last year’s show!
It was good to see the other DCI representatives that I have met over the years there too: Scott Speelman (you’d think he must have Dutch ancestors) and ………….. Very friendly guys!
Another DCI guy that has become a good friend is announcer Dan Potter. Always a pleasure to see him at shows too!



Seeing Vivian Whittaker (Yohoooooooooooooo Viv with his Union Jack) at show is a lot of fun. This crazy Brit travels with the Glassmen evry single summer. I think he has done this ever since his daughter marched. When the corps enters the field he waves his flag in the stands. I remember he brought a Dutch flag when we toured DCII in 2006!

DCI media contactperson Diane Peasel had promised me my media credentials for the remainder of the season would be waiting for me at the will call desk at the stadium. I was expecting single event media passes as they issued for me over the last few years, but to my surprise she had made an “ALL ACCESS” pass. That’s way easier than using the individual show passes.
Ran into some photographers I know from different DCI shows as well. The location of the stadium wasn’t too favourable though. With the sun setting behind the stands the field would end up half sunny and half in the shade, which completely screws up your light settings on your photo camera.
Especially during Colts and Glassmen this ruined quite some photos!



Blue Devils topped tonight’s show again, but went down in scores by just a little bit.
SCV placed second and Blue Knights third. I think we’ll see all of them again at the next few shows. BD also played the encore tonight by the way.

Enjoy,

HK