Adventures from

    So we all get on a bus for the airport.  Guess what.  Our driver doesn't have the proper voice box or something, and he has to push on his throat to talk.  Maybe he should have quit smoking sooner?    So people are telling jokes on the bus when the lamest joke we have ever heard is told by Sarah Omernick, but guess what - we laughed our asses off at it.  See the quotes page and look for the punchline.

    We arrive in El Paso after an interesting flight on our chartered Northwest 747.  Some people learned about being on the right channel when watching a movie that takes international flights.  We were met by a mariachi band, who would have guessed that????  So we finally get on the buses.  Our bus smelled like Lysol.  Gotta love that, a really good first impression.  Our bus is a whole story in itself.  This was our bus:

    The first night we were there we went to Andre's  Pizza.  Somebody forgot to mention that this place is a little small.  We had to eat and get up so other people could have a seat.  The pop was really watered down too.  Matt Clark spent the bus rides filling people in about El Paso when we were driving anywhere.  He pointed out the border to us many times.

    The Trip to Montwood High School.  This is what happens when 2 different bus companies are hired for 1 band.  Only 2 buses knew the way to the High School.  Bus 1 and Bus 4 I think.  Since we were Bus 2, we had to wait for the other buses to catch up.  While we did that, Bus 1 took off.  Darryl, our driver, trip to find Bus 1, but we ended up taking some wrong turns.  We drove through nice looking neighborhoods that had bars on EVERY WINDOW.  Now that should tell you something.  Finally we get to Montwood, and find out that it's band has it's own entrance!  We also got handed Yellow Rose of Texas that we needed to learn.

    Thursday we practiced outside all day.  Gotta love asphalt.  People were still sore the day of the game.  We ran pregame to death out there.  We also learned Yellow Rose of Texas in that afternoon.  This was the day we say how dirty El Paso is.  Just walking to the Whataburger it looked like a garbage dump.  The 2  chains of store we saw the most were the Whataburger and the Diamond Shamrock gas stations.  Some gas stations located next door to eachother had completely different gas prices.  Hmm.........which gas station to chose, the one for $1.29 or the one for $1.37 per gallon......

     Friday, the busiest day of the week.  We got on the buses and headed to the El Paso convention center.  El Paso city crews were busy getting ready for New Year's, and the drive to teh convention center was an obstacle course.  Darryl made it through perfect until we were a block away from the parking lot.  Darryl was turning right when the bus began scraping against a one-way sign.  A loud CRACK was heard from the back of the bus with a lot of "woah's" from the bones back there.  This is what happened to the bus:

    So we played the concention center.  We got to see the Oregon band perform. Yee Haw.  Coach Glen Mason directed the Rouser.  Matt Pavek got to say "Hi mom" on tv.  Oregon's school song sounds a lot like Our Minnesota.  That's about it.

     The fan pep fest............eesh.  We sounded like Wisconsin.  The microphones were on while we played, and we could barely hear Luckhardt, and we were in front of speaker cabinets larger than those Metallica would use, and..........I think you get the picture.  Section cheers were a joke, Luckhardt tried to direct them since we were spread out, but that didn't work too well.  The setup for the pepfest really could have been better.  Hearing what you are playing 5 times in a second

     The taping for MSC was rather........boring?  We had to stand and wait to be told when to play, and then we actually had to play one song twice for the cameras, and we couldn't see the cameras anyway.  The best part of that was watching our fans climb this little mountain behind the Sun Bowl.

     Battle of the Bands.  Wow.  I don't think we have ever had that many people just there for the band.  When we were marching in the Oregon Band was trying to drown out our cadences, but they didn't even come close.  We traded songs back and forth, and finally got Luckhardt to let us play Battle Hymn.  We had a lot of people compliment us after the "Battle."  In the parking lot we did our section cheers the right way, and also broke out into "In Heaven There Is No Beer."

     GAME DAY!   Once at the stadium, we got our seating arrangements figured out, and then we prepared for pregame.  During Pre-Game, the Stadium was 60-70% filled, and the Temperature was around 65° F.  Pregame went off without a hitch, and BARF did their thing as well.  Our own Doug Hawkins managed to sneak a camera out on the field, here is how he saw his part of pregame:

     There are only a few words to describe us at the Sun Bowl.  LOUD and GOOD!  After the game we Heard from people that were the 'loudest/best/biggest/insert adjective here' band that they had ever seen.  We didn't know how loud we were until we watched the tape on the plane.  During the game we just blew Oregon out of the water.  Les Mis was so loud that CBS had to turn down our microphone!  To make a long story short, we, the Bones, asserted our claim as Rank of the Millennium with our snappy slide covers, Rubber Duck arr. by Doug Hawkins, Rawhide, Indians, and the ever infamous School's Out For Summer in the 4th quarter.  We played it better than Oregon.  We lost the game, but we played so well that most people forgot about the game an hour after.

    The ride home was uneventful aside from the 5 minute pillow fight in our section of the plane.  The trip was pretty successful. We impressed a lot of people including the Oregon fans and band.  Hopefully next year we will be in Pasadena..........

If anybody has anything to add, please let me know!  The more the better!