( If you haven't already read part I, it is suggested that you do so)
......After we got on the road, it was about six already. We had over an hour and a half drive ahead of us at this point, and before we head to the competition, we have to feed almost one hundred forty people with almost an hour less than we had planned. Nevertheless we did our best, however with only a quarter-staffed McDonald's and a combined KFC and Taco Bell to feed us all, the lines were long, but nothing we aren't used to. It was at this point I realized that my iPod had not charged overnight as I had planned, so I couldn't begin to write my posts and to listen to music on the ride home. Man was I frustrated!
As we got our food, at about eight thirty pm now, we ate what we could, and took what was left on the bus with us. The most entertaining meal was five or six of our guy seniors, all low brass guys all chipping in to get a bucket of chicken, four sides, a cake and one or two half gallon "cups"(although it could hardly be called anything but a jug) of pop and they passed around a plastic bag for chicken bones and passed the food around and ate out of the containers. And of course, everything had gravy smothered on it. I was talking to one of their moms while I was waiting for my food and she at one point commented, "I would not be surprised if they did this regularly in college too" I wouldn't be surprised either.
Since this took as long as we had planned for originally, we were later getting to the school than we had originally planned. We got there at nine and we had to be ready to load the pit tractor to transport in 30 minutes from us pulling up outside the school, including uniforms, unloading and setting up and fixing hair malfunctions.
Mount Pleasant is by far my favorite for pit loading, they bring a tractor-pulled cart for us to load our stuff on that we ride on to the marching field, and we can just pull it off and put the pit right where it needs to be, and they do the same thing for the way back, another perk is that the pit gets to watch the performance before us, which in this case was awesome because the band in front of us had a Zelda theme and they played it very well. Our performance was alright, and then we all came back and changed and left pit to go load the trailer while they watched the drum majors receive the awards for the band. We don't know how we did at Johnston, but last year at Mt Pleasant we got 6th out of 8 and this year we got 5th out of 8. We got everything loaded, forgot drum majors were still in uniform so we had to improvise with getting their uniforms on the truck.
On the way home, we finished our movies in the typical after dark seating of boys-with-boys, and girls-with-girls. I was lucky enough that I got to sit by myself on the way back. You were welcome to fall asleep if you wanted.
When we got back to school at one thirty in the morning, we had to unload the trailer and all of the uniforms. Since only about half of the pit plus maybe 4 or 5 other people actually helped unload the pit and drumline equipment. It took a long time to accomplish that. Some people got mad because we were running into them with the instruments, but as we few see it, if they aren't working when they should be, and when we are obviously coming toward them and they don't bother to get out of the way, then they deserve to get run into. Everyone is required to at least help unload the uniforms, and nobody is to leave before the trailer is unloaded. However, there are some that are under the impression, mostly new marchers, that "everybody" somehow doesn't apply to them. This is why we have section leaders, to straighten out people as a layer before the directors. They will soon learn.
All in all, this was a very good trip. For the next 3-4 weeks we have marching competitions every Saturday and homecoming is in 2 weeks, so we will be very busy.
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