Your Toughest Experience

[Scadescontra]

The first one that comes to mind is kind of like JediCadet's...In 2000 during Memorial Day Weekend after a very long day standing in hornarc I excused myself to go the bathroom. I was so physically and mentally exausted I just burst into tears the second i reached the bathroom and wanted to go home so bad. I knew I had a decision to make, whether to stay for the summer or quit and go home. I decided that if I was going to do this I had to do it well and stopped crying and went back to rehearsal...

I marched for 6 years and only missed one show... in 2003...it was our first show in California and first time in 100+ degree heat after a short rather cool NW tour. We had a short reahearsal before the show that night but when I got up that morning I just felt weak and thought it would go away once i streached and warmed up. I continued to feel weak all day and it was getting close to the end of day runthough. We were waiting for the count off for the runthrough and I was standing at attention and I remember feeling the most tired I ever felt and then I blacked out... luckly a visual tech had been following closely behind me and caught my horn before it hit the ground. I was extremely dehydrated due to the lack of gatorade on tour that summer. That night at the show I drank a gallon of gatorade.

Many, many others over the course of 6 years...blowing a tire on the way to finals in 2001...severe leg cramps my rookie year that literally completely siezed up both of my legs during Alldays in 2000...sleeping in a park across from the stadium in 2000 after arriving at our housing site to find another corps occupying it...oh yeah and in 2000 marching at prelims at a NE Div III Focus Show at 8:00AM that was covered in goose droppings, the hornile had to kneel during a portion of the show but I didn't feel as bad when I saw the guard! We went on first at prelims and went on last that night at 9PM ended up winning the show.

Edited July 24, 2007 by Scadescontra

[GreenTrumpetier]

K so this sint motivational but it was a pretty crappy experiance. In Revolution '03 our brilliant drum majors who were in charge of leading the corps through stretch decided to take us on a "nature walk" instead of run. Well some of us ran still because we didnt feel like slackin. Then someone snitched to teh techs we didnt run properly that day and our visuale caption head came running out of our little cement slab building, this was teh fair grounds in florida for anyone who remembers, and right before I took the first bite of dinner made us all run. He didnt specify the time but i do remember running a long ### time. the only reason i enjoyed it was 1 i was in shape and two we got to watch our overwieght DM who really hadnt lift a finger all summer, sit on teh 50 yard line doing situps while the tech talked some sense into him.

And number two which seems to be a popular one between corps, the bus problems. In Magic '05 we had so many breakdowns on the horn bus as well as just plane running out of gas. But another thing that was fun wit the busses was the hornline doing a chinese firedrill on a denver highway during high traffic in our boxers. That was fun.

[Carl306]

ive never marched a full season, but i tried to join up with the blue stars mid season last year. woke up 6 in the morning, started the morning run, had an asthma attack. Had to go to the emergency room. Went back, started playing and had another asthma attack. went back to the emergency room. Called my mom. She freaked out and demanded that i come home.

I'm sorry if this seems mean, and I'm also sorry that this situation happened to you, but I can't help but laugh at picturing the events of that day for you

[raphael144]

This thread is hysterically funny! Ah...the memories...

The toughest experiences -

-85, montreal - free day

Montreal had no drinking age limit so on our free day some corps members went to the bars and got blasted. Laura J drank a lot of wine. When we got back to the buses to go on to new york, Laura got really sick and tried to run to the back of the busses but didn't make it, she ended up vomiting all over the last 2 rows of seats...well, we cleaned it up as best as we could but we couldn't stop the bus caravan...even though cleaned up, there was a rancid wine vomit smell that would not go away, we drove for 12 hours! It was horrible, I couldn't sleep and was close to vomiting myself the whole time. In fact, the smell lasted for several weeks! To be honest, I think I was scarred for life because to this day the smell of wine still makes me gag!

-88, chicago practice

We left for practice early in the morning, it was super hot and dry...I had on shorts and a thin tank top. At night during ensemble, it got windy, drizzly and really cold....really cold....for july....I was so cold I was shaking and I kept praying they would stop rehearsel but no....despite moving/dancing and doing flagwork, I got to the point I was so cold I was shivering, and was in tears...It was one of the longest nights of my life, that 3 hours that felt like an eternity....let it suffice to say that I was never unprepared again.

-88, port huron

I stayed up talking to CM on the long bus ride to Port Huron MI, I had never really talked to him before and we really hit it off...we were both former horn players now marching colorguard...chem majors etc. We stayed up talking the entire night assuming we would get to sleep when we arrived at the school we were staying at...WRONG...off the busses, quick breakfast, no showers, no unpacking, straight to practice. We had already been up for 24 hours, had practiced 12 hours, and now practiced again the whole day in hot humid weather, then had to do a show that night!! By the time we had to perform that evening, Chris and I were soooooo tired and miserable I can't even begin to describe it. I almost believe I performed in my sleep. The second we got off the field we went to the buses and finally slept. I don't think I was ever so happy to be asleep.

-87, St. Louis

We stayed at a very nice catholic school in st. louis, with an incredible stadium and beautiful football field, with real grass. We arrived in the morning and we practiced for a while, then it rained like crazy for a couple of hours. It got sunny and after everything looked dry, we went out to do some run throughs....turns out the field was not dry, the grass gave way beneath everyones feet and the field turned into a complete mud pit. Basically we ruined the field and the corps had to pay the school to have the whole field re-turfed. We had gotten super muddy, people had slipped and fell, the guard had to try and dance in the mud....we went into the school to take showers and it turns out that because the school was closed all summer, that something had happened to the water system....and the showers were sooo hot that you would get badly burned through getting direct contact with the water....and the water pressure was so strong that the streams would just about sand blast your skin off...so we couldn't shower....and somehow.....there was no cold water!!!!! .......one of the contras figured out a way to use a trash can to deflect the stream into a spray and then you could sort of mist bathe yourself a little...most of us just ended up scraping the mud off and did the show "dirty" in our uniforms. The audience couldn't tell - but it really sucked, especially by the end, when sweat stared running down your body, it made these dirty sweat lines. Luckily, the staff found another school that let us stop by to shower on the way home. That was great.

***One last thing, this isn't really a "tough" experience, but I do have to say that I have never felt right showering by myself since after I marched. Every day I still expect people to be there. It's kind of weird because when I first marched, one of the things I was feared was having to shower with other people.

Edited July 24, 2007 by raphael144

[randiljeffreys007]

anytime we went through Alabama.

[Cathie Wiener]

My third camp for Freelancers was the Memorial Day Camp, which is already incredibly tough to begin with. The “L.A. bus” breaks down about 3 1/2 hours away from the camp at a Carl’s Jr. and we wait there for another bus. Some of us get out our sleeping bags and try to sleep on the asphalt and others hang out at Carl’s or Subway until it closes. And we wait, and wait and wait until early morning until another bus finally shows. It gets us to the gym just in time Saturday morning to hear, “Lights on. Rehearsal starts in one hour.” The staff then tells us that they have faith in the “L.A. group” and that they are going to continue with camp as scheduled and they’re sure we can tough it out. Talk about being tired!!! That night has got to be the most tired I’ve ever been in my entire life and I went through Air Force Officer Training School!

1992, coming home from finals, the two “Sac”(ramento) buses and staff bus split off from the one L.A. bus to go home. The L.A. bus has about 15 more people than seats and, of course, no A/C. Not too bad. We’ve had worse for longer. Anyway, it breaks down due to engine overheating multiple times. It cools off, we go about 30 miles, it heats up, we break down. Repeat process eight billion times all throughout Death Valley and the Mojave Desert. Thank god for night. Once the sun started setting we could actually go a little farther between each overheat. Great times!

In 1993, one of our buses broke down overnight about an hour before Tucamcari, NM on the start of big tour. The rest of the corps went to Tucamcari and waited while we emptied one bus that went back and got the members from the broken down bus and brought them to the truck stop. Everyone was still pretty much in our PJ’s. We couldn’t even get our sleeping bags, because they were in the smaller vehicle driving the parts back and forth to the broken down bus. So our brilliant staff decided to have the corps go ahead rehearse at this huge a** truck stop in Tucamcari while still in our pajamas. The drummers played on their drum pads and the horns buzzed through their mouthpieces, however, the guard was stuck spinning huge 4-foot-tall neon orange X’s with gold whiffle balls on the end. I can’t imagine what those truckers must have been thinking. I look back now and it’s funny, but it wasn’t so funny then.

Many people have already talked about how Jackson, MS sucked a** in 93. I once mentioned to other corps members that it was rough that we suffered with no A/C in the gym and they replied that it was better than what they had: good A/C at night in the gym so it was a huge shock when they went outside. This is where I beg to differ. At least at night those other corps that had A/C could actually sleep. Our entire corps was so sleep deprived (staff included) that we were just miserable. To top it off the girls shower was scalding hot. No place to cool off. Most of the corps members didn’t want to eat anything at all ever, because it was just so freaking hot with no reprieve. The staff literally had to order us to eat or else. I’ve never eaten so many peaches in my life. They were cool and light on the stomach. LOTS of people passing out during rehearsals and just after shows at the end of that summer, especially guard. We were in those god-awful long-sleeve tight body suits that actually had a whole other layer of a long-sleeve body suit underneath. It was miserable.

We had a visual staff member join our corps in 93. Not well liked at all by corps members! Somewhere in Texas in 94, the guard was practicing on a tennis court and he came to “talk to us.” He was incredibly pessimistic, disrespectful and flat-out mean. Standard operating procedure for him. Someone must have rolled their eyes at him or something because all-of-a-sudden he just lost it. He grabs a flag pole out of someone’s hand and starts screwing around with it, and then he starts slamming it into the tennis court over and over and over again while he was screaming at us at the top of his lungs and he wound up bending the pole horribly and just throwing it down on the court and walking away. The best part? Blue Knights was sharing that school with us and he did that right in front of their entire colorguard, staff and all. They had to stop what they were doing because he was so disruptive.

Oops, I almost forgot to mention severely dislocating my shoulder and tearing back muscles during our run-thru on West Coast Tour in 1995 in Tulare, CA. Then we had to load the bus immediately and drive to our next housing site in Arvin, CA. Luckily, not too far away. But I was in SO much pain and the bus ride SUCKED!!! Bounce, bump, brakes, bounce, bump, brakes... you get the point. So much pain. I was finally able to see a doctor the next morning in Arvin and get some pain killers. The worst part was that I wasn’t healed in time to do my “home show” (still considered Sacramento my home show) with equipment, but I marched anyway in extreme pain sans equipment. There was no way I wasn’t doing that show!

Except for one time with a locked gym in 95 in Albuquerque, NM where some guard girls (myself included) took a shower in the sprinklers on the baseball field that night (wish I could have seen the look of the Amtrak passenger train that passed us in that field that night), I am thankful that we pretty much never had problems with housing. And except for meals of meatballs, only meatballs (money was running out) for our last few meals in 1994, I scored the jackpot on the meals with both Freelancers and Blue Knights AND partaking of Marauders food from a friend that marched in 94.

And, of course, we had the same break down, push start the bus up the hill stories as any corps, but all in all, I made out like a bandit, I think.

Edited July 24, 2007 by Cathie Wiener

[RickCogley]

1981 - this was my first year in corps, marching in a small corps (what would now be Division III, I believe, in terms of size) called General Butler Vagabonds, based in Butler PA near the town where I grew up, and taught by Scott Koter, now of Cavaliers fame.

Although I had practiced a lot, I had no idea what touring would be like or how hard it would be, even though ours was a shorter tour. GBV were not very good as a whole that year (were we 43rd in the end?), but I think our drumline scored relatively well, beating some of the bigger lines in whatever perc sub-caption a couple of times that season. Anyway, it was basically a fun, eye-opening summer, and I got to see a lot of open class corps (Division I's today) and got to be taught by guys from good top-level lines. I fell hard in love with drum corps in 1981, because of SCV, 27th, Bridgemen, Spirit of Atlanta and BD. Such incredible presences that I was hooked and hooked hard.

The little GBV drumline must have made some waves in 81, because we had a big line at camps in the winter of 1982 - basically a full-size Div I line, with 12 snares, 5 quads, 6 basses, and Scott had to score new drums and such. Well, it wasn't to be, and we folded in the Spring due to lack of money, so that was a tough experience, especially after really loving something and trying so hard to be good enough for people to want to come march, seeing the recruiting happen successfully, and then getting the rug pulled out.

1982 - it was suggested my fellow snares and I go try out for Rockland Defenders, in May. We went up, learned the exercises, show book and drill in one or two weeks thanks to the very helpful vets in the line, and were digging marching up near Boston, playing the Defender's cool drum book which included Return to Forever's “Medieval Overture” and other tunes I love to this day.

The hard parts were, the fact that we had played matched grip in 81 and then had to switch to traditional for 82, which was physically demanding. Besides the bad blisters we got from the switch (lots of blood and pain, I remember), my buddy got some sort of herniated muscle or tendon in his left hand, which kind of popped out and swelled the size of a golf ball.

In retrospect, those things seem minor compared to some of what I see people went through, in this thread. Eyes closed by pesticides, are you kiddin' me? Jeeezzz...

Then there was the fact that the corps was getting spanked for visual all the time (the music was great, but the drill etc got criticized a lot - I remember this being pretty tiring), and, there was the fact that the drumline was not scoring higher, especially given that we were very clean, playing a challenging odd-meter book. It was like, all the hard work, none of the rewards, so it was mentally hard. We just kept pushing though, and came off pretty well in the end.

I think the biggest difficulty was after the season, because Defenders folded in the winter of 1982. Heavens, that was depressing, after a good season, and thinking about going back in 83 to march again. Two sad off-seasons in a row!

1983-85 - after Defenders folded some of us went to 27th Lancers, tried out, made it, were thrilled to be marching such a cool “scottish” book, and kind of in awe of the surroundings, but we had a number of challenges after that.

Lots and lots of bus stories come out of 27th. I think the buses were old 1957 coaches, that were on their last legs and always fairly “creatively maintained”. Some anecdotes spring to mind: One time, I came back to my bus, and noticed a sickly smell of burning plastic or rubber. As I started hoisting myself up into the back of the bus, I could see that the back seat was burning. Problem was, one of our buddies was asleep on that seat. We woke him and got him out of there and to safety, and someone put out the fire, but the smell of burnt plastic and/or rubber was with us for a while. That really gives you a headache, but luckily noone was hurt, and everything got fixed up!

Another time, our fearless caption head Charlie Poole fashioned a bus engine gasket that had blown, out of a gladstone pad (it's a black rubber drum pad that you put on top of a drum head, but not so popular these days with the realfeels etc). I think they smeared some spit on there, and I am pretty sure there a liberal dose of cussin' and duct tape involved in the equation. Well, needless to say there was a lot of bus pushing involved in anyone's tenure at 27th. Thanks to all the corps that lent bus space and so on to 27th over the years. It wasn't about if but when.

On a different subject, I got a horrible case of athlete's foot at Miami finals week in 83. It started itching early in the week, and got really, really bad with nasty broken skin and all that goes with that. I think I was putting anti-fungal cream on there for months, after that. Also in Miami - my grandmother had made me a care package, complete with fudge! We put it in the airconditioned gym, but found that not only had the fudge turned to soup during our rehearsal, but also that it had been invaded by Florida-sized roaches! Yuck!

Speaking of food, the food was ok, at 27th, if utilitarian and somewhat repetitive with ziti and more ziti (at least it wasn't potatoes every single day, like I read on here - terrible!!). We were envious of certain corps menus, but then again they were charging a heap-load more in tour dues. We had some lean times, but thanks to the love of the Bonfiglio's and their team of volunteers, we were kept fed. It got a little sparser as we went along over the three years I was in, but I don't remember ever starving. Except when I used up my money between tours - mustard sandwiches were pretty tasty when you were hungry!

I'll leave you with this: I did not march 86 due to studies, but remember seeing 27th at shows and thinking how good they were, sure to not repeat the whole debacle of not making finals in 85. When I heard they missed it and by tenths, with such a good drill and show, and then folded pretty much right there, it was such a sad piece of news for me.

I love 27th's 1986 show, and admire the marchers who stuck it out through dwindling resources, and tough times, for one last hurrah.

Cheers,

Rick

[RickCogley]

Meals, during full rehearsal days, were often 'potato bar.' Not so bad, right? Well, yeah...until you realize that all there is are potatoes and some toppings for them. Someone donated a ton, literally a ton, of potatoes to the corps and we had them for just about every meal. Often they were the meal.

Jeez. That sounds rough!

[RickCogley]

...however, the guard was stuck spinning huge 4-foot-tall neon orange X’s with gold whiffle balls on the end. I can’t imagine what those truckers must have been thinking. I look back now and it’s funny, but it wasn’t so funny then.

...

We were in those god-awful long-sleeve tight body suits that actually had a whole other layer of a long-sleeve body suit underneath. It was miserable.

...

... then he starts slamming it into the tennis court over and over and over again while he was screaming at us at the top of his lungs and he wound up bending the pole horribly and just throwing it down on the court and walking away.

... took a shower in the sprinklers on the baseball field that night (wish I could have seen the look of the Amtrak passenger train that passed us in that field that night)...

That's a funny post, Cathie. Your comment about the neon X's and truckers reminded me that it must have been pretty surprising to anyone at a truckstop or mcdonalds, being suddenly inundated by 140 starving people. They must have thought we were all insane - drumming on everything in sight.

Body suits? Why visual designers should a) have to wear anything they design and B) should never design summer wear in the winter! Gack - sounds terrible! I guess the gals in 27ths guard had it pretty tough with those high boots, woolen unis and busbee hats (tall fuzzy black hats).

Wow - what a childish person that instructor must have been. Can you imagine. That's got to be something you won't forget - having a guy you're supposed to trust go off like that. Hope they got rid of the jerk.

Showers on baseball fields at night? So THAT's where all the guard gals were going at night. Now I get it! :P

Cheers,

Rick

[RickCogley]

Raphael144 talks a lot about sleep, and I think anyone in drum corps can sympathize with the conditions not being the best, some times. But I attribute my ability to sleep anywhere and through just about anything, to drum corps. My wife says "you're going to die when the earthquake comes!" Yikes!