Dash Fieldpaint Posted April 12, 2008 Share Posted April 12, 2008 I don't have any starving stories, even though we did have a few consecutive "watermelon and crackers" days. Oddly, my friend who was in the drumline the years I marched remembers going hungry all the time. I don't get that. The drumline ate the same food as the hornline. What WAS hard was the week and a half in '95 when every night something would break down and we'd arrive at the housing site at 8 or 9 AM. There was no downtime, we unloaded and went directly to rehearsal. The corps had about an hour to unload and eat. I was on the field lining crew so we got off the bus, tossed our stuff in the gym, and grabbed some food on the way to work lining the fields. The "watermelon and crackers" days fell within this "no downtime" period. My friends that marched Tarheel Sun have some rough stories. I don't want to repeat anything I heard, because it would be second hand information. Do any Tarheel Sun people have anything to add? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nukeme70 Posted April 12, 2008 Share Posted April 12, 2008 Coming back from Madison in '87, the clutch had gone out of our bus, so to get started, the driver had to force the bus into gear by aligning the shifter (yes - the bus was a manual transmission), and then forcing it into gear by brute leg force. Gear shifts were accomplished by revving the engine to get everything synchronized then shifting up/down as needed. All night. Literally, grind 'em 'till you find 'em. We did pretty much the entire '88 season with no battery (maybe starter) in our bus...the driver always tried to park backwards on a downhill slope whenever possible, and there was a rotating "push crew" to get things going. The two situations merged one day after a parade in '88. The clutch had been replaced from the previous year, and we had just gotten the hang of not having a battery (or starter, whatever the case was...), and the bus shut off at a stop sign. Calls for the push crew went out, and we started pushing...nothing was happening, so we got pretty much the whole corps out to push...we moved the bus about 20 ft. down the road before someone pointed out that the tires weren't rotating. Seems the genius that replaces the clutch, put the plate in backwards and it had finally seized up. They brought in our 2nd bus, got us home, and had the other towed. Air conditioning? Not so much...drum corps is where I learned the value of taking aluminum foil and scotch tape on tour. We used to have gummy bear races on the windows...stick one on and see which color would melt fastest. Wool uniforms during multiple Chicagoland 4th of July parades. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
whitedawn Posted April 12, 2008 Share Posted April 12, 2008 cadets 1999 tour. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danielray Posted April 12, 2008 Share Posted April 12, 2008 Back when I marched, we really had it rough. For example, I remember a time at breakfast, we actually had to ask the waitstaff TWICE for a sharper knife... causing us to have to take the stairs, as the delay (I know... French waiters... our fault for not factoring that in) left us with little time to wait for the elevator to get our gear before heading across the street to rehearse on the beach in the south of France. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dbc03 Posted April 12, 2008 Share Posted April 12, 2008 One time they ran out of A1 sauce for our after show steak dinner so I had to use regular bbq sauce. And the lobster that night was really subpar. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mad_scotty Posted April 12, 2008 Share Posted April 12, 2008 the madison buses didn't have bathrooms, well, no working toilets, they were capped off with a carpeted plywood platform that was given out by seniority. other than that, well, when you march a scott stewart run corps you got decent food, plenty of rest (8 hrs minimum, bus time hours were counted half hours only, and minimum of 4 hours floor time regardless of the length of trip), bathroom breaks, water breaks, and respect from every staff member. scott put his kids first, his corps second, and everything else a distant third, and ran an incredibly tight ship. my worst hardship was going without sweet tea for months on end (even if the damnyankees i marched with knew how to make it, no way scott would have let us have that much sugar on tour, or fried foot, salt, or fat other than peanut butter). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FieldofBlueDreams Posted April 12, 2008 Share Posted April 12, 2008 One time they ran out of A1 sauce for our after show steak dinner so I had to use regular bbq sauce. And the lobster that night was really subpar. i lol'd. We had steak after our memorial day camp. It was medium well... i prefer medium rare. Marching in the 2000's is tough. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
liebot Posted April 12, 2008 Share Posted April 12, 2008 Of course my posts in the other thread was all in jest, but now that you've started this one, I forgot one particular hardship that we had to endure...Our buses that we traveled on from 1981 through 1985 had no bathrooms. Talk about brutal. Especially on those 300+ mile trips. We never stopped. The "bathrooms" on drum corps buses nowadays are not used as restrooms. As a matter of fact, it's been a rule everywhere that I marched (a rule I can only assume extends to the rest of current corps) that you do not use the restrooms under any circumstances. Because if a bus restroom isn't cleaned out every 3-4 days it makes sitting in the back of the bus pretty unbearable. So yeah, while we may have "bathrooms" on the buses now, they are never actually used for waste disposal. Your options on a long bus ride are holding it or using a wide-mouth gatorade bottle. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlanAndreasen Posted April 12, 2008 Share Posted April 12, 2008 the madison buses didn't have bathrooms, well, no working toilets, they were capped off with a carpeted plywood platform that was given out by seniority. other than that, well, when you march a scott stewart run corps you got decent food, plenty of rest (8 hrs minimum, bus time hours were counted half hours only, and minimum of 4 hours floor time regardless of the length of trip), bathroom breaks, water breaks, and respect from every staff member. scott put his kids first, his corps second, and everything else a distant third, and ran an incredibly tight ship. my worst hardship was going without sweet tea for months on end (even if the damnyankees i marched with knew how to make it, no way scott would have let us have that much sugar on tour, or fried foot, salt, or fat other than peanut butter). OMG you guys ate fried foot! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Piper Posted April 12, 2008 Share Posted April 12, 2008 The thing I dreaded most was having to march in a firemen's convention parade. For some reason unbeknownst to me firefighters LOVE to organize long parade routes at their conventions - I'm talking 5 miles and that's no exageration. By the time you got to the "finish line" you felt like you died and went to heaven. Can't give you any "barefoot in the snow on the 50" stories though. I wasn't THAT bad. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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