Aftermath of a Band Trip

Yay music.

I just barely came out of it. The aftermath, that is. The band trip itself was last Wednesday. I was extremely grateful that it wasn't quarterfinals week. But you're probably wondering what this band trip was about? Well, that's real important, that part is. It was region concert band!!!
To translate, region concert band means all the high school bands in the region (there are boundaries, I'm not sure where ours fall) come to a single school and play 3 pieces of music for a panel of 3 judges. Scores rank from 1 to 5, with 1's being the best and 5's being... well, I don't want to talk (or think) about that. But to qualify for state concert band, which is over a weekend in May, you have to get at least two straight 1's and the rest 1 minuses (or more ones). We weren't sure what our competition would be like, but we prepared zealously in the weeks beforehand. We had a well-recieved prep concert the week before April break, so confidence levels were running high. To add to that, Mr. Taylor confided in us that he thought we had an actual chance at beating the Wind Ensemble. Amazing! So of course we all expected great things- from ourselves and each other. 
Wednesday wasn't a particularly important day at school itself, aside from normal classes. It was boringly cloudy with random sunbreaks. It was a red day, so that meant that we did have band class the day of the competition- er, festival. Whatever. So I went to French, Ceramics, Band, and Geography. French was very normally boring, Ceramics relaxing (I was working on the potter's wheel), Band high-intensity, and Geography mildly stressful (it's an AP class). All through the morning and afternoon, I had my mind on my first traveling band trip. Yes, this was my first time spending a significant amount of time on the infamous band bus *dun dun duuuuun*. I have nothing much to say about the bus ride except that it was quite fun; but what happens on the band bus really does stay on the band bus. Believe me, this is for good reason. If you knew what happened on there, you'd be inclined to think that we band geeks are even weirder than you do now. So I won't say a word about it here.
When we got to the school we were playing at, we had spent about an hour and a half on the band bus and had about 2 hours until we were supposed to go on stage. So we went in to the auditorium and sat and watched 2 bands, I think. They were good; I was surprised at how much their numbers varied by section from ours. I suppose it really varies by school/region/whatever. 
The odd thing about this trip is that there was a track meet at the same school at the same time, so people kept running in and out to make it to their events (and some of them ended up coming on stage in their track uniforms and running shoes...). I didn't envy them; it was raining and at one point became a thunderstorm.
After watching the other bands for about 45 minutes, Mr. Taylor, our director, came and got us and said it was time to go get warmed up. So off we went, leaving the Wind Ensemble to watch, we went to get our instruments and filed into the choir room, which was our warm-up spot. We tuned, went through little bits of our music, and kept our instruments warm. Our entire time in there was about half an hour. We went on stage at approximately 5:35, like we were scheduled to. Our overall performance was quite good, with some little times where we slipped out of tune for a second but recovered well. We played March Juno, Lest We Forget, and Into the Storm. I don't remember any of the composers, but they were all fun to play. I'm not honestly sure whether or not we all expected to get to state or not after we played. I think subconsciously we all realized that though it was very good, it may not have been quite enough. So we played our music and then came off stage and put our stuff away, then went back to the auditorium to watch the Wind Ensemble. They were good as always, and of course because of that, we expected them, if not both of us, to get to state. They played an excellent march entitled The Mad Major, something by the famous American composer Copeland, and some sort of "Divertimento" by some composer I don't remember, that was, as said by one of the judges, "a nice diversion from the rest of your band's music, and from the festival in general". I can't tell if it was a good or bad thing, but I enjoyed listening. While we were waiting for them to get set up, for some reason I had an intense straight-face contest with  Danielle and Whitney. I conquered them both. After the Wind Ensemble was done, we all packed up and high tailed it back to our buses, leaving the track and field people in the rain to run the rest of their races. It was still raining on and off, but it was a fairly warm rain so none of us band kids cared much.
After this, it was about 7:00, and we had a long drive ahead of us. Despite that, we had been promised a stop for food. What none of us had counted on was stopping at a gas station. But that's where we stopped and so everyone got out, ran in and swamped the gas station's little store-thingy, buying loads of junk food. It was something of a frenzy that I watched (I refused to buy anything and had brought my own dinner) as my band-mates tore around the little store in an adrenaline-fueled search for sugar. My friends grabbed handfuls of candy and crackers and ice cream and junk while I tagged along and complained about being dragged out of the bus. Eventually they checked out and Ceci picked up the burger she ordered. We ran back to the bus through the misty drizzle, got on, running past Mr. Taylor (who was looking like he had watched this happen many times before) and returning to our original seats. Once there, Emily and Ceci immediately started on their vast quantities of gas station food. I started on my dinner from home. Group by group, people got back on the bus with their food, and started eating. In the first few minutes of waiting to leave, we were all tired and just stuffing our faces with food. As we later learned, we were sitting there for about 15 minutes, just waiting, because some people hadn't followed directions and had crossed the street to McDonald's. So we waited and ate while Chris the tenor sax counted us a bunch of times to make sure we were all accounted for (*Walks past for the first time* "How many times you gonna count now, Chris?" *As he walks past for about the third time* "Wait...how many times have you done it?!" *As he walks by again* "OK, WE'RE ALL HERE, STOP COUNTING!!"). Eventually we left, and by that time the sugar had gone to our heads. Yes. We were all very hyper. It was extremely entertaining and fun. It made the whole bus ride feel like it was really short, and it was punctuated with light from a glowing rock that Ceci brought along. 
The next thing I knew we were pulling up to the our own dear high school, ready to go home and get a few hours of sleep before school the next day. We cleaned out the busses, grabbed all our stuff we had left in the dressing rooms, said goodnight, and high-tailed it out of there, now all sugar-crashed from all that junk food. 
And so ended the great adventure that was region concert band, and my first traveling band trip.
I only feel bad for my friend Elaine, who got up at 4:00 a.m. the next morning so she could sit and listen to the zero-hour Varsity jazz practice. 
We've all recovered now though, so it's all good. :)