We started off our journey by heading to Apollo, Pennsylvania to play at my friend Steven's church. It was a fairly small church for our group to play in, but we made it work and had a fun time of it.
Setting up in Apollo, PA
Our night in Apollo was spent in host homes, so my friends Lisa, Brynn, Justina, and I all ended up staying with this older couple on their farm in their 100 year old house. It was a lot of fun and we had some pretty good laughs, especially over an incident with some wasps. Apparently, around 3-4 AM, Lisa got up to use the bathroom when she ran into Brynn in the hallway. As far as I can remember from what I was told, their conversation went a little like this:
Brynn: Lisa! Justina and I just had to kill two wasps!!!
Lisa: (having heard Brynn wrong) you had to kill two possums?! Brynn that is a big deal!
Haha...gotta love miscommunication.
Around 8:30 the next morning, we loaded up and headed out towards Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio to play at a christian school. It was a 45 minute assembly thing that ended up being quite hilarious thanks to Dr. Shewan and his tendency to talk much longer than he should when introducing songs. After the concert we did a short rehearsal to fix a few mistakes and then packed up and headed towards to Toledo, Ohio for dinner.
Dinner in Toledo was a blast. I ended up going to this American Grill place with Dr. Shewan and a few of my friends, and we basically spent 95% of the meal laughing, which is always fun. After our food we headed to our hotel, which is when things started to go down hill for me...
From the moment we arrived at this hotel (The Days Inn in Toledo...don't stay there!), we all sensed it was pretty sketchy. From the creepy, foggy, pool area...to the sketchy people hanging about, I don't think any of us had great vibes about it; but, whatever, we were only going to stay there one night. Marinna, Lisa, Cathy, and I were on the first floor, so our room had a sliding glass door that led to the outside. It kind of freaked us out, so we nervously joked about it, saying, "Oh hope no one tries to break in and get us!" but then didn't think much more of it.
Sketchy weight room @ the Days Inn
To make a long story short, the four of us did end up getting our room broken into that night. Luckily, none of us were in the room when it happened (though I had run down to our room around 10:40PM to grab my camera and everything was fine, then Cathy found the place trashed when she went down at 11PM), but the whole entire room was turned upside-down. All our bags were turned inside out, with all our stuff strewn from one end of the room to the other. It was terrifying, and we did have things stolen; though, I got lucky and only had my ipod stolen (my wallet was in my coat pocket which for some reason went unchecked and as before stated I had grabbed my camera just 20 minutes earlier). We ended packing everyone up and going to a different hotel down the street around 1 AM. I crashed around 3:00 but did not sleep very well. I just wanted to get out of Toledo.
Saturday morning we headed for Spring Arbor, Michigan to play a concert at Spring Arbor University, which I found out happens to be our sister-school. We took about a 2-hour stop over in Ann Arbor, MI to go ice skating, which was fun.
Zach and Andrew skating in Ann Arbor, MI
I didn't skate as well as I would have liked, but I was also exhausted, as I think most of us were. We left the skating rink around 1:40 and then headed down the street for lunch. I had a pretty good time getting Subway with Dann, Jess, Joe, and David and they helped me take my mind off everything for a bit. It was a good time. Then we piled back on the bus for another hour or so towards Spring Arbor.
Unfortunately I didn't make it all the way through the concert in Spring Arbor. About 4 songs in I got really hot in the face and started feeling super claustrophobic and panicky, so I ended up getting off stage during a song switch and just chilling for the rest of the concert. I think I was just way over-tired, which sounds like a real lame excuse since I think everyone was, but I just had to get off the stage. After the concert we headed to Kalamazoo, MI where I had a nice relaxing night watching "Friends" with Dann and Lisa until we were all so tired we could barely keep our eyes open.
Sunday was our day off. We spent it in the windy city of Chicago, Illinois...which I was totally stoked about. The first 3 hours were spend at Shedd Aquarium, checking out all the fishies and just fooling around a bit.
Zach doing his best fish impression
Steven having some fun in the giftshop
Dolphins!
After the aquarium we headed downtown and just hung around until about 6:30. A few of us went to this popcorn place and waited in life for about an hour for popcorn that would later make me seriously ill...go figure. It was kind of worth it though haha. After popcorn Dann and I headed to this pizza place that made gluten free pizza while everyone else went to this other famous pizza place. It ended up being a much more exhausting day than I had hoped, and by the time we went to bed that night my brain was barely functioning.
Interesting street names in Chicago...
It was back to Ohio for us on Monday. We headed to New Middletown to play at a church that had asked us back after playing there two years ago. It was probably one of the most awesome concerts I've ever had the pleasure of playing in. Despite the fact that 2/3 of us were sick and the other 1/3 was dead tired, we played our hearts and souls out and it showed. It was awesome. Lisa and I got put with this really sweet family that had 3 teenagers, and we had started to feel a little better about Ohio. I mean, honestly, nothing more could go wrong in Ohio, right?
Wrong. The next morning Lisa and I were being driven back to the church by one of our host family's daughters when we got into a bit of a fender bender. Nothing bad...just bad enough to have to pull over and have the police come and all that. This time Lisa and I had to laugh; seriously, Ohio?!
Lisa with the New Middletown cop car
I think the best part had to be when the cop told us he would need our information since we were in the car when the accident occurred. We both bust out laughing and looked at each other saying, "Well, by the end of this trip half of Ohio will know about us!" It was nice to be able to just laugh it off.
Tuesday we had our last concert in Fredonia, New York. It was a great end to the tour, and to top it all off we got to drive home from Fredonia in the Amerks bus due to the fact our bus had stalled out about 2 minutes before we arrived at the concert. Apparently our bus driver had been driving the Amerks around for quite a few years and pulled rank or something so we got that bus. It was cool.
The Amerks bus!
We arrived in Rochester around 11:15 Tuesday night. We unpacked the percussion equipment, unloaded the bus, and headed back to our rooms. I passed out around 2:30 and slept straight through til 9:30, then rolled out of bed, packed up the car, and headed home to Jersey.
It was a crazy trip, and a lot of stuff happened, but I still had tons of fun. I am very much looking forward to next year and already miss spending all that time with all the awesome people in Wind Ensemble.
Anyway, speaking of being exhausted...I must go to bed! Big day tomorrow, lots to do.
G'nite!
-Erin
"What is man, hat you make so much of him, and that you set your heart on him, vist him every morning and test him every moment? {...} His wisdom is profound, his power is vast. Who has resisted him and come out unscathed?" - Job 7:17-18, 9:4
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