Alliedassault - Hail to the Chief!

[quote="[DAS REICH] Blitz":8b384][quote="Jin-Roh":8b384]260 Members in your band??? Wtf? oOo:[/quote:8b384]Yah, thats a bit large. eek:[/quote:8b384]we have 243 marching instrumentalists/color guard and we had to have adults with us which came around 260 in total.

Here's my write-up of my experience:

We left our school around 6:15am on Weds. There was a bunch of traffic getting down to DC from PA (which I wasn't suprised about). We were supposed to go to the hotel and drop off our things and then go out to Medieval Times, but the traffic held us back. Since our 260 people made up about half the audience they decided to hold the show up a few minutes and wait for us. The dinner was great, but my Black and White Knight lost....freakin a. After that we went to the hotel to unload.

Next day we woke up at 5:30 for breakfast in the hotel. We departed for the Pentagon around 7am. Our band had to take 5 large 55-passenger Charter buses this whole trip since we were so large. At the Pentagon, it was insane. Nothing could be left on the bus--no trash bags, no asperine, no extra band gloves, nothing. With all the students, we couldn't bring instrument cases except for tubas and drumline. No one was allowed cell phones, cameras, watches, nothing. It took us a while to get through a few checkpoints. At this point each element (in our case our band) was assigned 1 Seargant Major as our guide. At the final one, everyone was instructed to get off the buses while they were sniffed by the police dogs. The students on the other hand had to go to a large white tent where they had metal detectors and a bunch of military personel. You had to empty all of your pockets and show them your school I.D. The drumline and tubas, at this time, were put through large X-RAY machines. From here, we had to walk about 200 yards to where our checked buses were waiting for us.

We then got on our buses and went down to the National Mall area (Where a bunch of the museums are--US National History, Natural History, Air and Space, etc.). At this time everyone had their instruments out including drumline and tubas and we had to walk a pretty large distance to these white warming tents until we were instructed to move. There we were in a tent with a high school band from Minnesota. Remember, none of us really knew what time it was since we had no watches or cell phones so we had to depend on our seargant major for guidance. I am guessing about 1 hour later, we were on the move to our ready point. From there we saw the swearing in ceremony (it was about 1,000 yards away, but it was still interesting to know you were 'there' for that).

We waited here for about 40mins and started to wonder what the hell was going on. Over the loudspeaker a marine told us that the parade had been held up. Rumor has it that a bunch of protestors held things up by getting in the way of the parade route while sending money up in balloons rolleyes: . So we were then alllllll scruntched into 1 heating tent. There were marine bands, marine arms units, highschool bands, college bands, and i saw 1 group of little girl dancers or something. This is where I thought I saw Milla and yelled "Groundforce1.com" ha. We were talking to marines and they had with them 1903 Springfield Rifles with them. It was a fun time talking to other people around the country. About an hour and a half later, we were called to get back to the ready checkpoints.

From there, we basically started the parade. The military ran the whole show and they calculated that with taking the proper step size, the parade would be exactly 42mins to walk the whole route (which amazingly enough did). All along the sides there were armed soldiers spread about 10ft apart. We came up to the point where Bush was standing. It was amazing to see "The President of the United States" (notice how I didn't say BUSH Pyro) gazing at us and clapping. He called Tom Ridge (former governor of PA) to come watch us and we saw he gave us some large extra clapps biggrin: . From the corner of my eye his wife stood out from all of the black business suits with her white dress-suit.

After we completed the route, we got back to our buses and had to hurry and load up so the remaining of the parade could pass through. I couldn't describe what it felt like to walk through that internationally-televised parade. I'll remember that for the rest of my life.

That night we went back to the hotel and went to the "Inner Harbor" to get something to eat. I went to "Easy Wok" which was a chinese place. Interestingly enough, it was run by some awesome friendly Italian dude! Food was good and we departed back to the hotel where we had to pack up for the final time. The next morning (Friday) we woke up to 8:00am breakfast and left the hotel around 10:00am to get back to Easton, PA. We arrived back home around 1:00PM.

Remember, since I couldn't have my camera with me on many of the different events, I couldn't get great photos. So here as some of the ones that I took.

[img]http://img26.exs.cx/img26/6818/copyofdsc002784em.jpg[/img]

[img]http://img26.exs.cx/img26/336/copyofdsc002824kk.jpg[/img]
smart asians

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This freakin cheetah made me laugh. it is soooo overly priced in the Natural History Museum. It wasn't even made from great quality stuff. I probably could have went to a Toys R Us and got it for $50.

[img]http://img26.exs.cx/img26/1720/copyofdsc003120db.jpg[/img]

[img]http://img26.exs.cx/img26/8080/copyofdsc003136hp.jpg[/img]

[img]http://img26.exs.cx/img26/9350/copyofdsc003186rp.jpg[/img]I took it right after 2 inches of snow fell.

[img]http://img26.exs.cx/img26/6218/copyofdsc003320ap.jpg[/img]

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[img]http://img114.exs.cx/img114/5945/copyofdsc003147tg.jpg[/img]

yep, some of the shots are blurry because I'm still perfecting my camera skills with the new digi cam I bought 2 days prior to the trip.