Back from WGI

Got back Sunday from Dayton, Ohio. Winter Guard International Championships -- aka WGI or as we call it "Wee-Gee." Had an absolute blast, even though the weather was predictably unpredictable Midwest late winter... cold/rainy, damp/chilly, warm/sunny, warm/chilly... all in three days. Ick, I could never live in the Midwest again. The guard performances, as always, ran the gamut from tiresome to truly tremendous (God I love alliteration). It's so hard to explain the color guard activity to anyone who's never seen it. If you're reading this and you've never seen a winterguard performance, do yourself a favor and surf over to the WGI site and check out a video clip of Fantasia, from California, who won the Independent World Class (that's them in the photo) All of the top groups were nothing short of astounding.

It was so great seeing all my old friends. Damn this November will mark 20 years since I first boarded that plane in Lafayette, LA, and headed to Chicago for Cavaliers auditions. I never could have dreamed that some of the same people who greeted me at O'Hare airport that afternoon would be so influential in my life, and still so important to me, two decades later. The cameraderie found in our little guard-cult is really unlike any other in the world. I just can't imagine what my life would have been like had I not found the guard activity. It's unfortunate that so few people outside of the band/corps/guard world understand what it is even about, but judging from the astronomic growth of the activity over the past few years, that is changing fairly rapidly as well.

Many stories to share from the weekend. Will have to update later. Work is a cluster-fuck!