I've survived.... I survived...

Yay...

At 1:30 a couple of Wednesday mornings ago, we returned from a band trip to Washington D.C.... and what a ride.

My mother, step father, my father and I went. I woke up at my fathers Tuesday morning at 2:40 ish so I could get ready to be at the school at 3:30 for the busses and loading everything on, then we would leave at 4:00.

4:00 arrived, and the busses didn't.

4:30 arrived, we had one.

Shortly after we had two.

My bus has not arrived.

Before hand, our band teacher Mr. J started shoving kids on other busses, but we did not have the room.

The busses we had left at five, and my group had to wait until just past six for or bus. During that time however the adults got us donuts and coffee. I played the Oregon Trail Card Game with a kid and a few of my friends. This however was after I decided I was going to clean up backstage in preparation for next year.

I didn't think of stealing one from the janitors, so I only had this giant push broom... and my dust pan... non existent.

Kids had piled candy wrappers into the corners of the stage, and it was the only thing I could take care of because the flats were in the way, and you need two people for those.

I ended up using my hands to get the wrappers in the garbage.

Eventually our bus arrived, and we headed out... an hour behind everyone else.

For breakfast we hand McDonalds. But I packed something for my breakfast ahead of time because... McDonalds...

Because we waited, we got a nicer charter bus, with outlets with every seat.

It faintly reminded me of a session of Morning Program at my first Elementary School, where we had a lesson in patience. The music teacher called up some kindergarteners and they had a box, and they each had to wait their turn. Some kids waited, while on the first turn some kids took things.

If you looked, you could see her talking to the students, like she was giving them instructions.

The kids got little things. Those who went first took the Oreos, while later on down the line there were tinier things like cheese it's. After a few turns there were two kids left.

Both of those kids got Oreos.

When I was younger I always thought that was a weird lesson, because that never happens when you wait... and I did wait when I was young, I was a good child.

Anywho... that thing with the busses reminded me of that.

All of the charter busses had movie screens every couple of seats, so one kid (the one who brought Oregon Trail) brought a bunch of movies.

We ended up watching Spaceballs, Shrek, Mall Cop 2, and Jurassic World. I listened to music for most of that because watching movies on a bus gives me a bad headache.

An eight hour road trip later; Wolf was in the capitol. Damn, DC is a beautiful city. There's a lot of green, and there's a height restrictions on buildings.

I don't like cities, but I wouldn't mind living there... except it's probably expensive as all hell...

We got to see a bunch of monuments, and they were all pretty cool.

Here's one view of it, with faces crossed out that weren't mostly obscured.

That's the Washington Monument from a Distance.

The statue of Jefferson.

One of his quotes.

The celling.

Another quote.

The Washington Monument from the view of the steps.

The monument was pretty cool, my father loves Thomas Jefferson. He's probably my fathers favorite founding father. He approved of the decisions he made and loved that he was a strict interpreter of the constitution... which my father considers himself.

So my father made me take a picture "with his boy Thomas". I ended up getting one of the both him and I in front of the statue too, and that's now my phone background, I also took a picture of a nice family for them.

History Lesson: Thomas Jefferson helped draft the Constitution, and was a President of the United States, along with being a Democratic Republican. He also founded a collage, which it's current name escapes me. Jefferson was the ambassador to France, and let's face it... he was a bit of a Francophile.

Jefferson considered himself a strict interpreter of the Constitution, and didn't know if it was within his power as president to purchase land from Napoleon... but he did it anyway.

After that we went to Arlington National Cemetery. For my non-American friends who have never heard of it, I'll cover it in the lesson.

Us students got to skip going through security, and I ended up saying to one of my friends something along the lines of, "It's a little sad that they trust us teenagers enough to not go through security despite what's happening in our country."

Errr... teenagers shooting schools... and adults shooting people...

Anywho...

Arlington is beautiful. I didn't take any pictures because I thought it would be disrespectful to the dead, and this also didn't seem like the place to.

They have all of these little white headstones, and you know which parts of the cemetery are newer because the stones are perfectly lined up. They soldiers name, rank and honors are engraved on each stone, and each stone can signify the burial place of two to three people.

We were there to see the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, mainly the changing of the guard.

We watched one of the guards pace back and forth. Well, pace is probably the wrong word...

He would take 21 steps in front of he tomb (in honor of the 21 gun salute), then he clicked his heels and turned, clicked his heels again and looked down across the Cemetery. Whenever he turned again, he switched the hand his gun was in, with a few fancy motions, then waited a few moments, and there was another 21 steps.

After a while he marched into the little green tent and we waited. We heard the church bells go off... and that's when we met Sentinel Wilson.

He told us, in the good ol' commanding military voice to be quite, and respectful and "The Ceremony you're about to witness is the changing of the guard".

That was cool. Everyone was in perfect step, standing straight up... I can not describe this. But Ima gonna try.

It was beautiful military precision mixed with showmanship. Marching, turning a gun around, and salutes.

I highly suggest looking up a video of this, it's extremely impressive.

Our school and one other also got to lay a wreath. Four students from our school got into our band uniforms, and walked down to the tomb. I generally think we look rather snappy, but compared to the Sentinels... the students looked rather frumpy.

They placed the wreath, we put our hands on our hearts, and we listened to Taps being played.

Then we did it again with another school, who wasn't in uniform.

By the time we were done standing and we left I was almost limping because my feet were in some much pain from standing... in shoes... without supports...

History Lesson: Arlington was created during the civil war on land that belonged to Robert E. Lee (his house is still on the property). Soldiers are buried here if certain conditions are met, and if the family seeks to pay extra, it used to be the soldier would get a bigger gravestone.

Wives and children can be buried with the soldier, and you can find their names on the backs of the graves.

Now since space is becoming an issue in Arlington, only high ranking military members can have the larger grave stones.

Only two U.S presidents are buried here.

The tomb of the unknown soldier was built for an unidentified WWI soldier. Eventually he was joined by a soldiers from WWII, The Korean War and the Vietnam War. The soldier from the Vietnam was was eventually identified and reburied somewhere else.

After the tomb we checked into our air conditioned hotel... yay.

The entire time we were aight seeing, it was brutally hot and humid, with temperatures in the nineties. Some people didn't go to the tomb because it was too hot for them, we even had one girl pass out there.

My dad brought this thing called a Maxpedition Bag, which I refer to as the bag of holding, and he had these two giant hydroflasks he kept filled with cool water.

Afterwards we had dinner at Kennedy Center of Preforming Arts. It's beautiful inside, and they already had stuff set up for Hamilton and few of use got pictures. We had a lovely little buffet, that I hope the band teachers didn't pay too much for, because it was not very good.

I don't mean to sound ungrateful... but it's the Kennedy Center of Preforming Arts... and their food tasted like day old Ponderosa. And the people serving us food did not look happy.

After that one of the bus drivers ended up clocking her hours wrong and started this whole big debacle about how she couldn't drive. Which you know... inconvenienced us. We had to wait to leave the Kennedy center because of her. Then the middle school bus didn't even get to see the monuments because of her.

At the Lincoln, I saw Mr. J calling her company... and he was not happy.

Here are some views from the Kennedy Center terrace. Lovely isn't it.

We toured the monuments some more. We saw the Vietnam Wall, the Lincoln Memorial and the Korean War Monument.

The Lincoln was okay, but the Vietnam...

There's something about just seeing rows and rows of names, of people who for home, and people who didn't. They have some wonderful statues there. They had one of three Vietnam soldiers, and they had one of three nurses tending to a soldier.

Note the pose of the one on the right. You can't see it too well, but it's almost angelic.

The Korean War Monument we saw at night and damn... It's another wall with all of these pictures that have been printed onto it in black and white of soldiers and nurses. There are statues of soldiers where it's designed so ones alway looking st you, and it looks like they're trekking through the rice (shit what were they called... think... think) I wanna day patties... but I know I'm wrong.

I'm writing this at 6:30 in the morning... a week later... please forgive me.

But the lighting in this area... that's a beauty I can't describe.

I felt s little bad taking pictures of all of these monuments. It felt a little wrong. I don't know why. I think I was comparing it to the time I went to New York City with my family, and st the 9/11 Memorial, people were taking selfies over the memorial.

Even thought what I did was nothing like that... at all.

Now for the part I've been waiting for... the fucking parade.

Imagine it's just over 90, and it's humid as all hell. Okay, good start.

Now add a wool uniform to that. Better.

Now imagine that the colors of your uniform are dark, and you're wearing a cowboy hat.

Yup, it was bad.

We got up and had an excellent breakfast at the hotel, then grabbed our uniforms and put together our instruments.

What sucks about being a woodwind is when your reed chips, it is not pretty. If you can still play the instrument, it takes a lot more air. We're not even taking the cases down with us, so the entire ride, us woodwinds have to protect our instruments.

I may or may not have chipped my reed twice...

Fuck... my... life.

We had to crowd on the steps of the Smithsonian to take s picture in full uniform for the trophy case, and that was torture because we were already hot, and being that close together made it worse.

Then it was an hour and a half wait in the heat. We're at the National Mall, which is the green area with the Lincoln and Washington monuments, and we were behind the Washington.

During that hour and a half, we were hot, there was some guy spewing of stuff about Jesus behind us in the little tent area, and a playoff with another band that had the same song as us. We then played together.

Then we lined up, and we had those people who carry balloons right beside us. They told us good luck and pronounced our town name wrong.

Well to give them credit... we technically are the ones who say it wrong. We were named after a general who fought in the Revolutionary War. I may or may not have had to have looked that up... I thought it was the Civil War. Anyway long story short, we pronounce it wrong.

Allow me to get back on track.

This was the worst parade I have ever marched in. The heat was unbearable, you could feel the sweat dripping down your back. I was out of breath after the first song due to my reed and I could barely play the rest of the parade.

We were constantly out of line, and I was banished to flute hell, because our line was too full.

Let me tell you something, the clarinets started seven strong this season. Then we lost one... then another... and for D.C. one didn't go. So it was four of us, with what was left of the tubas (errr... Sousaphones) and some kids who got kicked back because they were too many in a line.

I hate the flute section.

During the parade, I had never been more desperate for water. People who had never watered before were doing it, and would walk in front of us really slowly so you got out of line, but that shouldn't matter... because water people are God's.

The water was a blessing, the misting was a blessing, and they took the water bottles and poured water down our backs to keep us cool.

The TV area was cool, and we looked up the parade once we got home.

At the end of the parade there was the area just filled with EMT's and volunteers handing out water bottles. I had reached the point where I didn't care if it was piss warm... it was mother fucking water.

We weren't done yet... nope. We trekked to a park, taking off our uniform tops (which you need help with) carrying hats, jackets, instruments and water bottles, while wearing this black uncomfortable dressy looking shoes.

Then we had to put our instruments away, and no one could find the tote the flute and clarinet cases are in. Then my bus driver almost thought I was a guy, and that caused him to almost stop me from getting on the bus where some girls were changing so I could search for my case.

Eventually is was found. And that took an excruciating long time.

Well, I'm done, this took too long... I kinda like procrastinating.

I got this little fellow at the National Zoo, which was cool... when we saw the animals.

  Wolf is also a very happy piece of Hamiltrash. I may or may not be listening to this right now. Helpless is playing right now.

I'm going to get back to doing nothing right now.