Rain of Fire

was AWESOME.

Friday: we met up at school at 7:40 and loaded up onto the bus, which promptly broke down less than halfway to Reno. Waiting for a new bus set us behind schedule. Even so, we stopped at In-N-Out to eat lunch, and found that the fries were literally half potato and half grease. April and I experimentally crushed some between napkins, to find that the grease soaked through all the layers. Friday was also Day of Silence, and April was feeling creatively communicative - she wrote her name in fries and squished them into a napkin. Later on we pulled the napkin out again to find that the grease had seeped into unreadable blobs.

At UNR, Andrew, Timothy, Jeff, Rafey and I went to see a couple of performances. It took some running around, but we finally settled watching one big band performance and then several combos. The Berkeley High School II combo was very impressive, I wish I’d caught their I combo performance. Very rarely did the players actually have to look at their instruments - throughout their entire performance they watched each other, by far communicating better than the other combos we saw. The Dos Pueblos High School combo was also excellent, they had an usual quartet - a pianist, drummer, bassist, and vibes. Their last piece also had a theremin solo.

Yes, we did have earthquakes. Several long ones hit while we were getting ready to go to bed.

Saturday: Another early morning. We arrived early to watch our III and II combo performances, then went our own ways to watch some other groups before the Jazz Lab performance. It went fairly well, I played my solo parts without messing up too badly, but after missing several chords things got a little tense. During Top Daddy I could feel my flute shaking - I was also sitting on the opposite side of the band from where I normally was during practice. It sounded completely different - I thought I missed my entrance because I could hear a melody that was normally covered up by the saxophones.

We changed and bought ‘lunch’ (cough) from the convenience store, then went to buy churros. Chris found me inside the building - I knew ECHS was at the festival, but I hadn’t been expecting to see him there. An awesome surprise :P

Skipping ahead to the award ceremonies - the I combo won first place in their division, and Mr. Bryant told us later that even though they didn’t announce it, both of our big bands placed in the top 10 of their divisions. All in all, satisfying :) We left after all of our groups had been announced to head down to the bowling alley. Apparently I suck, I haven’t bowled since I was too young to hold the 1 lb ball correctly. I did a little better after I used a too-heavy ball. After 2 games we went to play DDR 8D”“”“

A fun trip ;) The only downside is I didn’t get my weekly dose of binge-sleeping.