Stressed, but Happy Panther

It was on this day in 1911 that the Pitt band first formed. So I guess that makes it Pitt Band's 95th birthday, huh? That's pretty cool. Anywho, today was an interesting day, and interestingly enough, I spent a good portion of it with the band!

We performed for the Fort Ligonier Days Parade, which, if you didn't know already, is a pretty big deal down near Ligonier. The only downside was that we were to step off dead last, and no one told us this ahead of time.

So we warmed up at 10:50 for an 11:00 stepoff, thinking we might be stepping off shortly thereafter. Wrong. We waited and talked, talked and waited. After a while, I started playing random Christmas carols on the trumpet. But we stepped off at 12:25. Yeah. It was a long parade, not in terms of how far it went, but in terms of how many people were in it.

After we were done, we played a mini-concert in the street. We each picked up a boxed lunch (although they were in plastic bags, not boxes; wouldn't they be "bagged lunches"?). Then we boarded the buses and went back to Oakland.

Earlier, we had been assured that we would be back in Oakland by 15:00, most likely sooner. This was good, because I had to leave Oakland at 15:30 for a Heinz Chapel Choir concert in Uniontown. Except at 15:00, we were still miles away from Oakland. Looking at the map, it would have made much more sense for me to find some way to get from Ligionier (A) to Uniontown (C) directly, without the stopover in Oakland (B).

Finally, at 15:45, we arrive, and I'm panicking. I misplaced the choir's phone contact sheet, so I had no way of contacting anyone in the van that was supposed to take me to Uniontown... until I had a "Eureka moment" and became resourceful. I opened the email that had the van lists, and then logged on to Facebook and quickly scanned each person's profile for a cell phone number. Finally, I found one.

Ring, ring. Hello? Yeah, I'm supposed to be in your van; have you left yet?

"Um, yeah. We heard you had another way of getting there, so we didn't bother waiting for you."

Nice. I was so lucky that one of my fellow trumpeters had overheard my lamentations on the bus back to Oakland. He was getting a ride from his parents to his home, which was in that direction. I was fortunate that they were so willing to let me hitch a ride. Sure they had no clue exactly where in Uniontown we were going, but that's why I took the time to print out directions from Google Maps.

So I finally got to the church where we were going to be singing at 18:15, the concert being at 19:30. Granted, I'd completely missed the "logistical rehearsal" where they figured out who was going to stand where and all that, but I just told the people on either side of me to nudge me frequently in the proper direction. And it all worked out.

But I was wondering how my high school band was doing in competition on my college band's birthday. When I finally got back home, I was pleased to be greeted with two messages on the answering machine, both with loud cheering in the background. The first was from my girlfriend:

"... I advise you to call me ASAP if you want to hear how we did. Oh, my God. ..."

The second was from my father, two minutes later:

"Hi, ... it's Dad. Just wanted to let you know Girar..."

I was disappointed that this second message got cut off, because obviously, I wanted to know. But I called my girlfriend and she told me that they swept in every category. I was happy; that hasn't happened for Girard in a while.

So I am now a stressed, but happy Panther. And very tired. Hence the substandard writing style. Oh, well. I'm also an apathetic Panther right now.