Current mood:	nostalgic
Entry tags:	365 facts, choir, college, concert, texas, tim, travel

365 Facts: #115 (Travel--Texas)
I didn't do a whole lot of traveling as a child. Sure, my parents took me to Wisconsin and a few other places, but mainly we bummed around at home. We didn't take all that many road trips. Being in band in high school was exciting because we did take four buses full of music students down to places like St. Louis. College was the same way--we had our little band trip we went on each year, and then choir had its bigger trips in the spring as well. I'd never formally done choir before my sophomore year of college, so to be able to sing and travel was awesome for me.

That first year in choir, we went on a short trip during Memorial Day weekend--our main stopping points were St. Louis and Springfield (that would be Illinois, not Missouri). But the next year we'd embark on my biggest trip yet--Texas. We did eight states in ten days, and most of those states were ones I'd never visited before. How exciting. And choir trips were better than band trips because you had far less equipment to deal with. Consider that we had to rent/borrow vans for band trips because of all our percussion stuff and personnel. That wasn't a problem for choir.
(The choir problem? Roommates had to share garment bags. That wasn't a bad thing, except if you were a male and had to share a bag with a certain odoriferous tenor. Remember the Seinfeld episode with the stinky valet and Jerry's car? Yeah. My friend Tim had second-hand B.O. on that trip, poor guy.)

Gosh, where all did we go on that trip? We started in Illinois, in Springfield again, I believe. I remember performing in this smallish church. We did "Jabberwocky" with toy instruments--I got to "play"--and then that evening most of us went to a hotel, while a whole eight people, maybe (out of 40 or so), had to do homestays. There were like two families at the church who volunteered to host us. Oh, rats. Except that I think that was the night where I fell three freaking times. I was at the hotel heading for the pool when I tripped in my slightly oversized shoes while running down the hall. Serves me right for trying to catch up with someone. Then, while trying to get into the hot tub, I thought there was a step and there wasn't and I fell on top of my roommates. Nice. I wasn't wearing my glasses, so I'll blame it on that. (There were totally other people, the snobby choir people who didn't get shipped off to houses, that were in the tub. I'm so glad I fell on my roommates and not them. It was bad enough I fell into the hot tub in the first place.) Then, the following morning I believe, I was trying to get on the bus and was loaded down with my carry-ons and I tripped going up the stairs. Nice. Yeah, I was kind of sore by that point, but I made it back alive.

The second night we were in Bella Vista, Arkansas. It snowed. Apparently it never snows there, or at least not in March, so everyone was pretty shocked. It was very pretty, though. At our concert, one of the girls got stuck in her dress and we had to break her out of it, I think. The next morning we went to Walmart #1 in Bentonville, Arkansas to pick up a new zipper for her dress as well as other stuff. I got fake Dramamine because the mountains, while pretty, did a number on our stomachs. I also picked up a scrunchie with a cow on it, which I still have. Someone bought a bottle of Orbits, I think it is, basically this horrible thick, clear drink with floaty things in it. The thing ended up being passed around the whole bus and we still didn't drink it all. Our bus driver did some sneaky maneuvering to get us out of the mountains--more than a couple of us had motion sickness, though I'm not sure anyone vomited--and so we got from Arkansas to Shreveport via Oklahoma. Wild. We spent the night in Shreveport, which ended up being lovely--we woke up to discover that it was spring outside, warm, flowers in bloom. Lovely.

We then made our way to Texarkana, which straddles the Texas/Arkansas border. What fun to be in two places at once. Ha. We took far too many pictures on the state line there. There's a building, maybe the post office, that sits on the border. Ah, but we'd finally made it to Texas. We spent a few days in the greater Houston area (our base was Sugar Land, "Where there is no Equal," ba-dum ching!) before going to Galveston/Texas City (on the Gulf) and then Dallas (Euless/Grapevine). Houston scared us. We saw people drinking beers while going 70--probably 80--down the five-lane highways. We got to see the Galleria, which has its own ice rink. And speaking of ice, we were there in '98, which was right after the Winter Olympics in which Tara Lipinski won the gold. Tara is from Sugar Land. We kept passing this billboard that read "Welcome Home Tara" on it. We also passed the Aerodrome, where she practiced. Very exciting. Also exciting: Performing Handel's Messiah. Even though it was Lent, we sang the "Hallelujah Chorus." I can't recall if we did the whole Messiah, but I remember getting goosebumps because the whole night was so cool. They had these professional singers there. Wow.

Galveston was great. I thought it was really pretty. There were also a bunch of neat shops there, including one that had a teddy bear the size of Tim. Tim is a big guy. The bear was actually slightly bigger than him. Phew. But the funny part had nothing to do with the island. See, in Texas, there are all sorts of oil derricks. At least, I think that's what you call them. Our choir director, who went by Pete, saw some when we were in the Galveston area and said something like, if Jen had an amusement park, that would be a ride. Guys would line up and go to the top, but they'd only see Jen there, so they'd jump off. (Nice, eh?) The park would be called Four Jens Over Texas. (It was actually my last name, but we'll go with Jen for now.) This has since become a legendary theme park. Some of the guys in choir were opening fake concession stands. Even after we left Texas and went to, say, Oklahoma, we had Four Jens Over Oklahoma. It was insane. Consider that, two years later, we had the same bus driver when we went to Florida. He saw me and immediately said, hey, it's Four Jens Over Texas! Holy crap. Even the bus driver remembered. Of course, the bus driver was pretty cool. He was from Liverpool and sounded like Ringo. Except he made us watch Fawlty Towers whether we wanted to or not. Eh, it was better than chick flicks. We were made to watch Somewhere in Time, this awful Jane Seymour/Christopher Reeve film at the beginning of this trip. Oh, did we make fun of it the rest of the time (a penny!). Funnier still? We found an antiques store in Galveston named Somewhere in Time...*and* it had this doll that looked like one of our choir members. So freaky. But I digress.

While in Texas City, I realized I'd left my windbreaker at our host family's house in Sugar Land. That was strange, considering my jacket is maroon and the whole room was off-white...and I'm usually rather anal-retentive about stuff like that. I had to dig out the phone book and try to get a hold of them. Luckily for me, one of the guys actually left his wallet at *his* host family's place. The next day, instead of going straight to the Dallas area, we detoured back to Sugar Land to get our stuff from the church, where the families had dropped them off. What dorks. Oh well. I don't recall performing in Grapevine, but I know we did a homestay. The house we were in was pretty cool, and then there was the news: Supposedly aliens were going to talk to us on Channel 13 at midnight. See, this was a national news story...but it happened in Euless. Crazy. This was actually the local news there, even though my dad heard about it back here. Sadly, my roommate and I did not stay up to see it happen (I don't think our host family did, either). Suffice it to say, no aliens appeared on Channel 13. At least we didn't miss anything.

Our next stop was Oklahoma City. This was just three years after the bombing, and we visited the site. It's all cleaned up now, but back then there was still basically rubble surrounded with a chain link fence. It was so...quiet. Nobody talked. We all knew what had happened there and we treated it like the reverent place it was. I was just stunned at all the stuffed animals stuffed in the holes of the fence for the little kids that died. There were all sorts of notes, too. We got to see the survivor tree, which was across the street from the federal building. Nothing around it had been left standing. The anniversary was last week, and I saw that tree on the news, and it still makes me gasp. There's still nothing growing around it, but that tree and the building right behind it are still there, still recognizable. It never lets me forget being in that place.

The rest of our time in OKC was far more pleasant. We got introduced to "Indian tacos" for dinner--basically a thick, flat round of bread covered in ground beef and sauce. They were pretty tasty. And there was something special about the church, too, to me, but I can't recall it. Maybe because it was just so different from the other churches we'd been to--this one was a little more urban, a little smaller, and it had Native Americans running it, I guess you could say. I don't know. It was special.

After Oklahoma we drove through Kansas--"Miles and miles of nothing," our bus driver proclaimed. Our goal that night was Kansas City, another straddler city. I was mad that I never got to see any signs proclaiming which KC, exactly, we were in. I think we were in the Missouri part. I do believe this was the concert I got kicked out of. Again, anal-retentive packrat; I liked having all the programs of all the places we'd visited. I always bring a journal along with me on trips, but I'm not always good about actually writing in it. The programs would have helped me remember where exactly we'd been. But when we were in KC, we opened our folders to discover they were empty of all but our music. Pete claimed he was clearing them out because they were getting too full, and if we'd really wanted the programs and such we would have kept them. Right. Because we really have any place to put things except in our folders, which are absconded as soon as the concert's over. I should know. I was a folder monkey. (I think that's what made me so mad--I was in charge of passing out and collecting folders, yet I had no say in what stayed and what went.) Of course, Pete took exception to what I said and how I said it, so I was told not to perform that night. We had two choir performance outfits, our formal dress, and our choir sweatshirts and khakis. Since we were in a church at night, the choir wore the formal outfits; I put on my sweatshirt and khakis and sat in the back to listen to the performance. Wow. While I know the Women's Chorale was the premiere choir at my school, our choir wasn't chopped liver. I'd never heard us perform. We were actually really good. I got goosebumps. I also heard things I'd never heard before; it's amazing how different things sound when you're performing versus when you're listening. Getting kicked out of that concert was the best thing that could have happened. Of course, few people knew I'd been kicked out; I think I lied and said I wasn't feeling well or something.

I want to say that was a Thursday night. We went home with these cool people whose neighbors also took people in. The neighbors had four guys and a hot tub...sweet. They let us hang out there for several hours. It was awesome. There were choir members across the street as well who got invited over, but they never came. Sucks to be them. The hot tub was cleaned with bromine, not chlorine, which I'd never dealt with. Bromine has a different smell, but I guess it's gentler on the skin. That was good for one of the guys, who apparently was allergic to chlorine (as was his host parent). I forget when my roommate and I ended up going back to our house--we were at the neighbors' for a long time--but it was pretty late, like one in the morning, when we tried to shower before bed. See, there was something funky with the shower. Neither of us could figure out how to turn it on. And, since it was so late, we didn't want to wake our hosts. We ended up just taking baths and meant to ask the mom in the morning how the shower worked. We never did. But the mom was a sweet lady. She had two little boys who decorated brown bags for our lunches the next day. They had all these stickers on them, including an E for my roommate and a J for me. So cute! The mom was asking what we wanted for lunch. Now, it was Lent, and it was Friday, and my roommate and I both have problems with dairy. We ended up with peanut butter and jelly. Realize that our school is Methodist-based, so being Catholic and following Lent was a little weird at times. But it worked out there.

Our goal that day was to get to Port Byron, IL. Along the way we stopped at the Iowa 80, AKA the world's largest truck stop. Holy crap. There were showers and everything there. I think Tim wanted to buy luggage. Or maybe I did. But we could get it there. There were even several restaurants, though I think we all ate the lunches our host families packed for us. (Ours was pretty good-sized. We didn't complain. It was like a five-course meal.) We cheered when we crossed over the Mississippi into Illinois that afternoon. Plus, it was nice out. It was pretty chilly when we left, but it was now in the 60s. Great. Except there was a power outage that night when we were at the church. I seem to remember there being lots of candles involved with our concert before the lights came back on. So wild. But that was our last concert; we'd be home the next day. This was also our last homestay. It was also kind of weird, as we had to share a room with the family's kid. But it ended up being okay, and I think I was able to email my dad from their house. Oh, and I think it was at some point on the way back that I first encountered non-potable water. It kind of freaked me out. Why in the world would water be okay to wash with but not to drink? That makes no sense to me.

Ah well. I survived my first big road trip, and I even had fun in the process.

It was on this trip that I learned that every decent-sized town in the South has a dollar store and a Walmart. Those were the only places we seemed to be able to shop when we got off the bus to stretch our legs. And it was really windy in Oklahoma. Tim actually bought himself a kite at that dollar store and flew it in the parking lot while we hung out. Crazy.