My first band tour

This past weekend I went on my first symphonic band tour. I must admit, I never thought in my entire life that I'd ever be heading out on a symphonic band tour. I spent the week before preparing myself for what I might experience. This was all new to me, to be honest I had spent the previous 23 years before meeting Laura poking fun and scorning these people. (keep in mind, I still scorned and mocked most of them throughout the tour in my head)

                                                                                                                      

               (those are steaks from the bbq we had at hole n the rock)

In my preparation I printed out about 100 pages of reading for my Geography class that I had somehow managed to put off until the last week of the semester. I also packed along: music, my laptop and Dvds so that, at any moment I could throw up my armor and protect myself from any situation I might encounter. My biggest fear initially was that for some freak reason, Laura and I would be forced to share a hotel room with some other band couple, creeped the hell out of me to be honest. Fortunately, that never happened.

So we piled on the tour bus and made our way to Moab, which was wonderful. I had never been there, we stopped and enjoyed some authentic mexican cuisine and were on our way to the thriving metropolis of Monticello. Upon arrival we headed over to Monticello high school for a concert. As Laura prepared for her performance, I wandered my way around the school. The senior class at this school was 30 strong.... from what I could tell the entire population showed up for the concert.

                                                                   

The band performed well (as if I know the difference). My sweet Laura was chosen to conduct a special piece, I was the proud husband with the camera, position myself to get the best angle to get a picture. Making my way to the front of the auditorium, squatting to make sure I had the best picture I could get. 

The next day it was off to Durango, Colorado. I spent the entire 3 hour bus ride pissed because I was duped into not eating before boarding the bus cause I thought we would stop somewhere. Durango is a very interesting place, its main population are college students who attend Ft. Lewis College. The town is small, park city-ish. We got some tacos at Nini's taqueria (yeah, the diet is going great). We later attended another concert at Ft. Lewis, which in my opinion was better than the first. 

On the last day we stopped at hole in the rock and had a bbq. During this time we got to hike the rocks which was lots of fun. I also got to do my share of people watching. I saw many interesting situations while on tour, but by far, the most intriguing was the couple who couldn't go 2 seconds without hugging, kissing, snuggling, making out, causing me to vomit in my mouth. I inquired of Laura as to what their deal was, apparently they dated for like 2 weeks and were engaged and married within a few months, welcome to Utah. Bless their hearts, they've never had anyone to love in their life and now they found someone, hooray! 

I realized quickly that I get severe anxiety when I think about having to live in some small town in the middle of nowhere. I constantly think, where do they get their groceries? No movie theatre? Where do you buy a car? electronics? shoes? Do you have to drive to the nearest big city? So you end up taking these trips where you drive like 400 miles to buy a computer, or car. Or you buy it from the small town and get completely hosed cause there is nowhere else to go.