40 ’til 40: #5-6

I will post 2 moments a day, (this post will be back-dated), until the 29th of the month, resulting in 40 memorable and good moments of my life, in no particular order, leading up to my 40th birthday.

5. Nichole’s Baptism

My sister is the one in our family that regularly goes to church. A few years back, she got Baptized at her church. My brothers and Dad were there to witness it. It was an interesting experience, being in a church for a church service, for the first time. It was an even cooler experience to see my sister get baptized!

6. 2007 DCA Nashville

2007 to 2010 was the time period that I was in a Drum & Bugle Corps called the Derby City Knights, officially based in Louisville, KY but realistically was in Carrollton, Brandenburg, Danville, and LaGrange, KY, each year (Louisville wasn’t exactly friendly or cooperative towards Drum & Bugle Corps logistics). In 2007, we were classified as a “Mini Corps”: a group with 10-21 members, with some combination of Brass, Percussion, Color Guard, Honor Guard, and Drum Major. We performed at 8 events that year: Carroll County High School (Exhibition, before the season started); Louisville, for DCI Louisville (National Anthem); DCA Nashville, DCA Racine, DCA Georgia, and Alpharetta (all competitions; I don’t remember the official name of the Alpharetta competition), Adair County High School (Exhibition, after a High School competition), and the DCA World Championships. Nashville was our first “true” competition: we did a stand-still show but we were judged and got feedback – valuable feedback – from the judging panel. We did pretty well and the crowd was pretty responsive to us. What made this weekend stand out was the ‘lot performance’. A lot of groups will play, after a competition is over, in the parking lot(s) for fans. Although our group was somewhere around 20, we stuck around and played for fans.

A lot of fans came by, stopped, and watched! Members of the Houston, Texas-based Gulf Coast Sound Drum & Bugle Corps came by, as well as members of one of the Atlanta corps, the Corps Vets. We got a much-louder-than-anticipated ovation by everyone at the end. We didn’t played too badly, either. 😉 It was a performance weekend that I’m not sure I’ll ever forget!