Bergjord Boarding

May 23-29, 2024

By: Luke

This week I will talk about the first two days of our marching band trip to Washington DC. The tour company packs these days full of activities so I might just do a day at a time after this. I lump the first two days together because the majority of them was spent riding a bus.

We met at the school at 8 am on Thursday May 23rd to be ready to load busses and take off right at 9 am. Students, chaperones, and directors were spaced out evenly between two busses. We hit the road after a quick meeting and assigning which chaperones are responsible for which students.

There is a certain feeling that sets in when you realize ” At this time tomorrow we still won’t be done driving”. It really seems like your brain takes over and helps you pass the time. I am having a very hard time recalling any memories at all from the times between rest stops. I also have no idea what route our driver took from the middle of the country all the way to the east coast. I do remember our first big stop just about 10 hours in.

Iowa 80 is the biggest truck stop in the world! I had never heard of it but it was an exciting stop. One of my favorite parts of a road trip is seeing different gas stations and this one was king of them all. It had a convenience store that had locally made snacks and goods. It also had multiple fast food choices including Wendy’s and Dairy Queen. On top of that, it seemed to stock any part of a semi truck you could ever need including steering wheels, horns, shifters and LED lights. I need to also mention the fact they had a dentists office, chiropractor, and a movie theatre?!

It was a very good stop and I recommend going a little out of your way if you want to see something so grand and unique.

With all of that excitement behind us. (And yes that was very exciting compared to staring at the back of a charter bus head rest.) We still had 20 hours of road time ahead of us and very soon we would be attempting to sleep on the bus.

This went about as well as it could for me. I loaded up on melatonin and tried to find a comfortable spot. Unfortunately things were much worse for Samie. We never travel with neck pillows and didn’t bring any sort of pillow for this trip which ended up being a huge mistake. Luckily we stopped to fuel up somewhere east of Chicago at around 2 am. They had little pillows for sale there and we picked one up to help Samie find a comfortable spot.

This was about as dramatic as it got. I’m really having a hard time remembering specifics about this drive. It reminds me of the “halo effect” described after child birth. A mother “forgets” the pain of labor once they hold their child. It’s less about forgetting pain and more about the joy altering the memory and coloring more happy. ( I say this with no experience what-so-ever) Our bus ride was a long painful labor that we cared less about once we started making memories in DC!

It started getting very real when we started seeing monuments! This was one of our first and for the next week we could almost always see the Washington Monument of the horizon.

We arrived at our hotel and unloaded busses. We had a quick turn around to get assigned hotel rooms and to freshen up. We had dinner plans at Red Robin and then to Washington DC Marine Barracks for their evening parade.

The Red Robin had obviously done this before. Everyone had a burger and fries with side of mac-n-cheese and salad. They had everything ready to go and got us in, served, and back out in record time.

We then headed to downtown DC where the Marine Barracks are located. There was a lot of hurry up and wait until we eventually made it through a security check point. The group was then escorted to some of the only seats left open which were right up front!

The Evening Parade was a spectacular performance of musical excellence and marching precision. The level of self-discipline was second to none. It was an exciting start to our week.

After the performance we funneled out of the barracks and back onto the busses. We made it back to the hotel and everyone was very ready to sleep in a bed. Tomorrow we will have our biggest day on the trip. Looking back my phone recorded me taking almost 29,000 steps. But that will have to wait until next time.