For our last winter guard/winter percussion show of the season, Tim and I headed south to Chattanooga, Tennessee for the 2006 Southeastern Color Guard Circuit championships. The two-day show featured over 150 units from across the southeastern U.S.

The trip from Evansville to Chattanooga was about 6 hours so we had plenty of time to listen to some tunes during the drive. Frequent readers of our contest journals know that listening to the proper music is essential to put us in the right frame of mind for a show and this show was no different. After a brief discussion Tim and I selected the ultimate soundtrack for a road trip to Tennessee:

Wing Sings AC-DC!

Like Elvis, Madonna, Shakira, and other entertainers with only one name, Wing has become an unstoppable force in the music industry. She quickly outgrew the nightclub scene in her native Hong Kong and relocated to the Mecca of modern music - New Zealand. Since the release of her first album, "NZ in da house!!" her fan base has grown to nearly a billion people. Once Wing sings a song, it becomes her own. Check out this former AC-DC classic, and now Wing classic "Back in Black"

We knew that it was going to be a weird trip well before we made it to Chattanooga. After we crossed into Tennessee we could always hear the faint sound of "hootin' and hollerin'" in the distance.

No trip to Tennessee is complete until you stop in at the International Grits Museum in Nashville, so we just had to check it out. Widely regarded as the "Smithsonian of the hominy world," The International Grits Museum stands as a towering monument to the ubiquitous, amorphous blob found on all breakfast plates south of the Mason-Dixon Line.

This was the first time we shot a Southeastern Color Guard Circuit show. We were a little nervous because we wanted to make a good impression. Fortunately for us our old friend, Zhonda Shaw (one of our friends from Bateman Photography) put our minds at ease with a little humor.

Zhonda: "This is an important show, so you will guys will really need a buttfor."
Tim & Scott: "What’s a buttfor?"
Zhonda: "For pooping, silly!"
All: laughter ensues

Once we got settled in and started shooting, we had a great time watching the shows. But soon we noticed that most of the shows were either dedicated to someone who had passed away or had some other sad theme. By the end of the first day, Tim was totally depressed. All Tim wanted to do was go back to the hotel, eat a pint of ice cream, watch Steel Magnolias, and cry himself to sleep.

Day two started out very badly for Tim. A sharp stabbing pain in his back woke him up very early. By the time we got ready to go to the show, we could hardly stand up. The hotel manager offered to take Tim to the hospital and I headed to the show. A few hours into the show, Tim called me and told me that the hospital confirmed his suspicion. He had a kidney stone. Fortunately he thought he passed it because he felt a lot better. He brought the stone to the show so I could see it.

To ease the pain of Tim's kidney stone, the doctor prescribed some medicine, which Tim took before heading to the show. Unfortunately the medicine made him a little loopy. Often he held his camera backwards while shooting, which resulted in a couple hundred photos like this one.

What a great way to end the winter guard/percussion season! We saw some truly outstanding performances and Tim got a really cool pet rock to boot! We can only hope that the upcoming marching season will be as fun as the road trips we had the past couple months.

See ya in September!