Almost Home

The geography of Tour gets a little hazy for me, even with Andy’s tour map. I stopped looking at it long ago; the single sheet is frayed beyond recognition. On past Tours, Max would whip out his laptop each day, pull up his handy Atlas application and try to figure our routing without the help of the Tour Coordinators’ directions. Michigan morphed into Ohio somewhere along Tuesday’s drive. It cheered everyone to be one state closer to home.

Tuesday’s concert was a run-out from Maumee, Ohio. Long enough for most people to fall asleep as we hummed down the highway, the downshifting on the exit ramp had everyone stirring and reaching for jackets. Looking out the windows, we saw farmland with barns and silos, grain elevators, and livestock. We knew the concert was a gym job, but barring the grain elevators and barns, there didn’t seem to be anything large enough to hold a band concert.

The clouds hung low to the horizon, but a thin strip of brilliant orange glowed just below the clouds. Gradually a town emerged in front of us, with American Four Squares and Victorian homes giving way to an elegant County Court House centered in the Town Square of Bryan, a gem of a town in rural Ohio. Played to a packed gymnasium, the end of the concert was something of a milestone – only one of each program left before we reach home.

The longer drive and run-out gave us a free day in Maumee. Most people spent the day in the work-out room or in the pool, crossing the road to visit the Meijer (stocking up for Friday where we’ve been warned about “slim pickings” for dinner), catching up on phone calls, and taking care of business.

Wednesday’s concert was just down the road in Toledo. It was the last performance of the “C” Program; we say goodbye to Festive Overture, the horn concerto, Variants on a Medieval Tune, and The Perfect Fool. Michelle and I are happy to be done with “the note”.

Traditionally, towards the end of Tour, the MasterGunny’s take the crew out for a nice dinner on a Sunday evening. The shorter Tour and the scheduling of the Pizza Parties created a conflict, so the Crew Party was held after the concert Wednesday night. We gathered in the lobby once they returned from the concert site and chatted over pizza and ice cream cake. The evening ended with Charles and Sgt. Madachik in a little contest to see who could keep their full arm submerged in the tub of icy water used to chill the beverages.

People were pretty anxious to move on from Maumee – we had pretty much run out of things to do in the area. The drive to Youngstown was quiet, most people dozing or listening to their iPods. The sunshine was warm through the windows, but patches of snow caught our eye as we took the exit for Youngstown.