My First Road Trip!

Friends, guess what?!?!

I went on my first road trip last weekend!! Me and Katie and Glasses Boy and Curly-Haired Boy and Short Girl all went on a road trip to a place called Tennessee! Do you know where Tennessee is? Have you ever been there? I hadn't until this weekend. We went to watch our friend Tall Girl play music.

So proud of Tall Girl!

Tall Girl is part of something called "indoor drumline." (One of The Babies is in it, too! So I go to see TWO friends!!) Indoor drumline is exactly what it sounds like: drumming inside. But Tall Girl doesn't play drums like you see rockstars play. She usually plays something called a marimba. It has the same notes as a piano, but it's on wheels, and you hit the keys with mallets to make sounds. It looks like this:

But for THIS indoor drumline, Tall Girl isn't playing marimba, either. She's playing synth, which is basically an electric piano. (Dear Tall Girl, The Baby, and any other music person who reads this: please don't be sad when I explain music instruments badly. I'm just a bear. My head is filled with fluffy stuffs.)

Go, The Baby, Go!!

The indoor drumline that Tall Girl and The Baby are part of is called Music City Mystique. They're probably my favorite group, and I'm only kind of biased. (Katie's Note: Trash Bear is totally biased. He only knows one indoor group, and that's McM. He doesn't even know what "biased" means. He's right, though. McM is pretty stinkin' awesome, and I'm incredibly proud of all the JSU kids who march with them!!) It's called Music City Mystique because it meets in Nashville, and Katie says that Nashville is sometimes called Music City because of all the country music people who perform there.

It's really hard to be in an indoor drumline, especially McM. Tall Girl and The Baby have to go to Nashville EVERY WEEKEND, and it's pretty far away from Jacksonville. I know because we roadtripped to almost there this weekend. They work for hours and hours and hours on music and marching and lights and sounds and visuals and their really intense facial expressions! Sometimes they don't get home until really late on Sundays, and then they have to go to school the next day! It's not easy, but Tall Girl has always wanted to march with Mystique, and she told Katie that it's worth it.

And once we got to see their show in person, I think I understand what Tall Girl meant. Because they were SO GOOD! The drummers were like running around, and they had light sticks that they grabbed and tricks that they did, and sometimes the people at the front would spin around, and one time people stood on their heads!!! It was crazy! You'll just have to watch the video that I'll make Katie post here, because it was too good to explain! And you could see on their faces that everyone loved what they were doing even though it was a lot of hard work. In fact, I think they may have been so happy because it was a lot of hard work and they were proud of themselves for doing it. I know I'm proud of myself every time I post a new blog, so I bet the McM kids were even MORE proud.

So, we drove a loooooong way to Tennessee (Katie says it's about a 3-hour drive, but it took us almost 4....whoops), and we saw an AWESOME show; then we spent about an hour in Books-a-Million (because there's not much sightseeing to do in Spring Hill, Tennessee), and then we drove a looooong way home--but this time we had Tall Girl with us! The car was so full that I got to ride in the trunk! It was an adventure within an adventure!!

Last Sunday was a really long day (for me and for Katie). Even when we got home, she and Short Girl and Curly-Haired Boy had homework to do. But I think we all think it was worth it. Like Curly-Haired Boy said, "These are the things you're supposed to do in college: make memories."

And I like memories. Especially memories with these guys.

 Watch McM's 2016 Show "In Bloom" Here!

~Trash Bear (and Katie)

UPDATE: Katie says that Tall Girl and The Baby and the rest of McM are competing in the WGI Indoor Drumline Championships in Dayton, Ohio, today through Saturday! Go McM! Go Tall Girl! Go The Baby! We're all so proud of you! Wooooooooh!!!

***All photo credits go to Ms. Doreen Hart Brisendine. She's a mom of one of the musicians and McM's semi-official photographer***