Concert Choir Day Seven: Go East Young Men, Go East! (Part Duex)

Aloha!  

I’ve got a few minutes to catch everyone up now that Adam is fully integrated into the tour and taking care of all the finances now.  What a great help it is to have the staff we do!

I actually want to give them their due credit for a minute.  The reason all of this is possible is due largely in part to the awesome team we have assembled at the Land of Lakes Choirboys.  Of course, everything we are able to do on the road starts and stops with the awesome support we receive from Mary Jo back in Elk River.  Without her sending us spending money updates, calling parents we need letters from, taking care of the day-to-day needs of the organization, and doing hundreds of other things while we are on the road, we couldn’t take these trips.

The next cog in the system that makes all of this work is Rodney Tracy, our outstanding motor coach driver.  I tell you folks: it doesn’t get better in this business than Rodney.  Always has a smile on his face and can drive this bus through a McDonald’s drive through if you need it.  On top of all that, he spends hours every day checking the safety devices and systems on the bus to make sure it is always in working condition.  It’s not often a bus returns home in better condition than it left after 4,000 miles.  With Rodney at the helm, it will.

No tour would be complete without the Prefects that take care of the jobs nobody else wants to.  Kenny and Adam are the perfect Prefect pair and with several tours now under their belt, they are beginning to get the job done through experience and the little shortcuts you can only learn by doing.  

Kenny is a great guy to have for morale on a trip.  He is constantly smiling and chatting with the boys to make sure they are in good spirits.  It’s hard not to smile when you are around Kenny.  In addition, he is usually the one due all the credit for the photography on this trip.  He’s well into the gigabytes of pictures now, and we haven’t even gotten to the most photogenic parts of our tour.  The knowledge he has gained from working in a pharmacy has also made him a tremendous asset as our meds distributor. 

Adam has only been with us for two days now, but his impact is being felt greatly as well.  Adam’s attention to detail is rivaled only by Inspector #4 at Hanes, who has been ensuring my socks are snug on my feet for several years now.  This is exactly the person you want handling the finances on tour.  (To give you some perspective, he kept a $95,000 tour last year accurate to the penny – despite going through 3 different currencies on two different continents.  That’s pretty incredible!)  

As great as Prefects are for a tour, they just don’t have the comforting feel a mother brings.  Lisa is just that, except when she doesn’t get chocolate in regular intervals or the person in the seat behind her kicks it for the 9^th time in an hour.  She always has her finger on the pulse of the choir and helps us identify so many small issues before they get bigger.  Some of the observations she makes floors me – after all these years of touring together, she still amazes me every tour.

Of course, there is Aaron.  Mr. Carpenter has taken the notion of tour planning to an entirely new level in this organization.  If there is a 15 minute window to give the boys a new experience or opportunity to see something they probably couldn’t back home, Aaron will find a way to get it into the schedule.  On top of the “fun” side of the tour, the concerts he develops and the contacts he makes before the tour even starts ensures our trip will be successful.  It’s the leg-work before the tour that makes it awesome.  His organization skills and vision for the future help to mold the tour and organization in the best direction possible.  

With the experience we have all gained over the years, we all know our roles and have a good idea for what to expect as each day comes along.  It is a pleasure to travel with these awesome people and provide the best trip possible for the boys.

So this morning, we met at the school in Hilliard that has been our launching point for the past two days.  I received so many great compliments from the host families that I barely had time to greet the boys as they came this morning.  That is always fun!  This was another great stop for us and I think we made some good friends while we were here.   We did have our first lost hat of the tour, but when that new hat is purchased from your spending money, it tends to be the last hat those boys tend to buy for the trip.

The First Round of The Choirboy of the Year Award was voted on this morning by the boys.  Here are your nominees (in no particular order):

Jeremiah Shoemaker
Camden Goepferd
Joey Leibig
Noah Carpenter
Jacob Rud
Daymin Lang
Aaron Otten
Chi Asangwe
Jack Strub
Jacob Gordon
Steven Kelly
Isaac Volker

This will be a tough vote this year.  So many boys are doing an outstanding job.

The boys that are moving on to the second round were the Top 8 vote getters.  They were (in no particular order):

 
Jeremiah Shoemaker
Camden Goepferd
Joey Leibig
Noah Carpenter
Jacob Rud
Daymin Lang
Steven Kelly
Isaac Volker

Congrats to all the boys that received votes this year.  It is not an enviable position to have to select just one of them from a pool like that.

The bus ride to Maryland brought us through four states and ushered in some mountainous scenery.  It was a pretty average ride, other than that.  We managed to watch a little Dudley Doo-Right, but I think we either wore-out the DVD or it got scratched.  Dudley is no longer with us.  (As you can imagine, this has been a difficult time for some of the staff members who have known Dudley for some time now.)

The concert in Frostburg was pretty good.  The crowd was nice and the people were very hospitable.  The boys had huge plates of some amazing spaghetti.  The sauce was incredible.  The food alone was worth the trip!

Still had trouble getting our clean-up done on time.  16:24.  Ugh.

One other note:  Letter #2 is in the mail.  Expect the first one anytime now and the second one by this weekend.

Tomorrow is off to NYC!  As you can imagine, the boys are on the very excited side of things.  Aaron has everything mapped-out, so this should be an intense, scenery-packed, high-energy trip through the Big Apple.

I need my beauty rest.

P.J.