Road Tripping: Havahd, a Not-Love Story

After we got to the hotel, we checked in and found our rooms on the eleventh floor of the hotel (the executive level). Although most of the rooms had four people assigned to them, I only ended up sharing a room with the other female clarinetist on the trip.

In the morning, we woken up by one of the previous inhabitants of the room who had set an alarm for 6 am. We heard the alarm go off, didn't know where the sound was coming from, couldn't see anything, and hit buttons on the clock and phone until the noise stopped. A few hours later, when we actually woke up, we found out that the hotel did not provide breakfast, but there was a Dunkin Donuts across the street. Welcome to New England.

After a lazy morning, and being asked by housekeeping twice(?) if we were checking out yet, we collected our things and returned to the bus. We then drove to Downtown Crossing where we were performing. I had told my parents it would be too cold for us to play outside, but apparently not. We put on layers, and gloves, except for the clarinets, which is the only open holed pep band instrument and thus the only one that you physically cannot play with gloves on.

I have fingerless gloves, but even with those on, my fingers were freezing within three songs. Plus, the pin on my B natural over the break (B4) freezes up when it’s cold. I should probably get my clarinet tuned up two years ago soon, but I also shouldn't be playing outside in twenty degree weather.

When the concert was over and I could feel my fingers again, I met my parents and they took me for lunch (chicken rice and noodles – it was very good). To try and get us and the hockey team back in Ithaca before a(nother) storm hit Boston, the game had been moved up to 4, so right after lunch I returned to the bus for the drive to Harvard’s rink.

We hit traffic (and almost a road sign) on the way over, but we made it into the rink with two minutes to spare before the team came out onto the ice. Attendance at this game was higher (3,095) but still not at Lynah levels, and only because of the number of Cornell fans at the game. Harvard’s band came as well.

If you look closely, you might be able to see that the conductor is conducting with a baton.
At a hockey game.
You know what that is/
Pretentiousness.

And so, after travelling hundreds of miles, we came to the Bright-Landry Hockey Center to watch the dance cam during the period breaks. Instead of playing our instruments, which is kind of the point of having a pep band there. We did get to play some, but at Lynah, besides a few announcements, the pep band provides all the entertainment. We play during warmups (Harvard has “warmup music”),  we play the anthems, they don’t do contests during the breaks, and we play at stoppages.

One thing I will say for Harvard’s rink is that they have a digital scoreboard that can show replays. Lynah’s scoreboard is up against one end of the rink and they don’t even keep track of shots in real time. I wouldn't want Lynah to have something exactly like Harvard's scoreboard because it wouldn't fit with the wooden seats and beams, but it was nice to get to see goals and plays you missed.

The game ended in a 3-3 tie, which was better than we might have expected but not as good as it could have been. Cornell opened the scoring but Harvard came back and midway through the third period scored on a badly marked play to make it 3-2 in their favor. Fortunately, Cornell answered with the last goal of the game.

We left Boston after overtime around 7:30 and drove for seven and a half hours (with a half hour stop in the middle) to return to Ithaca at 3 o’clock in the morning. So after two days, sixteen hours on the bus, sleep and nutrition of questionable quality, and two hockey games, we departed from New England with one point out of a possible four. Would I have liked to see Cornell win a game? Well, yeah. But the trip was still a lot of fun, and if I have the opportunity to travel for another hockey weekend, I’d do it.

Moth Hairs

Pippin: Merry, I've got it this time – Happy Moth Hairs Day!

Merry: Pip, you smoke too much.  That doesn't sound right at all.

Gimli: What are you two going on about?

Merry: Pippin thinks there’s some sort of occasion going on today.

Pippin: Yes, it’s Moth Hairs Day, just like last year.

Legolas: Mother’s Day, young master hobbit.

Gimli: Ah, a day celebrating dwarf women.  You know, some say that there are no dwarf women, and dwarves come up out of the ground.

Pippin: I – I don’t understand.

Merry: You don’t understand a lot of things, Pip. . . . Are there any dwarf women?

Gimli: Of course.  My very own mother.  Ask Frodo’s uncle, Bilbo; he’s seen a picture of her.

Gandalf: Yes, yes he has.  And how did we come at this topic?

Merry: Pippin was wishing everyone a Happy Moth Hairs Day, but he’d had it all wrong, it’s-

Pippin: Wait, I want to say it.

Merry: Go ahead, then.

Pippin: Happy Mother’s Day!

Road Tripping: Big Red visits the Big Green

In my two and a half years in the pep band, I had not gone on an overnight trip with the band until a few months ago. There were a variety of factors that led me to this decision. One, I’d never been on an overnight trip before and it would overlap with February break so I’d have time after the trip to relax. Two, I would only be missing two lectures (and production lab) instead of three or four lectures and a recitation. Three, it was the Harvard-Dartmouth trip. Four, I would be able to meet my parents in Boston in the middle of the trip. And five, I wanted to go.

I signed up and got on the trip and so I found myself hauling myself, Hezekiah, and a blanket, among other things, up the slope at 8:15 on Friday morning. The blanket was in case we got stuck in Boston after the Harvard game on Saturday night, which should give you an idea of how bad the weather in the northeast was this past winter.

We left Ithaca by nine and stopped for lunch at noon, kicking off two days of minimal nutrition healthy foods like pizza, burgers, and donuts. I had a sandwich and returned to the bus to finish reading Walden for environmental history. We watched Dodgeball and pulled into Hanover around five. Based on the minimal time I got to spend in Hanover, it seems like a nice town. It feels New England-ish.

From dinner, we walked back to the rink, where we arrived not only in time to play for the team as they came out of the locker room but also before the Dartmouth band. As far as the rink itself, it’s pretty nice, though I was doing some research on Thompson Arena and I have a couple points from Dartmouth Athletics’ official website to refute. For one, their statement that “Crowds of more than 4,000 regularly attend Dartmouth men's hockey games and the atmosphere can be electric . . .” The box score reports attendance at the game as 2,673, and this was on a Friday night in the midst of a six-game win streak for Dartmouth. Also, on our way out, we were informed that the 25+ people with the pep band outcheered the other 2,640 Dartmouth fans in the arena. Second, “One of the toughest arenas for visiting teams in all of college hockey, Thompson Arena’s design has been replicated by other schools trying to the create a similar feel.” First of all, good job proofreading. I’m interested in how other schools try to the create a similar feel. Next, Lynah is older; its first game was played in 1957 compared to 1975 for Thompson Arena.

You know what those things are at the back?  Empty seats.

As for the game itself, the first period saw Dartmouth jump out to a two goal lead only to be matched by Cornell. The second period was scoreless, and we thought we were heading into overtime . . . when Dartmouth scored with eight minutes left in the third period. Cornell couldn't come up with another goal, and so we left Hanover with the loss. On our way over to Harvard, we watched Love Story, and arrived at the hotel around midnight.

Reviews From the Road

When the pep band goes on away trips, we spend a lot of time on the bus. Instead of being productive To make the bus ride less monotonous, we watch movies (or anything on DVD; when we went to Madison Square Garden last semester we watched two and a half hours straight of Community).

Over February break (six weeks ago . . .), on my first overnight trip with the pep band, we ended up watching three movies, one on the way to Dartmouth, one between Dartmouth and Harvard, and one on the way back to Ithaca. After our lunch stop on the first day of the trip, we put in Dodgeball.

There are some movies that you watch for their story, animation, cinematography, character development, or thought-provoking ideas. Dodgeball is not one of them. The entirety of the movie was slightly totally ridiculous. That doesn't mean I disliked the movie; in fact I enjoyed it, but if you do watch it, be warned that there is very little substance to the movie. A group of guys joins a dodgeball tournament to try and win the prize money that will save their gym from closure, and that’s about all there is to the movie.

Then after the Dartmouth game on our way to Harvard, we watched Love Story (spoilers ahead). There are only two scenes that the pep band likes – the beginning, where Cornell beats Harvard in hockey, and the end, where Jenny dies. During this trip, however, we watched the whole movie, which contained a contrived plot, terrible dialogue, and seven thousand renditions of the Love Story theme. It was somehow nominated for both Academy Awards and Golden Globe Awards and spawned a sequel, which was universally acknowledged as being awful. I thought Love Story was so bad that I liked it. Time to find the sequel.

The last movie of the trip was Django Unchained, which would not have been my film of choice. We were warned that it was a violent movie before it started. That was a very accurate statement. The beginning has some violence, and there’s some scattered throughout the middle, but things really pick up in the ending sequence. Up until that point, the violence had been excessive, but in the last scenes it’s so utterly unnecessary it’s absurd. The movie’s about a freed slave who becomes a bounty hunter, so you know there’s going to be some shooting, and then the last half hour happens, and it’s a little more than some shooting. I’m not sure I’d watch it again, and if I did, it wouldn’t be soon. The movie was well done, but the violence is somewhat off-putting.

Overall, it was an interesting mix of movies on this trip. Nothing fantastic, but nothing I regret watching either, though my brain cells might beg to differ about Dodgeball.

3.14.15(926535897932384626)

In honor of the pi day of the century, I decided to come up with some trivia questions to celebrate.

Don McLean song with the lyrics “’Cause the players tried to take the field/The marching band refused to yield/Do you recall what was revealed/The day the music died?”

Fill in the blank: As American as _________

TV trope with origins in slapstick comedy

Maine’s state dessert

Circular chart used in statistics in which arc length is proportional to quantity or percentage

Book featuring a lifeboat and a tiger

Type of detective who can be hired to interview people, search records, and conduct surveillance, among other things

Black and white movie about a paranoid mathematician

Police drama featuring a retired police officer who also runs a restaurant

Type of hopes an ant might have

Ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter

Leave your answers in the comments; correct answers win a virtual high five. And no, I did not get any pie today.