Bells (Day #2 of A to Z Blogging Challenge)

"To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells!" - The Bells, Edgar Allen Poe

A little over 15 years ago, over Spring Break in 1997, I went on tour from Indiana to Colorado with my university handbell group. There were 18 of us or so, almost all young women from ages 18 to 22, with one non-traditional student (an older gentleman) and one male director who was still quite young at the time. I was a senior in college, not quite age 22 as yet. I had been playing with the group since my first week at school as a freshman. I had started playing handbells at age 10, but would have started playing even earlier had a been permitted by the director at our church at that time. I wanted to play badly. One of the reasons that I chose the college to attend after high school was the fact that they had a bell group!

Here are excerpts of the journal I kept of the trip (we did concerts along the way in Illinois, Iowa, Kansas and Colorado - and stayed overnight in host homes) - Names have been omitted for protection of the innocent and guilty:

March 1 ~ "We are on our way. . . . Today it is very warm - 60F and humid. There is a chance of thunderstorms."

March 2 ~ "The concert last night went pretty well. It can be tiring, especially my part on the last piece - 'Psalm of Praise'. It's a good thing it is last." [Note: a fairly fast and busy piece on which I played A6 to D7 . . . large part of the melody that repeated often. I loved the piece.]

"I am seeing a lot of historical places I would love stop at, if we had the time. However, we need to get to the next [location] by four. They are taking us all out to eat. They have three bell choirs and a full-time music director, so we really need to do well. 'Simple Gifts' has been going badly. I have been doing fine, but N____ isn't - she has to come in on the fourth beat before I come in and it's like she has fallen asleep or something. I have learned to come in whether she does or not."

[After the evening's concert . . . ]
"Tonight's concert went all right. However, 'Sing Praise' went very badly, because the high and low octaves got off from each other. Fortunately, we got back together eventually before the end."

"This is rather exciting, seeing different peoples' homes. . . We have our own rooms tonight . . . This house has five bedrooms! Their children are grown up and married . . . Oh, this bed is comfortable. Last night, A__ and I had to sleep on an old double bed with old worn sheets and icky old pillows. I am glad that I brought my own pillow. I would love the house I am in now. It is huge!. . . This room has old fashioned lace curtains, a white wicker rocking chair, and dolls."

March 3 ~ "Last night during the concert, D. called on me to demonstrate the various bell techniques. I was so nervous that I could hardly remember how to do them."

"This morning for breakfast, our hosts served S____ and I three huge pancakes, two sausages, and for an appetizer, fruit soup: some kind of strawberry juice mixed with tapioca, pieces of strawberry and bananas. It was good, but I felt very nauseous for a while this morning." [Note: this was when it started to occur to me that I could be allergic to bananas. . .]

"I just saw an old stone footbridge over a creek."

March 4 ~ "We are in Kansas! I am finally, really in Kansas. [My first time in Kansas.] I am looking at everything in awe. . . . Everything is rather brown, bare, and desolate."

"We just passed through a broken-down town with a white church building that has broken windows. Farm machinery cluttered the yard."

"We stopped at the Cathedral on the Plains earlier. It was pretty impressive."

"Trident cost $1.13 here! (Limon, CO)"

"6,633 feet - Simla, CO. . . It's snowing again, pretty thickly."

March 5 ~ "When we got out yesterday in Colorado Springs, we still hadn't seen the mountains because it was snowing. I also couldn't breathe. My chest hurt. I felt like I couldn't get enough oxygen. I was dizzy and my legs were wobbly." [Altitude sickness. It took a gallon of water to start to feel normal again.]

"The concert went well last night."

March 6 ~ "The people in Colorado Springs had a really cold house. I didn't sleep well. I was also excited to see the mountains, finally, yesterday morning. They are so beautiful (all of the colors and shapes)! . . . There is a brown layer of air over Denver. It looks disgusting."

"Yesterday morning, we played at Lutheran High School. The kids were head-banging to 'Takeda Rhapsody.' They also really liked it when we marted. Otherwise, they just talked and looked bored."

"At the demonstration at CSU, we had all the students try to play. I helped this one really nice guy, who said his name was S___. He played the D7 bell on Tallis' Canon, so he had only one note to play - on the fourth beat of measure 37."

"The lady we're staying with now is very controlling, and also collects a lot of stuff."

"B___ and S___ had a hot tub last night. Four of us (L___, L____, S____ and I stay with K__ and M___. I slept in a queen sized bed with L____. Neither of us really slept well because we were really hot and we kept thinking we were waking each other up. They have a cluttered house. They also had lots of alcohol. They served pancakes for breakfast. There were guns in a case in the room we slept in."

"Yesterday, I went to the top of the capitol building. Several of us rode the free 16th Street Mall bus around. We went to the Gap where S____ talked to a guy whom she thought had gorgeous eyes. We then went to the Tattered Cover, a wonderful bookstore."

March 7 ~ "A Schulmerich rep was there tonight. He fixed most of the bells! He also put some new necks on two which had broken off. The B5 played better than it has in four years. He likes bells which cannot be adjusted for volume by hand, but instead likes needing to get out a screwdriver every time."

"One lady at tonight's performance asked if she could buy a tape of our concert. We should release a recording of it."

"Last night six of us stayed at one house - two to a room. L___ and I took the 'blue room' with two twin beds, so we would not have to worry about waking up another person. We had cereal and bagels for breakfast. . . Mrs. W____ supervises student teachers. Mr. W____ is an electrical engineer. . . They had light green carpet all over the place. They had really nice cars."

March 8 ~ "_____ is reading about the conception of Hercules."

"It is snowing over one of the mountain peaks. A cold front is coming through."

"A___ suggested that we try to get in the main entrance by pretending we're half sisters and J___ is our father. B___ said, 'He's just like Hercules!' Hercules had sex with 49 sisters in one night, and had children, all sons, by all of them."

"Our last concert starts soon. I think this is the last time I am going to wear black and white for a while. It is rather sad." [I just have to note that I have never REALLY liked wearing black with white on top . . . all black is just better.]

March 9 ~ "I am really sorry we are never going to play 'Psalm of Praise' again. I nailed the C#7s last night and played the B6s in time. I don't know when I am going to play with such a good group again."

[Note: I've played in a few good groups since then! How was I to know back then?]

"S___ and I stayed with the S______s. They have a really new house because they lived in New Mexico for 40 years. In our bathroom, the guest bathroom, there was a separate shower and bathtub. It's a beautifully decorated house. . . We had a large breakfast - scrambled eggs and ham, muffins and toast. We have eaten so well on this trip."

"We just passed a couple of miles worth of cattle in corrals, eating. I wonder if they are going to be slaughtered."

"Colorado rest areas are bad. In the women's resroom, there was an urinal, and the toilets flushed with a foot pedal. There was an incinerator on the wall."

"We are in Nebraska!"

"The guys in the van passed us again! The guy in the front seat had his pants down and ski goggles on his butt."

[There is so much more that went on during this trip . . . this is only the tip of the iceberg of my journal entries, too. This is what I am going to share for now, however. ]