This past weekend, I traveled with the USC Spirit of Troy to Tempe, Arizona to play at the Arizona State vs. USC football game. It was the band’s sophomore trip, so it was really cool going with just my closest friends in the band. This past Saturday, we reported at the band office at 5:45 a.m. I am not a morning person… We dragged ourselves onto the buses with our instruments and gig bags and headed off.
As soon as the bus started to move, I fell right asleep. I don’t think even think we got on the freeway before I was asleep. By the way, for those of you guys who have never slept on a bus before, it is extremely uncomfortable, and hurts your neck, especially when you are sitting in the aisle seat and have nothing to rest your head against :(. When I woke up, we were traveling through the windmill world north of Palm Desert. I don’t think I have ever seen so many windmills in my life!
Rising 10,000 feet above the desert is Mt. San Jacinto, the mountain my dad and I summited a couple days before I moved in. The mountain has spectacular cliffs on its east side and stands strong and ominous over the lifeless desert (pretty awesome!).
Anyway, after driving in desert and more desert, and even more desert, we stopped in Blythe, CA, on the border between Trojan territory and sun devil territory, for some breakfast. After an hour we got back on the bus, and headed towards Phoenix (Tempe is right outside of Phoenix).
Finally around 2:00, we arrived at our hotel in Tempe. Getting out of the bus was like stepping into an oven. It was around 105 degrees and it was painful. Luckily, we had some downtime (which I used well, napping) in our nice air-conditioned rooms, before we had to get back on the bus and head off towards the stadium. Before we actually went to the stadium though, we stopped at a nice hotel in Tempe to play for some trojan alumni. It was pretty cool just knowing that there are trojans everywhere and they support the cardinal and gold every day.
From there, we walked from the hotel to the stadium. Their stadium is located in a really random place on the outskirts of the dining district. I think their campus was far away too. When we made it to the stadium, we started heading up, and up, and up, to the very top seats in the stadium. Thanks for the respect Arizona State… It was around 85 degrees when the game started and we were in pain with our thick uniforms and helmets on. It was interesting to see that after the Arizona State band, which was a joke by the way, performed their pre-game show, then took their top half of their uniforms off, wearing half a uniform for the game. What tenacity and spirit they have (NOT!). We powered through with our uniforms on the whole game.
The first half was frustrating at times, but we keptplaying loud and cheering loud with the other trojans fans, supporting our team 100 percent! We were having a great time playing louder than Arizona State’s 300-piece band with our 90-piece band too.
However, things started to go downhill in the second half. The team couldn’t get their defense together and we made some silly errors, which ended up costing us the game. It was sad coming to Arizona State for our trip and losing, but we would never back down or give up on our team and we are excited for them to tear up the Wildcats this Saturday!
All in all I would say it was a good trip with great memories. Fight On!
