First of all, I know what you're thinking...this guy can barely put up two entries in one semester, but two in 24 hours? No no, I haven't fallen ill or otherwise delusional. I'm just that bored at work. And I had to keep myself awake until 2am last night at the Union, so I might as well fill people in about our awesome tour!

This year's tour started out from our house in Ann Arbor (as usual) with our semester-ly song choosing potluck. It felt really weird for me to be a part of it this year as I was voting on songs that I would never sing. But whatever, them's the perks. Anyways, we decided on a pretty sweet set list (I think) which still allows me to do a joint arrangement of "Either Way" by Guster with the lovely Ms. Talsma and the dashing Mr. Hurvitz. So hopefully we'll be able to finish that up before Steve and I leave town for our respective professional degrees. Anyways.

So we left Sunday evening after SCP finished and headed over to Ashley's house in Troy, MI. As soon as we got there, her family had a glorious dinner prepared of pulled pork sandwiches, corn, baked beans, hot dogs, and potato salad. Woohoo! (By the way, you will eventually begin to notice a culinary trend on this tour...I think we had baked beans like 4 days straight)...anyways, after eating, we put on a short concert for Ash's family, friends, and neighbors in their backyard (a great way to kick off our schedule of performances)! The rest of the night was full of mostly just being lazy...some people watched a movie (That Thing You Do, a movie I personally hate) while the cool people (me) hung out, played guitar (one of the 87 different instruments we found out Young Noh was amazing at), and hung out some more. Everyone went to bed at a reasonable hour as we had an intense schedule of performances the next day.
Highlights: Dodger (the anti-Coda), getting face-fulls of smoke while trying to eat, football, "More Than Words".

Monday morning started around 6am for me as everyone got up fairly early for our day of high school/elementary school sings. After a quick catch with Labe and a bite to eat at the Talsma's, we headed first to sing at Chris' alma mater, East Detroit HS. As would eventually become the trend of the day, these guys loved most of our songs (especially Runaway)! After that gig, we headed back to the West Bloomfield (i think?) area to sing at Carly's high school, Mercy. This was kinda funny. It's an all-girl's HS, which didn't bother me at all until I realized that I needed to go to the bathroom and there were two men's rooms in the whole place. Weird. Anyways, her choir class loved us...too bad we had to dash to make it to our next gig on time! We sped over to Troy HS after that to sing at an assembly for Ashley's old school. We were performing in a gym, so acoustics were a bit lacking, but it was still a fun show. Afterwards, we did a shorter (but better) set exclusively for the choir class. They were definitely a better audience :) Then, for our last gig of the day (pretty busy, right?), we went to Ash's elementary school (Leonard maybe?) a few blocks from her house and sang at a 3rd-grade wide assembly. Performing for the little kids is the best. We asked afterwards if they had questions and about half of them (about 80 kids) wanted to ask us stuff, including one awesome kid who asked us to do the Michigan fight song. His friend hated it (he was wearing an MSU shirt...haha). Anyways, after that long day of singing, we headed back to Ashley's house to pack cars, grab a bite of pizza, and head out towards Charleston, WV. Now, we really had no business in Charleston...it was just a convenient stopping point along the way for us. Nevertheless, it quickly became quite maddening. First of all, the AAA directions took us through all of these side streets (like Erie Blvd type roads)...there HAD to be a faster way. Anyways, once we got there, a small mixup in a street name caused us to end up about 15 miles south of where we should have been. At midnight. After driving for about 7.5 hours already. No fun. When we finally did find our hotel, some people wanted to stay up to celebrate Kevin's 21st birthday. I hung out for a bit, but quickly decided that I wasn't gonna make it much longer and went to bed (without even eating dinner!).
Highlights: Dashing to every single gig to make it on time, Runaway choreo a hit!, Leonard Elementary spirit song (they love their diversity), a rather inappropriate car game involving a certain article of clothing and highway billboards, Alli: "Drew, just roll down the window and duck", MacCorkle Rd, Happy 21st Kev (and shotgunning Miller Lites in Room 104).

Tuesday morning started around 10am with a trip to IHOP across the street before hopping right back into the cars and heading for Gatlinburg, TN, a small tourist city outside of Knoxville. We were staying at a cabin which belonged to a friend of Kevin's aunt. When we got there (after a gorgeous car trip through the Smoky mountains), we quickly realized that this was going to be an awesome stop. The cabin was great, the perfect size for the 15 of us (well, given our tour mentality that sleeping on the floor was perfectly acceptable) with 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, a kitchen and family room with a sprawling porch and a hot tub! Soon after we got there, however, most of the group decided to change and head for the Smoky Mountain National Park for a hike in the mountains. I rode over with Ashley with Alex's car right behind. Whitney was leading the way in the Suburban. When we came to what we thought was the right place to stop (after getting lost, stopping to ask for directions, and doing about 35 donuts in the parking lot while the other car asked directions), Alex and Ashley parked their cars while Whitney kept right on going to the ACTUAL parking lot. So whatever...we got to hike even farther. After about 1.5 miles, we reached the real parking lot and found a note on Whit's car telling us to meet them along the way to the waterfall (our ultimate destination). We found them along the way as they were headed back...Whitney nicely agreed to come back for us so that we wouldn't have to walk all the way back to our cars (which turned out to be HUGE because, if that hadn't have happened, we would've been walking through the park in the pitch black). Anyways, we found our way to the waterfall and hung out and took a bunch of great pictures before heading back to the parking lot (along the way, we found lots of great views of the sunset, too)! Once we finally got back home, Vonnie (Kev's aunt) had prepared a lovely dinner of pulled pork, baked beans, and cheesy potatoes (sound familiar?) followed by smores and a dip in the hot tub (which allowed for amazing music due to the gazebo-style roof providing stellar acoustics) before we started playing Mafia (another trend of tour). We finally went to bed around 2:30am.
Highlights: Coffee and Kaluha for Kev, #1 with rye toast, driving the car while Ashley fixed her skirt, Tennessee Smokies baseball, hiking trails being uphill the whole way (i SWEAR!), Whitney running across a mother bear with its cub, Hide and Seek in the hot tub, Laura's AMAZING game of Mafia, sleeping quite comfortably on a hardwood floor.

The next morning, Wednesday, we woke up around 10, ate an amazing breakfast again prepared from scratch by Vonnie, and packed up and headed out for Nashville. We arrived around 5pm, checked in to the hotel, and headed right back downtown. Once we got there, we found an awesome bar which had pork sandwiches, baked beans (sound familiar?) and, an element that ended up being a spot of trouble, 2-for-1 night on all beers. So everyone got a little buzzed at dinner before we headed further downtown to try to find a bar that we could all get in to. Eventually, we found an excellent karaoke bar where we hung out, drank, and sang for hours. At one point in time, all gimble girls were dancing on top of the bar. They should've paid us for increasing their business that night. Interestingly, I had a great time myself even though I really didn't drink anything (after dinner anyways) and, more importantly, I actually enjoyed the country music. Usually I'm not a big fan, but I guess when you're in Nashville, it just makes sense! Afterwards, we gradually made it back to the hotel where most people hit the sack pretty early :)
Highlights: Group picture outside the cabin, getting lost AGAIN in Gatlinburg, more car games, football at Motel 6, Chris' cowboy hat, about 40 bottles of Bud between the 10 of us that drank, MITCH SILVER, "meow", "KIM-BER-LY!", gimble girls performing "Jump!", many wildly inappropriate times, my friend Alli :)

On Thursday, we all took a little while to actually wake up and get moving, but eventually we got in the car and headed for Lousiville, KY. We got there around 3:30pm, just in time to relax for a bit before heading back out to Kev's mom's antique store, where we had a gig for Kev's family and friends at 5:30. We went down to see the horses and played with the dogs. We got to the antique store a little early so that people who hadn't visited last time we were in Louisville on tour could look around. The place is gorgeous with lots of amazing pieces. The gig went well too, and a whole lot of people ended up buying our CDs, which was great for the group! After the gig, we headed back to the farm for an amazing dinner of hot dogs and baked beans (sound familiar?) followed by not one, but two delicious cakes for Kev's bday. The group then decided to hang out for a bit before getting some serious games of Mafia going. I don't know what it was about this tour, but (for the most part) the Mafia was great. My interest in that game was only really strong during my freshman orientation, but something about playing with this group was really fun. We played a bunch of good games and didn't go to bed until quite late.
Highlights: Jack-in-the-Box macaroni and cheese bites, car dinosaur!!, "If I was a goat farmer, I'd probably be going to hell, too!" <--an old farmer after we sang "Sheep Go To Heaven, Goats Go To Hell" by Cake, Chris and Emily are ALWAYS mafia.

On Friday we spent all day in Louisville. The original plan was to try to get up and go to the Oaks, but the weather was not very cooperative and only a few truly interested people ended up braving the rain to watch the races from the infield. Although we did manage to get our helpings of sausage and grits! On a sad note, Kate left tour in the morning to get home in time for her Mom's birthday. It was sad to see a member go early, especially one I knew I wouldn't see all summer (and, therefore, for quite some time), but sometimes that's how it is on tour I guess. Anyways, those of us who didn't go woke up lazily, showered, and played a few games of Euchre before really getting a plan going. We decided to head to downtown Louisville and break up when we got there...some went to the shopping area to see what was available, while another group (myself included) took a tour of the Louisville Slugger baseball bat factory. It was awesome to see how they make all of the bats! We all left with free mini-bat souveniers and took some swings in the batting cages with wooden bats! After wandering downtown a bit more, we met back up and headed back to the farm for a pasta dinner (I know, where's the baked beans?!?). On a sad note, we never ended up being able to take a hayride because of the weather...fortunately I had already taken one on a previous tour, but it still would've been nice! This also meant not weenie roasting/smore making/bonfire singing... :( Another game night ensued including Euchre, Texas Hold 'Em poker, (Yankees giving up 15 runs to the Mariners), more Mafia (of course), and a very interesting game of Minus Dare Plus Truth. We didn't end up going to bed til about 3:30am on Friday, which was all the more difficult because we knew how early we needed to get up...
Highlights: EUUUCHRE!, pink bats, Young Noh awesome in the cages, Whitney's awesome present, Labe and Young Noh awesome at poker, stealing extra chips, "Explode the Bomb!", gimble memories in MDPT, convo w/ Laura.