On the road again: a personal thank-you from a bus driver

Bryon Maddas submitted the following. Never in my one year of performing with a drum corps could I have imagined myself participating in one ever again. I was a member of Crossmen’s front ensemble in 1994. I wanted to come back for my age-out year in 1996, once again with Crossmen. Unfortunately, like a lot of other broke college students, I could not afford to do it. So I figured that I had seen the end of my drum corps career other than being a spectator or a television viewer. That changed in the summer of 1997. I read on the Crossmen Web site that the corps was looking for an administrative assistant as soon as possible since the Drum Corps International tour had already started. I responded and got an e-mail the next day from Brian Walsh, telling me to get to the bus station the next day. There would be a ticket waiting for me to go to Kingston, N.Y. to meet the corps. I got to Kingston and was told someone was going to be at the bus station to pick me up. No one was there. I tried to call Brian and got no answer. I didn’t know what to do. Lucky for me, the bus station was right across the street from the Kingston stadium. So I walked over there to at least check out who was rehearsing. Much to my surprise, Crossmen were rehearsing in the stadium. This wasn’t a bad way to meet up with the group with whom I was supposed to spend the rest of the summer. Brian got me situated, made room for me on the staff bus, and found a spot for my luggage. He explained what I would be doing as an administrative assistant. In other words, I would be a “gopher.” Go for this, go for that. My duties changed a few weeks later. I was to drive the tour director for the rest of tour. In just a few short weeks, I had learned much from this man as to how a top-12 corps worked from behind the scenes. So, in the summers of 1998 and 1999, I decided to come back and be his driver for the entire tour. Just when I thought I couldn’t learn anything more from him, I learned quickly what to do when a bus loses its drive shaft right after we leave a show and still had an eight-hour trip ahead of us. I learned what to do when the police were flashing their lights behind me at 3 a.m. when I was lost looking for the housing site. I learned what to do when one of the members suddenly got ill as I was driving down the highway and I needed to determine what the best course of action would be for the rest of the corps. I learned all this from one man. Unfortunately, 1999 was the last summer I could commit full-time to the corps. Job commitments made it impossible to take any time off during the summer. But as I made it back to a show in 2003 in Fairfield, Ohio, much to my surprise, I saw the man from whom I learned so much at the Crossmen, walking out with another corps, the Glassmen. Seeing this man made me realize how much I missed driving for a corps. As I made time to go on tour in the summer of 2005, he asked me this time if I would be willing to drive one of the member buses. Without a second thought, I took him up on the offer, met the Glassmen in Indiana and spent 10 days with them, leaving in Toledo as the corps had several days off. I did the same in 2006.