Bust out your warm-weather clothes folks; it's no longer freezing cold in Madison. Well, it's still pretty cold, but I was perfectly fine wearing shorts all weekend in it.

Eric Fox
Many changes were seen up in Madison this weekend. For starters, the color guard was finally back in, even though we only really saw them during meals and at nighttime. Warmer weather was a change too, but a bigger change had to be all new equipment in the front ensemble this weekend. The area where the front ensemble rehearsed this weekend was jam packed with big brown boxes plastered with the word Yamaha. We didn't even get a chance to open everything this month; we chose to rehearse instead, while putting together a couple pieces of equipment every now and then. We're still waiting on a few more pieces of equipment to arrive next camp. I unfortunately had to miss out on one of my "favorite" parts of camp, unloading the equipment truck, although I did luck out and arrive right after they finished moving everything inside. Truck loading is once again chaos for the front ensemble, more than ever. We're using much more equipment than the corps has used in years past, and we had to redesign a couple areas of the truck to accommodate it all. We made only one attempt at loading the truck this weekend and barely managed to fit everything inside safely. I'm sure it'll take us a good three or four more times before we figure out the best way to utilize room. The rest of camp went pretty smoothly for the entire corps. A lot of new drill was learned outside on the football field, battery and front ensemble learned a bunch of new music, guard auditioned some more new guys, and the horn line did their usual, whatever that may be. I really have no clue at times what goes on at camp outside of the front ensemble room. Maybe after I age out, I'll get to see what actually happens at a drum corps rehearsal. As I just mentioned earlier, I was late arriving to camp Friday night, mainly because the air travel gods must hate me. Not one camp has gone by this season without me having problems at the airport of some kind. My flight out of Tallahassee, Fla., Friday morning was delayed two hours, causing me to miss my first connection, which caused me to miss my second connection (yeah, I know that's too many connections, but I wanted to save money). Without much help from the clerks at the desk, me and fellow bottom bass drummer John Seay managed to find new flights, which would get us into Madison only an hour behind our original arrival time. The air travel gods won't be able to get me next month; I'll be driving instead. I'll be packing up my car with some other members and making the 1,350-mile drive from Tampa, Fla., to Madison, Wis., although knowing my luck, we'll probably have car troubles or something along those lines. Only like three weeks until move-ins. Hype it.