Here's another excerpt from GM Kuzma's book, "On the field from Denver, Colorado, the Blue Knights!" DAY TWENTY-NINE: Saturday, June 25, 1994 West Coast Tour We arrive at Concord, Calif., around 9 a.m. I get up to paint the field with the crew. Today's problem is that we have lost the keys to the equipment truck, which is holding our paint hostage. Now we have to look for someone else with keys or find another way into the truck. The corps gets up at 10:30 a.m., and begins eating. In our haste to make up the lost time searching for keys to the truck, we rush to get the field painted. Unfortunately, we don't do a very good job. This is the first time we mess the field up. We paint the yard lines at wrong angles and then try to fix them by painting them with green and blue paint. Now the field has about a hundred blue, green and white lines all over the ground. It looks like a bunch of first graders painted the field for a school project! After having some oatmeal and a PB&J sandwich we head out to the field for stretching. Jennifer Oxelson lets us stretch on our own today. She says it will help us grow together as a team. I think she is just lazy today and doesn't want to stretch us. We set up in a horn arc and Greg fills us in on last night's results. He proudly announces that we beat the Santa Clara Vanguard in the music category last night, which is pretty darn good. But, the Madison Scouts and the Troopers topped our music score. That's not so good. We go into drill and music block. Rehearsal is going very well for us so far. We crank out a really good run of the opening and Greg gets excited and nearly falls off the scaffolding tower the staff sits on. It stands about 30 feet high and gives the staff a virtual stadium seat perspective. "Yes! And that's how you play to beat Santa Clara Vanguard!" As soon as Greg said this, the hair on my neck stood up. Everyone gives a holler and we do one more run-through. We finish early today, which is a rare occurrence. Shower and dinner. I take a picture of the gym wall, Home of the Warriors (not the CMCC Warriors, though). I wear my CMCC Warriors shirt in honor of the school mascot. My customized shirt still gets laughs. I notice that my suitcase is about to burst open again. The roll of duct tape I used to tape it shut is starting to deteriorate. I hope it holds together until we get back to Denver. When I get there, maybe I could get a new suitcase and a new pair of glasses, too. We leave for the show site at Diablo College. On the drive over, a group of kids standing outside see out buses and welcome us to California by flipping us off. Nice people here in California. I think we just made a wrong turn into gangland! We arrive at the show site. Amazingly, there's no graffiti on the bus. We prepare ourselves for the show. The staff doesn't give us a very big hype speech tonight. In fact, they don't say anything at all. I wonder why. Falzarano says we need to do it ourselves. Overall we have a very good show. The crowd, 5,000 strong, is our largest audience yet but they give us a somewhat lax response after the opener. We are conditioned to an ovation of some sort at that point, but not tonight. Oh well, I wonder who the crowd really wants to see. Purhase "On the field from Denver, Colorado, the Blue Knights!"