So yesterday was our Kennywood trip for band. And let me first of all just say, school Kennywood trips, particularly school band Kennywood trips are worthless. Why is that? Well, we’re there prettty much all day, but because of the parade, we get maybe 6 hours in the park. And because of different report/checkin times those six hours become pretty much useless. The park is generally so packed that if you have two hours to ride something, you might only get in one coaster and maybe a small ride like bumper cars. I rode four rides yesterday.
Cool thing though, I got to see Adrian and Ray Ray, two girls I worked with at camp, and then I saw someone else from camp… While sitting at the Potato Patch, just sort of relaxing, some little girl, probably 10 or 11, walks up to me and she’s like “Is your name Jono?” And I’m like “yah?” And she’s like “you work at camp Lutherlyn don’t you?” And I’m like “yah?” And she’s like “well, I thought I recognized you, I just wanted to say hi.” I just thought that was pretty cool, I dunno why.
Moving on to the parade, to quote Mrs. West “this was the worst run Kennywood parade I’ve ever been to.” I honestly thought our performance was very good, but the parade was bad. There were some nice things, like the fact that we actually were given real changing rooms, but the fact that the changing room was about the size of my (rather small) bedroom wasn’t at all helpful. After the parade all the bands were in the loading area loading their equipment trucks, and so there were easily between 600-1000 kids packed into a space, that by my estimate using google earth, appears to be no more than a quarter of a square mile.
And it was when those kids were pretty closely packed into that area that Kennywood Public Safety department decided it was necessary to drive their vehicles up the road directly through the crowd. And so they asserted themselves into the middle of the crowd and proceeded to create a sort of stalemate. The people in front of them were packed in, and they wanted to go down the hill, the people behind them were packed in and they wanted to go up the hill, and no one was really able to go anywhere.
It was sometime during this chaos that a girl from General McClain passed out and needed immediate medical attention. I prayed for her before going to bed last night, I really hope she’s okay.
Also, sometime during the pandemonium, my trumpet case (minus trumpet) was picked up by someone else, and presumably loaded onto someone else’s truck. Highlands was right next to us, so it might have been them. Hopefully though, whoever took it, will realize it does not belong to them, open it, see the GS Band Parents papers, and call Mrs. West. If not, I’m out a trumpet case, and will need to buy a new one with my own money, sometime before Friday.
In case you couldn’t tell, pretty much everyone behind Brandon and I was about a measure behind by the end of the parade.
yah the parade did suck…but i got a lot of rides in
ok, what is this?!
we didn’t get changing rooms!
guhh.