So it's July again

Grandson Logan has invested a good part of this year in making his dream come true, to be a member of a drum and bugle corps and to compete in DCI or Drum Corps International.  It has required a lot of the whole family, both in money and in time.  DCI competitors are between the ages of 17 and 21 and as soon as Logan turned 17 in February, he started working toward this goal.  He auditioned for the Columbians, a Pasco Washington-based troop, and while his trumpet playing got him a call-back after he auditioned, he still had to learn to walk and play at the same time.

Missy drove the four hours for weekend practices while finishing her masters degree and teaching during the week.  He practiced and she worked on her thesis in their hotel room.  And he did it. Hours of grueling practice in the heat - and you thought it was just football that did that!  Last weekend she drove up to Pasco, but this time to drop him off for the competition tour.  They compete, get back on the buses afterwards and sleep until they arrive at the next destination, then roll out their sleeping bags and sleep on high school gym floors.  Then they get up, work on correcting the flaws the judges noted and then practice until it's time to compete again.  They'll do this all week.  We saw them in Hillsboro and then it's Tacoma, Pasco, Boise, Salt Lake City finishing up in Denver next Saturday.

I took this picture and a couple of videos before I was told that there had been an announcement - this was a big NoNo.  All the material is copyright protected but you can see what the group does for audition here.  Here's a performance from last year.  Logan will be a senior and is looking at colleges according to how close they are to major DCI troops like the Blue Devils in Concord CA (his dream) and this is what a practice looks like. And this is from the show we saw that night, bootlegged apparently.  I would much rather watch this in the stadium than football.

We drove over to Hillsboro, OR on Friday morning for the first competition of the tour.  Missy took this selfie , the first of many to come I'm sure as she and Josh and her parents are following the tour over the next week. Josh was exhausted.  They weren't an hour from the house when a radiator hose blew, and him towing a trailer. We managed to save seats because the stadium was full.  Who knew DCI was so popular?!

I've crossed the Sierras since I was a teenager but the Cascades are really a lot different.  For one thing there are a lot of distinctive peaks and I'm finding them difficult to distinguish.  It helps to identify them by actually being there so we stopped at the Mt Washington viewpoint. We learned that the fire damage is from the B&B Complex fire, two fires that grew into one and burned over 90,000 acres in 2003.  Our poor tortured West.

This is only our second time to take a trip north from Central Oregon since we moved here and again I'm stunned at how many visitors are leaving as we return.  As far as I could see it was a steady stream of cars.  I live in the right place.

This weekend is Summerfest so Ian and I went down Sunday afternoon, and in spite of it being the tail end of the event, there was plenty going on.  Parking isn't really a problem if you're willing to walk a couple extra blocks. It was fun and we stopped to enjoy music at a couple of the stages - probably could have stayed longer but it was hot and our dogs were barking.

I figure one vendor purchase is good and I could see this in our yard. 

So back to my volunteer role at the High Desert Museum, I've been familiarizing myself with the official backstory.  I'm a little frustrated as I'm pretty sure spinning was no longer an activity in 1904 and I can find nothing to support it either way.  Bend had a large Norwegian population at that time so I suppose I can tie into that. I called the State Library who referred me to the Willamette Heritage Center and they are only prepared to answer questions relating to wool as an industry.  

Meanwhile the boots for my costume that I ordered from eBay have arrived.  One friend asked me if I was planing a visit to Lancaster PA.

Laura is loaning me her Country Craftsman, a reproduction flax wheel, and bless her heart she delivered it, sparing me the hour drive to Prineville.  (I should be ashamed when I quail at an hour drive since every trip I made when we lived in Red Rock was an hour, one way.)  We talked over the wools I'm going to use and how to use them. It's been frustrating to me that there is no literature for me to draw on for this Living History role that I'll be playing at the museum. And then we just turned to working with the wool and sampling, and then suddenly it was like old days, like camping at Richardson Park before Black Sheep Gathering. I don't know what I'm doing half of the time but then I realize I never have.