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Saturday, June 8, 2013

BBS 2013 Day 1

Hello again from Ripon, WI!

My travels have taken me back to Ripon for the 2013 installment of Badger Boys State - has it already been a year?  A lot has happened for me in the last year, but I'm happy to have the opportunity to be back and work with the citizens and counselors again on another terrific experience in government and leadership.  I'm also proud to see all of my friends from the various American Legion posts throughout Wisconsin - always grateful and thankful for their service.

From the travel side of things, I took the "winding" road back to Milwaukee from San Diego, hitting two of United's hubs along the way (SFO and CLE).  Was the cheapest option - and I ended up in first class for two of the segments so I wasn't going to complain.  I can't say that I ever fly through Cleveland, but I took the miles this time - the price was right.  Mucho gracias to my family again for picking me up from Mitchell, and after a short drive I was here.

Day 1 is always hectic - registration, initial rehearsal, and the first assembly.  I chuckle to myself as I see the guys come in and through the line - most have this look on their face of "why am I here again?" and don't know what to expect.  Little do they know that by the end of the week, it will be a completely different story! 

After three hours of registration, I had my initial band sign up: 93.  Down a little from last year's all-time high, but still respectable.  I hurried to get the rest of setup done, grabbed quick food, and soon it was time to start in on the music.  The first rehearsal is slightly nuts - most are late, don't know what we're playing, etc etc, so we started almost 10 minutes past time.  No worries though - after two times of running through the BBS State Song, we were on the way!  This group is very talented, and I'm excited to see how things go the rest of the week.

Sunday's rehearsal will be a bit of a different story - the schedule always has band practice conflicting with special topics discussions, so I'm going to lose people at rehearsal for the next few days.  A challenge.

Stay tuned for more - the weather has held so far!

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