Traditions Too!

This trip I got to spend my bus time with the Brass.  On the way down I was remarking on how quiet of a group they are.  Really.  Just low key folks.  I thought that perhaps I wouldn't have much to write about except for that.  I wondered if it had anything to do with the fact that there are only 4 girls on this bus. hmmmmmm.
They didn't disappoint me, however, when it came to my favorite pre-competition tradition: singing the run through.  The Brass do that with GUSTO! and even sneak in someone doing the Tribal Call drumbeat so that they can keep in time with their visuals and their own tribal noises. 

I caught a picture of them at the end of sectional warm ups doing what I thought would be a giant hands in the center cheer.  It turned into some kind of noisy hand slapping and finger grabbing thing that reminded me of the end of a hand stacking game when it all turns to chaos and no one can tell whose hands is on top in the blur of motion.  It definitely looked like a way to stay loose.
After the performance, however, I got to witness the eating of the "pig."  An entire summer sausage is skinned alive and passed from one brass to another as the bus chants "Eat the pig! Eat the Pig" The sad little piggie is dispatch quite quickly.  The trumpets, who always sit in the back seats, are the last to get a stab at the beast.  They are so excited by that time that they cannot wait for the little plastic knife and just tear into the thing with their teeth.

I was very intrigued when Conner, the Brass captain, politely asked the bus driver if he might borrow the bus sound system for a few minutes.  He then treated the bus with the next installment of a novella that he is writing about the adventures of the Brass as they adventure in search of a fabled horn against their marching foes.  Apparently this is something that the entire bus has been looking forward to since the last cliff hanger episode was read aloud.  They were enthralled as they listened to a master storyteller weave his tale, incorporating the distorted names of their numbers into the heroic adventure.