Disclaimer: I have never written a blog before, and apologize for any and all possible flaws and/or offenses in this journal. All the events written here are the truth as I saw it, which may or may not reflect other people's versions of events.

The pre-rehearsal ran over. Surprise! 7-9 PM the night before we left. Which would've been great except for by the time we left, we had a glorious 6+ hours before reconvening to leave for the airport. I only know of one member who is already packed, (Bousquet) and he isn't planning to leave Harvard Hall between rehearsal and our departure. Bets on whether anyone gets sleep? Matt won't, Robby won't, I won't... hm, Stephen is responsible, Quentin and Doug are generally sleepy. I'm betting that's it for the sleepers though.

Rehearsal itself went pretty well. The national anthem is frikkin' solid as a rock, at least by the seventeenth run-through. Other pieces are a little more touch and go. The 'key change?' in Blue Moon is aptly named. We nailed it once by the end. Here's hoping that sticks.

Surprise soloists! We have many new soloists for tour. For starters - I have taken over Chase's solos! Also, Quentin has stepped into many roles, from taking over Why Georgia from Kurt Nehrcorn to King of Spain from Phil Hafferty. Kurt's other solo, Wouldn't it be Nice, has been happily passed to Stephen. The surprise soloist award definitely goes to MK for asking for and singing the 2nd tenor solo at the beginning of All Through the Night. While most of Lite was surprised when he volunteered, I think it is safe to say that we were all amazed to hear his gorgeous crooning. Jim better not get wind of this one, or the Glee Club will lose a good bass.

Speaking of which - here is the repertoire Lite is taking on tour:

A Cappella:
	Bear Necessities	-	Peter Lifland
	Blue Moon	-	Robby Griffin
	Good Old A Cappella	-	Robby Griffin
	Hallelujah	-	Robby Griffin
	If You Could Only See	-	Robby Griffin
	King of Spain	-	Quentin Sedlacek
	The Lion Sleeps Tonight	-	Quentin Sedlacek
	Why Georgia	-	Quentin Sedlacek
	Wouldn't it be Nice	-	Stephen Wolff
Glee Club:
	All Through the Night	-	Mukudzei Borerwe
	Fair Harvard
	Glorious Apollo
	Lo, How a Rose Ere Blooming
	The Star-Spangled Banner

All in all, the final rehearsal went decently. While we have some pieces that definitely hover on the brink of disaster at times, most of them are solid, and all of them have worked well at least once. Nobody is too worried, and we are all looking forward to getting to Florida with nice weather and no gloomy Harvard buildings. Another good sign - our, how should I say, 'minimalist'?, packing list had an entry 'bathing suit'. Considering a later entry was 'clothing' (very helpful) this is a very good sign indeed.

6 Hours to go. Alright!

We are now on a plane from Atlanta to Fort Lauderdale. It is 10 AM, which means that we have been travelling for six hours and awake for... between six hours (curse you, Stephen Wolff!) and about thirty hours (the rest of us). As a result we are quite a bedraggled looking group. Hopefully we'll all wake up enough to perform in four hours. Our schedule today is insane. Wake up (or stay up) to meet at 4 AM and catch taxis to the airport. Then we fly on a cheap (the cheapest?) airline until 11, where we quickly travel and perform at 2 PM. Tonight is also the night we sing the national anthem for the Miami Heat-San Antonio Spurs game. And we have to wake up early tomorrow for two back-to-back 45 minute sets at a high school. The performances are all really exciting, but it will certainly be nice at noon tomorrow when we can finally relax. And hopefully sleep. Sleep would be good.

Anyways, our travel has not been without its moments. First, Erin Mckenna showed up at Harvard Hall this morning in her role as 'RCS Tour Mother'. Or perhaps 'Lite Tour Mother'? Whichever it is, she will be appreciated and will hopefully take a lot of the stress off of Matt. Besides, Lite loves RCS, and Erin is one of the nicer human beings on the planet, so it's all good. Kudos to Matt for coming up with a good idea for making up for our extra ticket once Ryaan Ahmed couldn't go on tour. Her role actually has a number of duties beyond taking care of us. She will be tasked with a video camera, and also will do ticketing etc. at one or two of our concerts.

Surprisingly, Erin had by far the least baggage of any of us. In fact she didn't check anything, and instead carried on a purse and very small suitcase. This ended up being her downfall, however, as several of her toiletries were confiscated by security. Silly liquid rules.

So far there have been a plethora of complaints and a dearth of exciting happenings. Everybody is just too tired. Although we are all very willing to sound off on how tired we are. Or how much this airline sucks. Or how loud the Lite member next to us snores.

Performance in 3 hours. Here we go!

Memorable quotes, events, and people:

The Dins were catching cabs for their tour at the same time as we were. And yes, we got the first two cabs.

Absolutely everybody slept on the first leg of the flight to Atlanta. On the second leg almost nobody did. Probably a good sign for our upcoming afternoon performance.

There was no breakfast! The only place open at the airport was a tiny shop. I believe Quentin had a bag of pretzels. Robby grabbed a bag of fruit snacks. Beyond that, we all went hungry except for a case of Oreos supplied by Kelby. However, Stephen disappeared for a good twenty minutes at the gate in Boston, only to reappear with an actual breakfast from some distant Dunkin' Donuts. The man is magic. Also, he is not hungry like the rest of us.

Members of Lite on tour:
	Kelby Russell	-	Tenor 1
	Quentin Sedlacek	-	Tenor 1
	Michael Bousquet	-	Tenor 2
	Stephen Wolff	-	Tenor 2
	Robby Griffin	-	Baritone, Conductor
	Matt McClure	-	Baritone, Manager
	Doug Quirke	-	Baritone
	Mukudzei Borerwe	-	Bass
	Peter Lifland (me!)	-	Bass, Assistant Conductor
Non-Lite:
	Erin McKenna	-	Tour Mom!

After arriving and claiming baggage at the airport, we hopped into two rental vans (Bousquet and Robby driving). We caravaned to our first performance at Cushman school. Our soundcheck was at noon. We arrived at 1 PM, pulling into a gravel driveway and walking over to the outdoor auditorium. We had a 45 minute warm-up and shakedown - running through all of the pieces that gave us any trouble in the pre-rehearsals. It definitely took 45 minutes. At 1.45 we took a much deserved 15 minutes break while the children filed in. Our amazing mom had gotten a couple of pizzas during our sound check, which were quickly devoured in the 15 minute break. We even managed to avoid spilling pizza sauce on our clothing, although a slice of pizza did end up all over the concrete in our rush to the first food any of us had seen that day. Good times.

At 2 we filed onstage and began our performance. The audience was large and very obedient, due in no small part to about a 6-1 student to teacher ratio. The students, however, were much younger than most of us had envisioned. The middle school, apparently, was out of session for the week, which meant that the oldest students in our audience were members of the fifth grade (age 12). As a result, many of our pieces missed the mark. Anything slow or old inspired a sort of sleepy stupor in the audience. As a good 60% of our repertoire was old or slow, this led to a rather subdued concert. The upbeat pieces did get a better reception, however. Good Old A Cappella inspired the audience to clap along through the entire piece, which, while fun, totally drowned out the un-miked block. The children in the audience tried to start to clap along to other pieces as well, but such attempts were quickly quelled by the teachers, who apparently wanted to actually hear what we were singing. The acoustic as a whole was a little odd. The outdoor theater actually had good resonance, but the block sound was simply swallowed by the big space. The school apparently had expected us to bring our own sound system, but once that miscommunication was resolved, it managed to whip up a microphone for our soloist, without which our songs would simply not have been heard.

Despite my petty complaints, the performance as a whole went very well. The audience really enjoyed a couple pieces (Good Ol', Bear Necessities), and the teachers and more musically inclined students also really enjoyed the rest of our repertoire. Afterwards several members of Lite were interacting and talking to children who wanted to see us and talk to us and thought our music was great. It was a really rewarding experience.

Also on the plus side, no piece train-wrecked at all! We had a couple hitches, Robby ended up taking back over the solo of Good Ol' after the piece wrecked a couple times in the soundcheck. Also Why Georgia experienced a few new wrinkles. Quentin switched a couple of verses in the sound check, which didn't deter the block at all and simply created an amusing inside joke for everyone involved. During the performance he nailed the verses, except for the last one, on which he blanked and started simply humming the tune. This actually worked surprisingly well, and he came back in as soon as the body of the verse came to an end. No harm done, but quite amusing for the performers. My guess - 95% of the audience thought it was intentional. A similar occurrence - I ended up doing both the Baloo the Bear solo and the tuba solo in Bear Necessities. A little confusing? Perhaps. But it worked.

After the concert we eventually left the school and went to our first hotel to check-in in preparation for the night. In this process we discovered our first parking dilemma. Miami Beach has no parking. Anywhere. What you end up doing is going around and around until you find an empty, non-loading, non-motorcycle parking space. Then you gun for it and hope no one beats you there. Kind of exciting, really, in a rather monotonous way. Checking in was a rather extended process, which involved Robby's credit being stretched thin as the hotel put many unexpected holds on his account for the duration of our stay. This combined with similar holds imposed by the car rental company has resulted in the dissolution of Robby's available cash and credit... not a good sign for the rest of tour. Oh well, I suppose we still have nine other travelers with credit.

After checking in we embarked on our journey for our first real meal of the tour (besides Erin's pizza). Kelby is the gourmand of the group. He has already put extensive research into cheap, ethnic, amazing restaurants for us to try. Our first restaurant attempt was a cuban restaurant near Little Havana, Enriqueta's. Getting to the restaurant was its own ordeal, as one of the vans went to 19th Street, and another to 19th avenue, across town. The first van arrived, only to discover that the restaurant was first, in the middle of a rather frightening slum, and second, closed. The van parked anyways and we wandered around the area looking for another place to eat. We stumbled across another small Cuban diner, which we decided to try. We piled back into the van and drove into the other restaurant's three-spot parking lot only to discover the following - a 'Beware the Dog' sign, a 'No Trespassing' sign, and last, but not least, someone sleeping in one of the parking places. After further investigation from the car, we also discovered that our diner was a Cuban diner and landromat rolled into one. Thankfully, before we could decide to go anyways, the other van arrived with a GPS system and located a nearby Subway, which became our first, decidedly non-ethnic meal. Oh well, we'll do better next time.

After dinner we drove over to the American Airlines Arena, where we had a soundcheck for the performance of the national anthem that evening. The soundcheck was very cool. There were mikes set up in the middle of the court, and we were instructed in how and when to proceed on and off the court. The soundcheck itself was two run-throughs of the anthem, in the middle of an empty arena. The echo was immense - it was a very cool ambience. We were assured by the staff that with the people in the arena the echo would be much reduced, and contented ourselves with the knowledge that we would sound good no matter what. And we did. After waiting just off the court for about an hour and a half (meanwhile watching the teams warm-up before the stadium was open to the general public) we went on-court and sang for slightly under 90 seconds. It was a blast. Afterwards we filed off and watched the game from seats provided by the Heat in the nosebleed section. I guess 90 seconds of sound isn't worth all that much. But we got our name in the program! "The National Anthem will be sung by the Harvard Glee Club". Well, they were close, anyways. Another triumph of the evening... we intermingled with the Miami Heat cheerleaders several times on our way in and out. For many Lite members, that alone was worth the whole trip. By the end of the night, a minor debate arose. If a Miami woman drives by in a 1967 convertable, which would you watch, the woman or the car? So far, Lite has been impressed with Miami in terms of both.

After the game, which was a great nail-biter one by the Spurs in the last minute, we went back to the hotel, struggled for parking and went in to crash. Eventually most of us visited the beach and local area, before crashing before 2 AM. Good thing our next gig isn't until 8.30 AM. Hooray for tight schedules. One good story from Miami beach - while wandering the area Robby encountered and engaged in conversation a man with a huge snake over his shoulders. Long story short, a little later a rather intimidated Robby was walking away short ten dollars and plus a very crappy CD. Hilarious.

Memorable quotes, events, and people:

"I can do a U-turn here, it only says no left turn!" - Michael Bousquet

"Take a U-turn. Now take another U-turn." - our GPS system

Robby had a great time announcing our songs for the first concert. First bad sign... he forgot what the second song was (Good Old A Cappella). He frantically searched all of his coat pockets on stage, pulling out his pitchpipe, boarding pass and other accoutrement before finally finding the ripped half sheet he had written the order on. All the while I was whispering very loudly "Good Old!", as we had gone over the order right before the concert. Everybody in Lite heard me - except Robby. Oops.

The next adventure was locating the pitchpipe. Robby unintentionally stored it in a different pocket after every use, creating a very amusing game we like to call "find the pitchpipe" between each and every song. It is great fun. Tomorrow maybe we will place wagers on which pocket it ends up in the most.

We are currently in a van on the way South from Miami. The weather is warm but not terribly sunny, so we chose to put off going to the beach for a sunnier tomorrow. Instead seven of us (Erin, Stephen, and Matt stayed in the hotel due to illness, work, and comradery respectively) are heading down to the strawberry fields in southern Florida, with possible intentions of driving past the Everglades and/or to the Keys. It should be fun. Speaking of the hotel, although the rooms are small, the new hotel (still on Miami beach) is gorgeous. Well done, Matt.

We are currently 32 hours into tour, but we are already done with the hump. Our two performances yesterday were followed up with a trip to Pinecrest School - the most amazing private school I have ever seen - this morning. We woke up between 5.45 (the mom's room) and 6.30 (the manager's room) and were on the road a little after 7. We arrived a little after 8 and performed twice in their large auditorium, once for the middle school at 8.30, and then for the high school at 9.45. Both were full 45 minute concerts, which coming right after the two performances yesterday was a little intense. We all took water onstage for the second performance, and were administering the soothing liquid liberally to our suffering throats.

That being said, both performances were amazing. Both audiences loved us. Everyone left that concert happy, even our conductor, which is really something. Memorable moments - Quentin Sedlacek again suffered temporary amnesia on his solo, only this time during the King of Spain in the first performance. A couple of lines simply escaped him, so he just took on a contemplative pose and rolled with it. It was a pretty amazing sight, actually, and was pulled off amazingly well. Although I am sure that he is tired of blanking on lines, he certainly has the showmanship to pull it off. Another prize moment, Quentin stepped up impromptu during the first performance and recited Mogli's lines in the Bear Necessities, the role that Joe Tofte had performed with Chase last year. It was a huge hit, and was repeated more purposefully for the second performance. Sadly I am not of the stature to complete the role by having Mogli jump on my back. No worries. One last note, which I chronicle quite unfairly. Robby, our esteemed conductor, has four solos, in addition to his conducting duties, announcements, and a trio for Glorious Apollo. He performs all of these duties admirably, but particular his solos, which sound fantastic. However, his voice started to fade a little bit during our first, water-less performance. It only showed once, which was when the first line of Glorious Apollo was unexpectedly a duet rather than a trio. Oops.

Both concerts went amazingly well, and thankfully Erin captured the first one on tape, which hopefully will turn out well. It was certainly a set of concerts to remember. Now that the concerts are over, we are done until our next concert and rehearsal, Sunday night. Hooray!

After the morning concerts we were given a tour of the school which is amazing. It is huge, actually bigger then a couple of small college campuses. Just to give a little perspective... it has it's own parking garage, a whole building for the Institute of Civic Involvement (their equivalent of the Harvard IOP), multiple libraries, and two swimming pools, one of which is olympic sized. Also, the grounds are gorgeous and well-maintained, with stone paths through gardens in the nooks between buildings. Our tour of the campus was guided by two student singers - which meant that it was informal. So informal, in fact, that they took us into a couple classes, so we heard the school chorus warm up and saw art students at work.

The art room held its own adventure, in the form of a very enthusiastic teacher. She loved our performance that morning, and was not hesitant at all about telling us so. While this was nice, the really enjoyable part is when she started involving her students. Apparently one of her students had told her before we visited that she had a crush on Bousquet. After we arrived, she quickly looked through us to find the crush. She first pinpointed Doug, but then figured out that Bousquet was the actual crush. Much awkwardness ensued as the teacher told us about the crush and kept asking the girl for confirmation. During the ensuing awkward pandemonium and laughter she came up to Bousquet and offered to rip off his visitor pass as a momento to the girl. Hilarious! There is nothing Lite appreciates more than massively, massively awkward situations. This one certainly qualified.

Following our tour, we had lunch in the school cafeteria, which was, unsurprisingly, amazingly nice. During lunch we put out CDs and managed to sell a gross of 1. Oh well, $10 CDs are a little steep for high school students with no notice. A cute moment during lunch - a very small girl (age 10?) came up to Quentin with a pencil and napkin and asked for his autograph. Upon receiving his signature, she triumphantly took the napkin and went back to her table were she excitedly showed it to all her friends. Following this little scene, a second little girl came up to Quentin and asked his name. She then told him that she had a hamster named 'Winston', which was a really similar name to 'Quentin'. There's a surreal factor here, as Jim sometimes forgets Quentin's name (as he does everybody's) and whenever he guesses Quentin's name, he comes up with Winston. There is a striking parallel between the mind of a brilliant conductor and that of a child.

The state of Lite is good. Everyone is on a high from our successful concerts, and looking forward to the days of relaxation ahead. Particularly I am looking forward to sleeping, I have slept for five hours out of the past sixty or so, which I think is pretty much par for the course in Lite at the moment. But there is free time ahead, in a nice hotel, and it will be great. Speaking of which, out of the seven people in the car, two are asleep, and another is almost nodding off. My voice is definitely shot and more than a little rough after this morning. But I have until Sunday night to get it back. It should be good.

Memorable quotes, events, and people:

"It is a privilege to be a gentleman. It is not a privilege to be taken lightly." - MK

During the night we were all sleeping two guys in a twin bed. One of the beds was Robby and Matt, both rather tall individuals. Apparently they made it work, but during the middle of the night Robby rolled over and gave Matt a hard elbow to the face. Ow.

So I hadn't anticipated writing again today, but the trip has been so phenomenal that I feel that I should write about it right after the heat of the moment.

Our excursion started very poorly. We programmed the strawberry farm address into the GPS, which had no trouble and offered us two alternate routes with the same travel time - a longer route on the toll roads and a shorter route with no tolls. We chose the non-toll route, hoping to save money both on tolls and on gas. It was a bad choice. We got stuck in massive bumper-to-bumper traffic on long highways and bridges with no alternate or parallel roads. To cut a long story short, the supposedly 40 minute drive devolved into just under a 2 hour drive. There was a quite amusing incident, however, when the driver behind us lost control of her emotions and started honking madly at us. She was eventually repaid for her noise pollution with some inappropriate gestures. This did little to assuage her frustration, and later when the traffic thinned, she drove up to be next to us, rolled down her window, swore at us in Spanish for a while, and eventually flicked us off and when she turned off the road. Lite travels in style, what can I say?

Once we reached the strawberry farm, we were disappointed to discover that the farm itself was not open to the general public. In other words, we couldn't go amongst the strawberries and experience a truly fresh product. There was, however, a small shack which sold many local produce products. We each got a strawberry smoothie, made with fresh strawberries, which were amazing. Kelby and Robby indulged their tastes by also getting jars of strawberry jam and local guava jelly. While still at the moment unopened, I am sure that both of those products will be delicious.

The strawberry hut was very good. Probably even worth an hour round trip. But it was certainly not worth a four hour round trip. So we decided to extend our travels and go get dinner down in the Florida Keys, an hour south. This one was one of the better decisions we have ever made. Kelby called his parents, who eventually gave us two restaurant recommendations in Key West. We arrived at the Key around five and visited both restaurants to compare menus. As both menus looked good and were in about the same price range, we settled on the restaurant which had an ocean view to the west, so we could watch a cloudy sunset. The sunset ended up being essentially non-existent, but we made the right choice regardless.

The menu had many items that looked amazing, so we ended up ordering all four featured fish dishes to split between us. This included:

An all you can eat fried mahi-mahi dish, fried to perfection (literally), which we refilled three times

Sushi-grade tuna served with a lump of crab meat, and a tomato and scallion relish on top

Yellowtail snapper with mango salsa, served alongside a 4-cheese penne

Grouper served with a topping of lung-crab and bernaise sauce

These dishes were absolutely DELICIOUS. Truly spectacularly cooked, clearly very fresh, and all served by a very nice and helpful server with a smile. Before I go on I should also mention the appetizers, where several people tried a conch chowder, which apparently was very good and not at all rubbery like clam chowder can be. The very option of conch chowder is already quite cool.

The best part was yet to come. The dessert menu had four amazing options, and we indulged and got all of them:

A warm chocolate cake with a molten center - Eating this cake was like eating a very rich, undercooked, warm brownie. Amazing!

A freshly made (that morning) carrot cake, made weekly by a local woman with homemade cream cheese frosting

A huge bowl of white-chocolate creme brule

And last but not least, locally made keylime pie.

Our waiter saved us a lot of money, and gave us a much more substantial dessert, by directing us to buy a whole pie ($22) rather than three slices ($24). The keylime pie, was... phenomenal. The restaurant had won awards for their keylime pie, and it was easy to see why. The seven of us at dinner each had appetizers, a main course, and extra helpings of mahi-mahi. We ordered the equivalent of twelve desserts, as the keylime pie had eight slices. Despite our stuffed condition, we managed to finish nine of those desserts, by an amazing feat of will saving three pieces of the keylime pie for the people left at the hotel. Bousquet was particularly enamored with the pie, and had a very hard time giving up his right to a third slice.

In addition to the truly amazing service, the restaurant and service were themselves phenomenal. The ambience was quite nice, and we had a gorgeous view out over the ocean and along the coast until the sun went down. Our waiter was immensely helpful (earning us many more desserts) and also happily refilling plates of mahi-mahi, even against our protests. In addition, two desserts were taken off our tab in response to minor delays by the kitchen. And by minor, I mean delays of about three minutes. It was great service. I believe we gave him about 30% as well as filling out seven individual customer comments cards. He earned it.

With dinner under our belts, we are currently driving home. I personally am about to put down my computer and slip into a food coma.

We learned our lesson. We're taking the toll roads home.

Memorable quotes, events, and people:

"You should ask if you can taste his conch (pronounced 'conk')" - Quentin to Doug

Anything involving the saga and death of Will Skinner's hamster.

"So, what newies to you think won't return to the Glee Club?" - Bousquet
"Wow. I think Quentin just died a little bit inside" - Kelby

Today was our first day without singing. So far it has been relatively low key. Last night we chilled in our new, nicer hotel, watching TV and talking, with people breaking off whenever they were tired to go to sleep. Everyone was asleep by 1 AM, with some people, notably Kelby and Erin, falling asleep in a room with seven talking people and a blaring TV and staying steadfastly asleep through all the noise. There was no wakeup time in the morning, so people woke up on their own between 9 AM (Kelby and Stephen) and 12 noon (Doug, Robby and I). The early risers had fun... Stephen explored the town and got breakfast miles away, while Kelby walked for miles down the beach, enjoying the sun and sights. The rest of us thoroughly appreciated our sleep.

At noon we checked out of the hotel, but left our packed vans in the parking lot while we spent another hour in the Miami beach area. Most of the group went down to the beach, while some visited the local outdoor mall and explored. Robby, Kelby, and I found a Ghiradeli chocolate store, and bought a cord at a local electronics store to connect our ipods to the van speakers. After an hour, everyone met up to go to lunch.

Kelby again chose our destination spot, choosing a famous (yet cheap) Cuban restaurant with a huge menu in Little Havana. While Little Havana was a little run-down, the restaurant itself was quite good, although the waitresses seemed to respond better to Spanish than English. In addition to the cool food, we also enjoyed the presence of some very serious looking cameras, which were taking pictures of a nearby table. This table appeared to be a donor dinner for the Mitt Romney campaign, and a man who looked like a young version of Romney (and was wearing a Mitt Romney campaign sticker) made sure to shake everyone's hand at the table. We suspect he was one of Mitt Romney's sons, which is a relatively cool sighting.

After lunch we went next door to the Cuban bakery and got dessert to take on the road. Then we loaded up into the vans and headed out on a four hour drive to Orlando. We are meeting some people from the Harvard Club of Florida there, who are putting most of us up in a hotel for the night (I believe a few of us are staying with Club members). The drive itself, while long, has been quite fun. The toll-roads are expensive, but quite fast, each van has broken 100 at least once. We are in a small, informal, relatively safe race to reach Orlando, which Robby's van is currently losing. We'll see though, there are still 31 miles to go.

I don't really have much to more to chronicle at the moment. After meeting our hosts, we are going out to a good barbeque restaurant in Orlando, and we don't have other plans for the night. Without performances or rehearsals, tour is really easy. Florida is really a relaxing and gorgeous place.

It has been quite a day. Before I describe it I should briefly fill in the events of last night. We stopped at a small barbeque restaurant. It was quite good, very quick, and very cheap. As an added bonus, there was hotsauce on the tables which came in three flavors - mild, hot, and killer. Naturally this intrigued our food and mischief inclined members. The killer hotsauce ended up mixed heavily into a serving of beans, which Kelby and Robby each tried. They then convinced Bousquet to try it, essentially on a dare - "surely this hot sauce isn't too hot for you?" etc. The pain hit about three seconds after he took a bite... his face was priceless. Sadly, however, it was not caught on camera. The festivities ended once Matt finished off the beans (with no visible reaction) on the condition that people would leave and go to the hotel once he did.

After dinner, we split up, with Robby, Kelby, Doug, and I going to stay with a member of the Harvard Club of Florida, while the other six went and stayed at a Best Western. Our host was quite nice, essentially giving us the run of his house, and we each got our own beds for the first time this tour. The one thing our host was not was conversational. He ended up standing with us for almost two hours, while the four of us talked. After he went to bed, we stayed up choosing and planning activities for our free afternoon on Sunday. Eventually we went to bed, after calling and waking Matt three times after midnight with schedule ideas and changes. He wasn't very happy with us. Oops.

The final Sunday schedule was definitely worth Matt's discomfort. We woke up and enjoyed a breakfast of grapefruit and clementines before meeting the rest of the group at 9.30. We then drove an hour south to a citrus grove, which sold fresh produce and also opened its groves for picking. We spent literally an hour and a half walking through the groves, sampling limes, lemons, tangerines, tangelos, pomelos, and many, many varieties of orange. By the end, we had picked two and a half bushels of citrus to take home. Hopefully we can carry them on our plane back to Boston, otherwise Kelby, Bousquet, and Robby are going to be out on a limb with over half a bushel of citrus each to eat in two days. Everyone in Lite, as well as our vans, are going to smell like citrus for days.

After leaving the citrus grove we drove for an hour and a half west into the middle of nowhere. There we pulled up to a fishing school in the middle of some Florida fens which has airboat rides. It's other feature was a restaurant which served swamp foods, such as catfish, alligator, and frog's legs. I personally did not try the catfish (although I am assured it was very good), but the alligator tasted almost precisely like chicken, and the frog legs were similar to chicken wings, although a little bit foreign tasting. After a lunch at the restaurant, we loaded up on an airboat and went out for a ride.

The airboat ride was intense. The boat has no propeller (and therefore no brakes), and instead was propelled by a gigantic, very powerful fan on the back of the boat. Every passenger was given a set of earmuffs to muffle the noise, which was intense. On the ride we circled around four miles of marshland, cruising at high speeds until we saw wildlife. It started out very well, we noticed a bald eagle circling over head about a minute into the ride - apparently Florida is second only to Alaska in indigenous bald eagle population. Soon we found our first gator, which was sunning it's 10 foot length on a bank. We drifted in nearby water for a while, with our guide telling us as many interesting facts about alligators as he could think of. We eventually continued on, finding another alligator which we watched, several herons, feral cattle, and feral horses. Our most entertaining encounter, however, was with a huge flock of some variety of water birds. Our guide accelerated and drove straight through them, causing the whole flock to leave the water and fly around in a large circle before re-settling in the water. Our guide then circled around and drove through the flock again, causing a similar commotion. Quite fun.

After the tour we left and drove for an hour back to Orlando and to Rollins College for our concert. We arrived at around five, and were given the auditorium for rehearsal. Note that this hour and a half was our first and only rehearsal of tour. The acoustic was amazing. We did not need and did not want microphones, our sound projected amazingly. The acoustic was resonant without being cavernous, and had enough play that the nine of us could literally overwhelm the auditorium with sound if we chose. The acoustic gave us an incredible amount of power and choice, in my opinion it is the best acoustic for Lite that I have seen or sung in ever.

Rehearsal went well, and we changed and relaxed for an hour before our concert. The concert had an admission charge and was not well publicized, so our audience only numbered about thirty. This was not a let-down however, as first we had been led to expect ten, and second this meant that the acoustic was unchanged by the audience. We recorded this concert, very, very happily. We sounded amazing and it reflected in our performance. Whether it was due to rehearsal, early performance experience, or the amazing acoustic - we had no mistakes. Seriously, the number of minor errors, and by these I mean single mistuned chords or notes, could be counted on two hands, maybe three. It was far and away the most professional performance I have ever seen Lite put on. Really an incredible experience.

Once the performance ended (sadly) we met our audience, which included some of the Harvard Club of Florida members, and one woman who is an alumna of RCS. We then hightailed it to a nearby Vietnamese restaurant known for its authentic food. We arrived very shortly before it closed, but we convinced them to take us and ended up eating by ourselves while the restaurant closed up for the night. The food was quite good, but two unique items should be mentioned. Kelby and Bousquet split a fried red-snapper (whole, head and all), while Matt experimented with an avocado smoothie. The smoothie was a bad choice, but the snapper was apparently delicious, and the head served the purpose of annoying and scaring mom quite well. We are now on our way to Tampa to find our hotel for the evening. We have a very early wake-up call for our last performance, which is here in Tampa in the morning. It is a pity that tour ends so soon and classes are about to begin again. Tour has been amazing.

Memorable Quotes, Events, and People:

"I planned my outfit carefully so I can change in the same room as you guys and then you go an kick me out anyways!" - an indignant Erin

"Sorry, I'm tap dancing on your foot." - Erin to Matt at dinner

"Giant, fee fie foe fum, why are you angry?" - Kelby to Robby

After exploring the massive orange groves, we moved over to the pomelo section. Bousquet tried to sample a pomelo. He literally peeled the entire fruit, which was about the size of his head. After peeling it, he tried to rip it open, but couldn't manage it. We have now coined the phrase and corresponding gesture - "Awkward Pomelo".

Out of the thirty person audience, one was a girl between the age of 16 and 20. She was a very pretty blonde girl, and she swooned each and every time Robby took the stage. Which, with his four solos, is a pretty impressive feat. After the concert, she didn't approach us, as most of the rest of the audience did. Her mother, however, did, coming up and shaking Robby's hands and congratulating him for her performance. Right after this the girl essentially grabbed her mother and hurried out of the theater. It was very cute. Hopefully Alli won't be too jealous.

The fishing school attracted two types of people - tourists like us, and motorcyclists and other daredevil individuals. One great sighting - a jacket with the back being a confederate flag. Welcome to the South.

Sunday night we stayed at the Tahiti inn, where we had six rooms for the ten of us, a relic of our original plan of twelve people coming on tour. As a result, Erin and Matt got their own rooms, while the rest of us all got our own beds. We arrived at the hotel after 11 PM, with a wake-up call of about 6. I stayed with Doug, we simply crashed soon after midnight, waking up at 6.20 to be ready to go in our semiformal at 7.10. The rooms were nice, and the beds served well.

In the morning we all groggily woke up and drove to St. Mary's School, about five minutes away. We were given the parish to rehearse and warm-up in for 45 minutes before the concert. The space was very resonant, we had an amazing echo, especially from loud or high solos. Still, the acoustic was very clear, and we were tuning really well. Our main problem was that we were very tired, as we haven't really had any rest on tour, and then got almost no sleep last night. The group as a whole knows the repertoire really well, so we were tuning and singing well, we just didn't have the energy to hit a groove.

The concert itself was a different story, however. The audience was huge. We not only had the captive student audience, but we also had a huge family and parent contingent, as the school had apparently invited all of the parents to stay and see us. The church was totally full, which meant at least seven or eight hundred people were in the audience. This changed the acoustic drastically - we had no echo anymore, to say the least. The clarity was preserved, so our sound tuned really well on almost all of our pieces, including All Through the Night, which hadn't tuned perfectly before on tour. The audience loved us, and we were inspired by them, and tapped into energy that we didn't no we had in order to sing. It was great fun.

There were a couple of great moments in the concert (even beyond the musical ones, of course). We were announced by the headmaster, who told the story of his link to us. Apparently in high school he was a leading basketball player at his school. His rival school's basketball team was led by none other than Matt's father. Also, the headmaster gave us the names of two students who had birthdays that day, so we added Happy Birthday in the middle of our set. We sang Happy Birthday in the 'traditional' fashion of the Glee Club, with amazingly loud falsetto 'oo's between each phrase and made up, impromptu harmonies. I think the students enjoyed it.

The school gave us a nice breakfast after the concert. Then we changed and went to Ybor City, the old and historic part of Tampa. The area was fairly deserted, but we had fun wandering around. Eventually we stumbled on a Christian Scientist Center, which most of us went in and took a free personality test. In general we found the results of the test to be suggestive, but inaccurate. Common themes from our results - we are apparently all very irresponsible (not entirely true), depressive (mostly untrue), and confident (quite true). This took a while, the test was 200 questions long, and then each of us went over our results personally with a Christian Scientist. As we left, Quentin revealed that he had put Mrob's (his roommate, also in Glee Club) name and address. The rest of us didn't put real names or addresses. Hilarious.

For lunch we went to the Columbian, a spanish restaurant. The restaurant was huge, it seats 1700 people and has 16 dining rooms. Despite it's size, it was quite good and had good service. The only food really worthy of documenting was the 1905 salad, which apparently was incredible. Now we are in our vans on the way to Siesta Beach, to sun for a couple hours before going to Doug's aunt's house in Sarasota. It should be a good day. All the singing for tour is over. Ah well, we have a concert back in Massachusett's next Friday, so we'll be singing again soon.

Memorable Quotes, Events, and People:

"What name did you put down?"
"Fleming."
"Really?! That's my fake last name too!" - Bousquet to Erin

On the death of the president of the Mormon Church
"He was 97! He was past his sell-by date!" - Bousquet

"Just put it (pitch pipe) to your mouth and spin it." - Kelby

At the concert today there was a man who knew every song. We know this because he sang along (or perhaps just mouthed the words) to each and every song, from Good Old to Lo, How a Rose. Lite has acquired a stalker.

Music-master Kelby's Music Awards:

Most Played:
	Crazy	-	Gnarles Barkley
	Don't Make me a Target	-	Spoon
	It's a Beautiful Day	-	U2
	Kokomo	-	Beach Boys
	Roses	-	Kanye West
	Sloop John B.	-	Beach Boys
Honorable Mention:
	Aladdin
	The Beatles Abbey Road
	The Beatles Revolver
	The Beatles White Album
	Dizzy Gallespie
	Elton John
	John Mayer
	The Killers
	The Mambo Kings
	Mitch Hedberg
	Red Hot Chili Peppers
	REM
	U2

We left Ybor City after lunch and drove down to Siesta Beach - a beach near Doug's family in Sarasota. We stopped on the way in order to purchase wiffle ball equipment and a frisbee. We arrived at the beach at about 4, and changed and went out to enjoy our second real time on a Florida beach. This time we were on the Gulf Coast, which meant the beach had very fine sand and cold water. It was great.

The beach was fairly empty on a Monday afternoon. Several people went for a walk or simply read in the sun, while most of us played frisbee. It was a rather windy day, so we played 500 with the thrower tossing the frisbee with the wind. This made for very fun throws to catch, but had the unfortunate side-effect of making it almost impossible to get the frisbee back to the thrower. We instituted a rule that if the frisbee didn't make it halfway back then you had to go and re-throw it - otherwise the thrower had to get it. After an hour or so, we all went into the ocean. Most people just waded, as the water was cold and the day was a little windy and chilly. Bousquet, Kelby, and Robby, however, decided to go for it all and went for a real swim. They raced out to a distant buoy, and then came back in and froze for the next long while. I believe Robby won the race.

At about 6 we piled back into the vans, and drove to Doug's aunt's house in nearby Venice. There we met Doug's aunt, uncle, mother, and father. The family was very nice, and, unsurprisingly, rather similar to Doug in just about every respect. The house itself was very nice, and we enjoyed just sitting around the house and talking to Doug's family and each other. Eventually we had a homemade lasagna dinner and then ate sundaes and watched the State of the Union address. After the address we split up and went to bed. Matt, Quentin and I stayed at the house, while Doug, Erin, and Bousquet went to Doug's house for the night and the others went to a nearby hotel.

In the morning everyone met back at Doug's aunt's house at 8. Doug's family served an amazing home-cooked breakfast of eggs, sausage patties, bagels, toast, orange juice, coffee and tea, which helped us all wake up for our travels home. We piled into the vans and drove for three hours down to the Ft. Lauderdale airport (it was cheaper to book a round trip, apparently). There we turned in our rental vans, got on a plane and began the flight back to Boston. The oranges were no problem, a couple people put their oranges into their luggage, but most of the group just carried on 1/2 bushels of oranges as one of their carry-ons. I imagine this isn't a particularly rare occurrence in Florida. At the moment we are in the second leg of our trip (our flight stopped in Baltimore) and almost home. It has been an amazing trip. I don't think any of us are looking forward to landing and starting the second semester of school. All of us, however, are looking forward to beds, and staying in the same bed for a while.

The tour was an amazing success. We sang a very reasonable amount, had large audiences, and performed quite well. We had some great experiences, explored a good portion of Florida, and tried many different (and amazing) restaurants. Nothing went particularly wrong - in fact there were basically no hitches at all in anything logistical. On top of that we think we may have broken even, which wasn't quite going to happen in the original budget. However we have had almost no unexpected costs (just a couple parking fees, I think), our one ticketed concert (Rollins) made about $100 more than projected, and our rental cars cost far less than we had budgeted. Assuming that the rental car company doesn't bill us more retroactively, we broke even almost precisely. This is good for the Glee Club, of course, but is also really good for us - because this means that there should be little or no objection from management if we request to go on another tour next year. Hooray!

Major kudos go out to Matt for managing the tour. He did an amazing job, both in planning and execution. Tour had no significant problems, was amazingly fun, and didn't cost the Glee Club money. Really it could not have been better managed - so thank you Matt.

Kudos also go to Robby for conducting Lite for this tour and the semester. We have an extensive repertoire solidly up and running, literally half again as many pieces as we did at this point last year. We sound amazing, and while this is a direct result of the talent of the singers in the group, it is also in no small part due to his conducting, and how he picked music and led rehearsals this semester.

Kelby also deserves mention, for being a major aid in getting the tour approved in the first place. Sadly, not everyone in Glee Club management thought that this tour should happen, at least initially. Kelby, in his role as manager of the Glee Club, was a major factor in helping Robby and Matt get the support they needed to set up this amazing tour. Kelby also deserves some mention for researching and choosing all of our dining experiences on tour. We have many very different yet tasty culinary experiences - his help there was really top notch.

Thanks also to Doug and Doug's family for hosting us on our last night, and providing for us so well. Doug also helped out with directions and general area knowledge, which came in handy every once in a while, finding us Siesta beach, for example.

Thanks to Erin for coming with us and being a lovely tour mother. We really appreciate your presence, for everything from simply hanging around with us to taping our concerts to getting us food.

Lastly, thanks to everybody in Lite for coming on this tour and giving up your intersessions in order to sing. I think we all agree that this tour has been amazing both musically and otherwise, and I hope that you all enjoyed it as much as I have. May our other tours this year be so successful.

Memorable quotes, events, and people:

"Punch the ocean!" - Bousquet

"I haven't swam since I was fat!" - Kelby