On the road again...

No. Not me. I'm talking about a bunch of kids from the Denver area - the Singing Youth of Denver.

When you are the primary sound guy at church you get to attend a lot of interesting events; Sunday was Baccalaureate, Wednesday was a concert by the aforementioned SYD group. Tonight is a wedding rehearsal, tomorrow the wedding. If I'm lucky I'll get to skip the party in the Family Room tomorrow night.

But what I really wanted to talk about was being on the road with a bunch of kids. Last night was about the half-way mark of a 15 day trip for these kids; about 30 singers and a few frazzled adults. When I got to the building there were kids sprawled on just about every pew - they were zonked. They came from Lubbock by way of Midland - at least they were in the Midland Christian Schools bus because their bus had broken down. I don't know when they left Lubbock but they didn't get much down time before it was time to perform.

All of which reminded me of road trips with kids from church - most notably the caravans to Trek in Colorado.

I remember spending a few hours at a Wendy's in Abilene one night, waiting on some mechanic friend of Jeff Boyd's to check out a problem with the van Jeff was driving to Colorado. We were only 4 hours from home and already having mechanical problems. On the same trip, at a small service station in Walsenburg, deciding the A/C on the van we were driving was shot and we would make the rest of the trip without it. This was going; it wasn't a big problem until returning. And then it was a big problem. "It's our turn to ride in the air-conditioned van!"

Of course, that was the trip that we drove straight through - coming and going. A really, really, really bad idea. "Gary! Get out of the van! You've been driving for 6 straight hours!"

And then there were the gasoline and restroom stops. Everybody is dying for a potty break, so you reluctantly stop. "Fifteen minutes! We're leaving in fifteen minutes!!" Thirty minutes later you get them all back in the van and they all have 32-ounce Big Gulp drinks. You know you're going to be stopping again in an hour or less.

Or the stops where you do your best not to let any kids out of the van. If you let even one out, they all will be out and it will be at least thirty minutes before you get them herded back in.

Or feeding everybody. You had to make sure that wherever you stopped there were at least three fast food restaurants nearby because no one place satisfied everybody. And even then there would always be two or three kids who went three blocks down the street to an Arby's or some such. And were late getting back.

And there was that food fight at Underwood's, with the principal actor the youth director himself.

And trying to keep 2 or 3 vehicles together in a caravan. This was before cell phones or CB radios that worked for more than a mile or two. "Should we wait a while longer? Do you think they got ahead of us at that last divide?"

Or driving Bob King's Suburban one year with the really cool stereo - and all the seats in back folded down to make one big flat area the kids could stretch out in. You would get arrested for that these days - or at least ticketed.

Or simply spending 24 hours in a van with high school kids. Ah, the memories.

Better them than me.