ONCE UPON A TIME, there was a very big marching band that lived, practiced, played, worked, performed, and sometimes even studied in Madison, Wisconsin. Once or twice every year (more if the UW-Madison football team did a good job that season), this large band would pack up its collective bags and travel to some other city to amaze and delight the natives as well as the marauding horde of Wisconsin fans that were sure to follow their sports teams wherever they might go--Japan, Nevada, California, Pennsylvania, Arizona...even as far away as Green Bay.

If the destination was more than one time zone away or on the inconvenient side of a major body of water, the Wisconsin Band, with the financial help of its alumni, fans, and athletic department, would fly in comfort and luxury far away from its snowy home. On these flights, the band would always be on its best behavior and would never dream of bothering the flight attendants or crew. They were, after all, miles above the ground, and if the captain had to scream, "STOP THAT INFERNAL SINGING!" over the microphone, he might become distracted and send them all spiralling down to horrible flaming deaths.

If the band's destination was closer, however, as it was for their annual Big Ten away game road trip, they would drive. A full Wisconsin Band, with support staff and the occasional Pom Pon for entertainment, required seven big coach buses to travel over land. Even though the big coach buses had a listed capacity of 48 people, they only had one tiny bathroom in the back. If a younger member of the band needed to make use of the woefully inadequate sanitary facilities, he/she was required to solve a puzzle or riddle before being allowed to pass. If the newer member of the band wasn't able to perform the feat of mental agility required by the older members (perhaps too distracted by the state of his/her excretory system), the seasoned veterans of the Wisconsin Band would take pity on their new friend and allow him/her to enter the bathroom without solving the puzzle. The seasoned veterans of the band were not stupid, though, and would not allow their new friend to exit the restroom until he/she solved the riddle. If someone else, maybe another young member of the band, needed to use the bathroom, and he/she didn't solve the puzzle before reaching a critical level of discomfort, he/she would be allowed to enter the bathroom before answering, as well. It should be noticed at this point that the first young member of the band would still be in the restroom, too. The kind, knowledgable, older band members did this on purpose, as A) two idiot freshmen can hopefully figure out the damn password faster than one can, and B) this encouraged an atmosphere of companionship and cooperation among the new members of their band.

The Wisconsin Band has always had very strong ties within its instrumental sections, so it follows naturally that the various sections would want to travel as distinct units. The tubas and the marching french horns, the euphoniums and the flugelhorns, the trombones, the saxophones and the clarinets, the percussion, and the trombones all had certain buses that had become their own over time. Mike Leckrone, the leader of this great organization, travelled on the first bus, along with a number of freshmen, strays, outcasts, band members who had studying to do, and other pathetic losers. Bus two belonged to the trombones. The drummers, euphos, and flugels had bus three. Bus five was the domain of the trumpets. Bus six was for ****. Bringing up the rear of the band were the tubas and frumpets in bus seven. In the Wisconsin Band, though, there was no "bus four," and this is why:

During the University of Wisconsin Marching Band's trip to the 1995 Hall of Fame Bowl in Tampa Bay, Florida, the saxophones and clarinets were subjected to, quite possibly, the worst Bob of all time. (Author's Note: If you drive bus for the UW Band, your name is Bob. That's just the way it is. If you're female, you're Bob. If your bus has wings, you're still Bob.) Bob has a fairly easy job: get the bus, drive to the hotel with six other Bobs, pick up the band, drive us where we need to go, wait there while we do what we need to do, drive us back, drop off the bus, and go home to lick the emotional wounds that you've been subjected to that day.

On that trip, our Bob was simply incapable of carrying out any part of his job with any reliability. He overslept, causing the UW Band's saxophones and clarinets to miss the beginning of a morning rehearsal. He got lost. He was personally responsible for causing seven busloads of sweaty, unhappy band members to be packed into six buses. He had no sense of humor. He was not only, as a bus driver, a worthless human being but was a worthless bus driver as well.

Kurt Mullendore, field assistant, Butt Captain, and well-known swell guy, solved the problem of our somewhat random bus assignments thusly: if anyone were to ask a clarinet or saxophone "What bus are you on?", the only acceptable answer was " you." When he actually succeeded in getting the UW Band's reed-suckers together onto one bus, he coined the phrase "Welcome to Bus Hell". As these things will often do in our band, it just kind of stuck.

It's road trip; some people get hurt, some people die. You just learn to accept it.

©1997 Mark Stokosa