Fun At Apple Corps

My first Apple Corps weekend has come and gone, and it was a blast. We had classes on Friday and Saturday. There were a lot of them to choose from, but we had made our choices when we sent in the registration. You could only fit in a maximum of 8 classes, so there are many interesting ones left for me to take if I go again next year.

We lived in the college dorms, which was a real jolt of nostalgia for me. The one I was in was air conditioned and had two person rooms with a common lounge area for each pair of rooms. I've seen much worse. Son Mike made the comment that he never envisioned sitting in a college dorm drinking beer with his dad. We will have these moments to remember.

We got three meals everyday with lots of items to choose from. I am eating rather sparingly now at home to average out what I ate down there. There was a long, very steep hill to climb to get from the cafeteria to where the classes were. That helped to work off some of the food. There was a fantastic, outdoor BBQ Saturday evening.




Kenyon or Hogwarts??

I participated in the MEGACHORUS, along with over 200 other guys. We learned two new songs at rehearsals on Thursday, Friday and Saturday afternoon. Talk about a cram course.

Each year, on Friday evening they hold a pick-up quartet contest. When you register, you put your name and what part you sing into a box. For the contest, they randomly draw a lead, a bass, a baritone and a tenor from the boxes and you have five minutes, or until the quartet before you finishes, to pick a name for your quartet and figure out what song to sing. Very hectic, but a lot of fun. I was in two different quartets. At the end, the two judges picked the best of the 26 groups and one of my quartets won the top prize. We got little engraved trophies and everything. It's all about the bling.

On Saturday, we had the big closing show. Two choruses, one from Canton and one from the Columbus area performed. The MEGACHORUS also did our two numbers. Then came the quartets. They started by having the pickup winners sing. We called ourselves, Mentalpause. Then there were five more quartets, four of which had qualified for the International Convention in Nashville, in July. So we heard some top notch quartet singing.

Mike's quartet, The Summit Chordsmen

There had been an outdoor wedding on campus Saturday afternoon and the reception was being held in one of the buildings that evening. Immediately after our show, about 200 of us went over and gathered outside the building. The bride and groom and the wedding party came out and we serenaded them with two barbershop love songs, Let Me Call You Sweetheart and Sweet and Lovely. They were surprised and thanked us over and over again. The bride did refuse to hug all of us, however.

Then it was back to the dorm area for an "Afterglow". For non-barbershoppers, that loosely translates as a lot of singing and drinking. We had to check out of the dorm by 9:00 on Sunday. We stopped at McD's in Mount Vernon for breakfast and then did the 90 minute drive home. What a great time!!

Daughter-in-law Kim asked if we had RA's in the dorms. I said that we didn't, but considering the average age of the participants (the oldest guy was 95), we probably could have used RN's.