Pride of West Virginia

Karrie has inspired me with her incessant embedding of YouTube clips and talk of her days with the drum corp. I'll just pretend I didn't see the gaucho bashing.

I did a little Youtube surfing and came across clips of the West Virginia University marching band (aka the Pride of West Virginia) performing their pregame show at the Nokia Sugar Bowl this past January. A bowl game in which we beat the crap out of Georgia; a game made only only that much more sweeter by the fact I live near the Georgia state line and I had to put up with Bulldogs this and Bulldogs that.

Anyhoo, I wasn't at this game and, seeing as how it was last January when Grace was still nursing all night long (side note: now I have Lionel Ritchie's All Night Long stuck in my head... and I hope you do, too), I was dozing in and out through the entire thing but it is the same pregame performance from my days at Mountaineer Field.

It reminds me of of being with friends, drinking mini bottles of Jack Daniels that I carried past security in my underwear, eating salty stadium fries and singing Country Roads at the top of my lungs. I was like the postal service when it came to attending WVU games- I was there in heat, rain, sleet, and snow and if I drank enough Jack, I could get potentially go a little postal. In my six years there, I never missed a home game. In fact, I'm pretty sure it was grounds for dismissal from the University if you missed a home game (never claimed I was in the Ivy League, folks) Game days were long days of partying. We often started at 8:00 amd and kept it going until 8:00 am the next morning. The only thing that dulled game days was knowing that tomorrow was Sunday- the day before Monday- and there was plenty of homework and studying that needed to be done in only half the time.

I get chills watching these videos and while there's no mini bottles in my underwear, hanging with a three year old and a one year old is rather similar to hanging out with drunken college friends on game days (puking, pissing everywhere, incoherent babbling, unprovoked tantrums, crying, etc...). Here's to my second favorite way to spend a Saturday:

Boogie Cadence:


Simple Gifts:


Country Roads: