Sunday, June 12, 2016

Day One - June 11 2016 SLC to the Deep South, Lanett Alabama

Day One of the 2016 tour was a long one!  We started out at the Salt Lake International Airport at 5:30 am.  Everything went very smoothly through security, onto a plane, off again in Denver, back on  just a few minutes later and finally arriving in Atlanta Georgia at about 3:15 local time.

Zack and the bus were waiting as scheduled and we were off for a one hour ride to Lanett Alabama. Here are two interesting but very relevant facts if you are ever traveling to Lanett.  First, the people there are lovely.  True southern hospitality.  Second, despite the fact that every map in the world tells you that all of Alabama in on Central time.  The town of Lanett  is on Eastern.  This apparently goes back to the town's founding by a company based out of New York who wanted to simplify things by keeping the whole town on the same time zone as headquarters.

What this means to the choir is, while we thought we were arriving early, at about 4:20 or so, we were actually arriving late, at 5:20 or so.  Yikes.

Set up took a bit longer than usual, in part because it's the first day, and perhaps in part because there are fewer ringers to move things this time around.

In any case, Katie was able to rehearse about four lines of the opening song and then it was off to a fast dinner.  A word about dinner though.  Wonderful.  More words:  fried chicken, sweet tea, tender ham, spinach and strawberries, many, many tasty desserts.

And then it was on to the concert.  There was a good crowd in a beautiful church.  Jack had no shoes.  (later found)  Ryan had a splinter.  Emma had relatives in the crowd.  We thought we overheard Mary Ann Alison several times.  Y'all know what I'm sayin?  Bryce was covering for Wes who joins us today.

The choir, at the end of a long day and many miles, performed admirably.  The crowd was appreciative and after a standing ovation were rewarded with an encore piece.    Tour is off to a great start!  Here are some pics of the start of Tour 2016:






























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