Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Suffering for Jesus

The reason for the trip to Bermuda was a trip for the Youth Band that I help organize for our division of the Salvation Army. It's always fun to travel and if we're going to play for people it might as well be tropical! Yeah, some real suffering was done over THAT decision.

We flew out of Buffalo at 9:50am on Thursday, but with checking in, travelling in a group of 30 with over sized instruments, it meant being at the airport by 7:30am. Now is a good time to mention that Buffalo is a solid 4+ hour drive from where I live. Do the math and you can see that it was an early morning.

So the Windsor crew (9 of us) went to London the night before to sleep (although I didn't sleep a wink) and then we all took a coach bus from there to Buff. Other than the insane departure time from London (4am), things went great. Flying into Newark for our connection was cool, because I didn't realize how close it is to NYC, which I had never seen before, and we got a good view of the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty from our side of the plane. Side-note: Newark airport has stuff well priced. I bought a bagel w/cream cheese for $1.49, in an airport!

The next flight to Bermuda was great, although coming in for a landing and not seeing ANY land is a little freaky. By the time we got to our billets, had something to eat, drove around a few of the sights, I had been up for almost thirty hours. When I hit the pillow that night I didn't even move until my alarm went off 9 hours later.


Friday was a busy day, we played in a few schools, did an hour or so on street corners and then had some free time. I convinced the rest of the leaders to take a ferry with me across the island. We didn't have much time to do it, but it ended up timing itself perfectly. Plus, this gave us 40 minutes to sit on a boat in the Bermudian sun. The sacrifices of leadership, I know...

We had a sound check for our concert Saturday morning, then spent the early part of the afternoon at the beach, Horseshoe Bay. At first the water was cool, but it didn't matter it was the ocean and it warmed up nicely. A few hours in the sun and water and most of us looked fairly pink. It was pretty evident when someone had missed a spot on their backs with sunblock. I got burned a bit, but only in the spots I missed. It's a little itchy, but it was worth it.
Saturday night we shared a concert with their Divisional Bands and then we did the church service Sunday morning. A quick, and wonderful, lunch was provided to us after church and we bolted for the airport. It was over too quickly.

But us Windsor folk still had about 14 hours of travelling to do. We had a four hour layover in Newark, then our flight was delayed an hour because of weather, after we had boarded. We got back to London around 3:15am Monday and I was home by 5:20. Fortunately shift work has taught me how to handle being up all night and I just treated it like a midnight shift. Once Sue and Darcy were on their way in the morning, I went to bed.
I feels like a dream. A very vivid and detailed dream. I'll have to go back to make sure it was real...




3 comments:

Sue Matthews said...

Yeah, well I'd better being going back with you on that trip!

Anonymous said...

That bottom picture of the water through the rocks is incredible!

Anonymous said...

Hey Comber,

What was my Leadership Position or did you forget I went to the dockyards??

Brian