Glory Days

My good friend, Rob, flew in from the UK yesterday evening, and we've had such a great time catching up.

Rob and I have known each other since 1988, which today I realized is the equivalent to half my life. (!)

Yes, it is another one of my long-lasting color guard connections: Rob has been involved with the color guard activity in the UK for many, many years. ( I could probably say "decades" but thought that might age him unfairly.) My sister went to study abroad for a semester in London way back in 1988, and wrote a letter to the color guard circuit there, offering to help teach a local group. Rob was the directly of a guard named "Trilogy" back then, hired her on, and they became fast friends.

I met Rob that summer while visiting my sister in London, and the color guard that I was teaching at Saratoga High School hired him on as our drill designer.

Rob came out to teach drill/visit for 3 weeks in the fall that year, and the two of us (and my now-gay-ex-boyfriend) had a great time teaching together.

That was 18 years ago. (good grief!)

Considering the distance between us, Rob and I have managed to see each other nearly every year since. Granted, our meetings usually happen in the lovely city of Dayton, Ohio, but nonetheless, we're always very happy to see each other. Unfortunately, we were usually each too busy with our respective units to ever have a chance to really have a good quality catch up.

Lucky for us, we've both been able to schedule a couple of vacations to coincide with real non-color-guard related visits. Rob came out here in 1997, and I've been to London, and later Spain to visit with him.

Since Rob has been out to San Francisco a couple of times before, he didn't feel the need to do the usual touristy things around town. Instead, he asked if we could just "hang out and relax" a bit before he takes off for Southern California this weekend.

So what do two old guard geeks do together on their first day of vacation?

Why, watch old color guard tapes, of course!

This morning, I popped in my WGI Fans Favorite 15 DVD which spans from our "Glory Days" of 1983-1993. It was so much fun to watch and reminisce with him. (really, how many people do I get to do this with?)

To top things off, I had just recorded this year's DCI World Championships on ESPN2 yesterday afternoon. We watched the full show this evening, and really enjoyed it. (Philip, I'd be happy to watch it again with you, too!) Kudos once again to Mike Gaines - the drill design for the Cavaliers was once again amazing!

Don't worry, we didn't spend the entire time watching color guard! We did make it out to Union Square today to do some shopping, and to enjoy the sunshine.

I'll have to dig out some of my old photographs of Rob and I from the late '80s. He said he just found a few back at home, and was amazed at how young we were. (Plus, that was in the heyday of my big hair!)

In the meantime, I'll leave you with one of our annual photographs from WGI. (this is from 2004, since he didn't make it out in 2006, and for some reason, we didn't take a picture together in 2005!)


Rob and Trina at WGI, 2004