24 posts tagged “bagpipe”

After two months with no posts, I've returned to my Vox blog.  Not sure why I have not posted in such a long time but hopefully I'm finally back to regular posting after four months of inactivity.  I have found myself regularly updating my Twitter and Facebook statuses but cannot seem to get full blog posts out the door.

Running:  So I have not been running much in the past month.  I have yet to figure out how to build a run into my daily schedule... actually I still have not really figured out what my daily schedule is yet.

Piping:  I have not done any piping for the past four months.  This is probably the longest dry spell I've had since I started piping nearly twenty years ago.

Hopefully I can swing back into my 'regular' life soon.

Last Saturday my Pipe Band, the Panama City Pipes and Drums, hosted a BURNS SUPPER fundraising dinner and dance.  A Burn's Supper is a celebration of the life and spirit of Scotland's national bard, Robert "Rabbie" Burns (wikipedia link).  This was the band's inaugural hosting of such an event.  It was pretty successful; not allot of money raised but I think everyone enjoyed themselves.

While not a particularly traditional Burns Supper, our event did have all the important stuff: haggis to eat, highland dancers dancing, the reciting of the Address to the Haggis, a few performances from the pipe band, good food to enjoy, some scotch at the bar, and an overall great night.

I've done a great number of Burns Suppers since I started playing pipes and this one was one of my favourites.

What are five words you really like? 
Submitted by purplesque.

1. Brilliant - A great British term that I find myself using all the time.
2. Snogging - Another brilliant British synonym for kissing,  Made internationally famous most recently by J.K. Rowling.
3. Bonk - Not a word I like to ever use to describe my own running situation but a cool word nonetheless.  Bonking is the performance drop that happens when you exhaust your glycogen stores during an endurance sports.  AKA Hitting the wall.
   
4. Canntaireachd - Is an even more obscure word than Piobaireachd (classical bagpipe music).  Canntaireachd is the ancient Scottish oral method of classical pipe music notation.  In particular, Canntaireachd was used to teach Ceòl Mòr/Piobaireachd by chanting or singing.
   
5. Anacrusis - is the term used to describe the note or notes which precede the first downbeat in a piece of music. Anacrusis is often called a pickup, pickup note, or pickup measure.
   

Band

It was a partly cloudy and warm day for the 15th Annual Panama City Highland Games.  This is our little local Highland Games run by the Grace Presbyterian Church.  I always find it surprising how many vendors and clans actually come out to these games seeing it is rather small.

My band was on parade with one of the largest bands in our history.  We had a total of 25 band members with 16 of these pipers.  It was pretty exciting to playing with a big band again although it does take more effort and time to tune up a band of that size.  We were able to add five additional folks to our ranks thanks to the Emerald Coast Pipe Band coming out to enjoy the day.

As with every year, we were forced to compete against the performers on stage during our performances.  It seems every year that no one bothers to deconflict the performance schedule :-(  I'm sure we'll try to fix this again next year.

It's time to starting getting lots of rest and drink lots of water in order to be prepared for next weekend's St Pats Day!

What's one of your favorite quotes? 
Submitted by Georgie-boy. 

Goals

I just finished my second 7HoHEP seminar, so I was reinvigorated to follow-up on my New Years Resolutions:

Family

• "Date Night" 3 X month with my wife - Needs Improvement.  Have only managed to have two date nights thus far.  Need to catch up on the four lost date nights.
  
• Read with my sons 5 days/week - Needs Improvement.  I'm probably averaging two to three days/week.
  

Running

• 5 runs a week - Doing Well.  Minus the required recovery time and some sick time, I'm well on track.
  
• Strength training twice a week - Needs Improvement.  No strength trg yet.
  
• Run over 1000 miles for the year - Doing Well.  With 18% of the year complete, I've completed 15% of the required mileage (149 miles)
  
• Compete in two marathons - Doing Well.  One down... one more to go
  

• 5 X 20 mins of practice/week - Needs Improvement.  No individual practice yet completed
  

• Begin post-grad - ??? Selection for my program is announced in a weeks time.
  
• Improve French speaking - ??? Working to get my distance learning course up-and-running (I'm having some technical difficulties)
  

• Reduce coffee consumption - Doing Well.  Only 2 mugs and none after lunch.
  
• Find 2 geocaches/month - Needs Improvement.  I haven't even gone caching once this year.
  
• Read for 5 X 30 mins a week - Needs Improvement.  I've been able to do this for only a week or so at a time.  Need to be more consistent.
  

Orlando Games 2007 009

I spent last weekend at the Central Florida Highland Games in Winter Springs, FL with the rest of my pipe band.  Overall it was a great time. Like most highland games, the main premise for our attendance was to compete in the pipe band competition.  We played in Grade 5 competition (the lowest level of competition) and did pretty well...we came out in fourth place out of seven bands.  I played a pretty large band and we had a pretty confident performance but a sloppy beginning and a less-than-perfect sound left us out of the prize money.

The highlight of the weekend was the Simon Fraser University (SFU) Pipe Band concert and workshop.  Being the four-time world champions, SFU Pipe Band is one of the best bands to hear perform.  While not the best concert I've heard them perform, it was still phenomenal.  The individual proficiency level of the players has definitely  increased over the past 15 years.  The Sunday morning workshop was also a great event, as the workshop was rather small and Terry, Jack, and Reid continue to be very personable.  I will admit that being from British Columbia and that I've had a few friends play with the band over the past decade helps makes these guys my favourite pipe band.

The only drag for the weekend was the fact that I was being stalked by the Southern US Pipe Band Association (SUSPBA) President.  It seems that SUSPBA has some arcane rule that precludes non-SUSPBA member bands from collecting travel money for more than one SUSPBA sanctioned event and Sandy Keith, the SUSPBA president, wanted to inflict this information onto me personally.  Gotta love politics.

Since it's time to review the past year, here is a rather long photo-montage summary of 2006 for my Pipe Band, the Panama City Pipes & Drums.  Enjoy!