Last weekend, in the middle of a fierce and unrelenting windstorm, we drove south for two hours to the Big City of Lubbock for the 2007 Destination Imagination regional tournament. Before I get into the tournament, let me clarify what fierce and unrelenting means. The wind hit us with 70 mile an hour gusts, and there were times on the road we could just barely see 20 feet in front of us because of the brown dirt all around. Out of the window it was simply brown. Brown sky, brown air, brown road. Whirling and rushing past us, brown brown brown.
I had never seen so many tumbleweeds racing across the road. There were hundreds of them, spinning along, ready to collide with traffic. One, the size of a volkswagen bus, smacked us right in the windshield.
At one part I thought I saw Miss Gulch from the Wizard of Oz pass us on her bicycle.
The scariest part of the drive happened when we were right about to pass one of those giant 18-wheeler semi trucks. The wind blew the truck sideways, tilting it so half its wheels lost contact with the road. (Later on, closer to Lubbock, another 18-wheeler lost it completely, blown over on its side across the median.)
Besides getting mouthfuls of dirt as we unloaded the two teams' props from our van (I hope it was just dirt - there are many, many cattle feed yards around here, and cow poop blows just as freely as soil), the rest of the morning went very smoothly. It was the third grade team's first competition, and they did great (Megan's role was the villain - The Guy With The Hair In His Eyes - and she was also the 'colorful character' of the performance; she was a hoot!). The third grade team beat out all sorts of other fourth and fifth grade teams and came in third place, which was astoundingly good. Since they were one of the top three teams, they got to run across the big stage and get medals draped over their necks.
Colleen's team, The Odd Sparks, did the improvisation challenge this year, and they did a masterful job. I was amazed at how funny, intelligent, and cohesive their performance was. Colleen had some great lines that simply left me wondering how she came up with them. It was really a great show.
The judges thought so too. The Odd Sparks came in first place and are off to the state competition next month in Dallas!
That's pretty exciting. Both teams worked very hard for the past few months and so did Suzanne, who was the team manager for the Odd Sparks. I hope the rest of the teams going to state don't even see them coming.
