We made it successfully to Ames, IA after a long day of driving. It felt good to get to the hotel, get some food, and promptly go to bed, because for some reason I was tired from doing nothing all day. When I say “we “ I mean my four new friends, Josh, Elliott, Erin, Vanessa and I. So far, that is the dynamic of the bus and is awesome!
Early the next morning we loaded back onto the bus, and headed towards campus. As we pulled up onto campus I noticed some high-rises of dorm buildings. We parked right outside the Concert Hall venue in what seemed like the athletic part of the campus. Which was near the pretty big football stadium and other theater and athletic buildings. The next thing that I noticed was how old the buildings looked both inside and out. Inside the concert hall when standing on stage it looked like you were in a spaceship. There was a main crowd in the center, including lower, middle, upper levels and balconies on the sides in an oval type shape. The catering was down in the basement, which felt almost like a dungeon due to the grey cement floors and older white painted cement structure within the whole building. Despite the cell feeling, breakfast was enjoyable and a great start to the day.
After breakfast we walked around the venue and figured out where we were going to set up our eco-village, and started to unload our supplies from the crates. Even though there was not much space we made it work, and had a great spot right by the doors where people came in. For a little, we quickly popped up some tents and unloaded Silk, Oxfam, and Reverb paraphernalia. However, we didn’t have a lot of time before the town hall forum, which was to be held at 12:30pm in a building on campus.
At each campus there was going to be a town hall forum in the afternoon. This was a chance for students on campus to sit in and listen to what the Campus Consciousness Tour was all about. In addition each school had a few student groups that had similar goals and ideas parallel to the tour. These groups were the ones that were going to talk about not only how people can make an impact, but what students could do on their very own campus to get involved. The panel included Elliott from Reverb, Vanessa from Oxfam, and the President from each one of the student groups, as well as a member of the band. On this particular day a band member could not make it because their flight was not getting in on time.
I definitely wanted to check out the forum and get a feel for what it was all about. I think it is a really great way to not only have us, from the tour, talking about what we do, but to go one step further and have it feasible for the students to do some of the things we talk about on their own campus.
What are the issues? Reverb’s whole philosophy is doing what they can to overall help the environment. Josh, Elliott, and Erin are very passionate about issues such as recycling, using alternative fuel sources, alternative energy sources, and generally just not being wasteful. They specifically focus on all of the energy and resources wasted on tour. Sometimes upwards to 20 vehicles are traveling across the country touring, and most of these vehicles are large busses and trucks. Think about how much emissions are cut down but running all of these vehicles on bio-diesel fuel. Also recycling may seem like something easy to do, but how easy is it when there are no recycling bins around? Reverb puts out recycling bins all over the venue, including backstage, and on the buses encouraging people to recycle. As well as having compostable and recyclable products used for catering. In general these are the issues in general talked about at the town hall forum.
How Silk ties in: Silk is a company already does all these things that Reverb works to do on each tour. Silk was one of the first companies to offset 100% of its energy used, to wind energy. There are ways to recycle a lot of what is used in the office, and the cafeteria carries compostable and recyclable products.
In general the Iowa town hall forum could have had a little better attendance, and a more proactive crowd (by that I mean they were shy/ could have participated more). But for the first one it went pretty smoothly, and the people who attended were definitely interested in the issues.
For the rest of the day we prepared our eco-village for the show that night. The eco-village is all about educating the students and people coming to the concert, including why the tour is actually even taking place. Everything came out great…
The show is the part I enjoy the most especially getting people excited about the product. I had four volunteers to help me pass out samples and have people sign up for the Silk raffle, which included an OAR autographed guitar and posters, a year supply of Silk, and some other Silk products. I gave the volunteers a few topics to mention to people about Silk, such as it taste good, its healthy, and the company is environmentally friendly.
The reaction to Silk was mixed, a ton of people came up to the tent saying, “I love this stuff I drink it all the time. It’s great!” Then on the other hand you have the people that give you a funny face when you ask them if they want to try some Soymilk. Some are willing to give it a shot and try a sample, and some are not. That is just the way it goes. Most of the people that I convince to try it like it, and can easily get over the fact that they are drinking soymilk. The volunteers were great and really upbeat in getting people to try the product. Overall we had the perfect amount of samples because we ran out just before OAR went on, and also attracted a lot of peoples’ attention.
We cleaned the village up pretty quickly and I still had some time to catch the end of the concert. It is so awesome being able to go wherever I want, so I strolled up to the first row right next to the stage without a person saying a word to me. The day felt a little hectic because a lot was unexpected, but was by and large a success. It felt good to be done everything for that day and just kick back and listen to the band.
After the show we all relaxed on the bus waiting for our 1am departure to Birmingham Alabama. I was a little nervous because this was the first night we would be sleeping through the night on the bus. I climbed up to my bunk and crawled in. It took a few minutes to get all my stuff that I had up there with me situated, because it is a pretty confined space. I then got comfortable under the covers and was sound asleep within a few minutes. I only awoke a few times, when the bus hit a bump or was making a sharp turn or something, but would just roll over and fall back asleep. Sleeping on the bust was actually fun and completely fine!
So this has been a pretty long entry…and we are almost in Birmingham Alabama!!
No comments:
Post a Comment