Strike up the Badgers band and let’s get this show on the road

Donny Lavrenz set a Rose Bowl record Monday, piling up an estimated 17,694 all-purpose yards.

Never heard of him? Now you have.

From the time the Wisconsin junior stepped onto the bus at his downtown hotel in the morning, to the start of the parade, to the end of the parade, to a pep rally on Brookside golf course, to a toasty pregame show, to a mercifully shady halftime show, that’s the mileage the band member racked up — in a wool uniform that weighed 14 pounds before he soaked it in sweat.

How hot was it Monday? Eighty-two degrees at game time. Hot enough to short out the electric pedometer Lavrenz was carrying to measure his day, caught as it was between his undergarments and himself. Fortunately, a teammate was counting her steps with a fitness watch, which gave us the final 10-mile total.

So that was our assignment Monday, to measure how many yards a band member puts in on one of the longest, most miserable, most exhilarating days a college kid could ever imagine. And to offer a little reminder that the Rose Bowl is an athletic endeavor on many levels, not to mention a miracle with a million moving parts.

“Suck the marrow out of this,” urged band assistant Matt “Gunny” Whiting, in a pregame pep talk. “Enjoy every moment.”

Far as I could tell, they did.

A giant parade is a beastly thing. Imagine an anaconda swallowing a turducken — a chicken, inside a duck, inside a turkey, inside a snake. That’s a lot of biology so early in the morning. But that was my metaphor, and I’m sticking with it. It was apt, if not elegant.

No, I hadn’t been drinking, though I should have been. It was 4 a.m. in Pasadena as I started jotting these notes, and to be honest, I wasn’t even sure Pasadena had a 4 a.m.

In the past, I was pretty sure this whitey-tightey place skipped right from midnight to dawn, in hopes of avoiding any untoward incidents.

But not on Rose Parade morning. At 2 a.m., the 30 volunteers who organize the parade’s bands show up, grill steak and eggs on the Del Mar overpass and wait for 100 or so band buses to show up.

You think you have problems getting to and from this parade, imagine if you had 100 buses to choreograph, in roughly parade order, in a 90-minute window.

The Marines show up first, then overshoot their target. Then the gigantic Arcadia band shows up, then some milky looking band from Sweden.

Eventually, so too does the Wisconsin band, and then an accident on the freeway threatens to snarl everything, prompting music committee Chairman Alex Aghajanian to jump into one of those white Honda minivans to trouble-shoot.

Multiply what the music committee does times 30, and you have an idea of what it’s like to stage a Rose Parade. Me, I prefer just to watch.

By 7, most of the 21 bands have shown up, from as far away as Japan.

By 8, Aghajanian starts inserting the bands in their proper spots in the giant anaconda forming along Orange Grove.

See? Easy.

At about 8:15, the Badgers band steps into the parade — apple-cheeked clarinet players from Kenosha, flugelhorn players from Waukesha. In 30 seconds, the temperature goes from 50 to 80. And the wool, which felt so good at 7, feels as if it’s about to sandpaper your neck off.

Two hours later, they are at the parade’s end point six miles down the road, scarfing In-N-Out-Burgers and bottled water. Then more water.

Well done. The day is hardly half over.

“We all had two water bottles in our back pockets,” says Lavrenz.

“The only way to do this is to do this,” says assistant band director Justin Stolarik.

How much do the Wisconsin kids love the Rose Bowl?

“A few years ago, they asked us if we wanted to go to the BCS championship or the Rose Bowl,” bass drummer Kenton Yeats says while cooling down from the parade. “And we all said the Rose Bowl.”

Must be that Pasadena night life.

By the way, it’s 20 degrees back in Madison this day. Partly crummy with a chance of snow. Summer is only six months away, maybe seven.

With that in mind, the sun starts to feel pretty good here in Pasadena. The musicians lick the cheeseburgers off their thumbs and board seven charter buses for the game.

And wait. And wait.

To many, a marching band seems like one simple unit, stepping the same way, dressing the same way, conformity personified, when in fact, it is 300 individuals who have to be fed, housed, entertained.

That’s right, even entertainers need to be entertained. One day, Disneyland, the next L.A. Live and the Santa Monica Pier.

“Did anybody go swimming?”

Yes, lots, says Wes Davison, a drummer from Sun Prairie.

High school bands, who unlike their college counterparts have to fund their way here, usually price a Rose Parade appearance at $4,000 per kid, which would make the Badgers band trip a $1-million winter vacation, give or take, a price band officials confirm.

But no beach romp, this. Adding to the day’s challenge is that the Wisconsin band does something they call “high stepping,” a Buster Keaton move that requires a 45-degree tilt of the knee and a pause — almost a hiccup — at the very top.

Imagine 300 kids walking barefoot across coals, and that’s what high-stepping looks like.

“I’m a marathon runner and I’d rather run a marathon than some of the stuff we do for conditioning,” Stolarik explains.

The band’s motto: “Eat a rock.” Because it’s tough to eat a rock, and it’s tough to be in the Badgers band.

Conditioning includes 100-yard wind sprints with their instruments carried over their head — players dizzy, griping, building strength for long days such as this.

And what a day it turns out to be. By midafternoon, the Rose Bowl looks like an Italian frieze. There’s that haze that creeps across the arroyo, giving it a painterly focus.

Turns out, as it usually does, to be a hymn to Southern California winters, played on bass drums and trombones. As the crowd chants, the Badgers mascot is doing pushups. Cheerleaders are flipping like pancakes in the air.

In time for halftime, the shade sweeps over the Bermuda grass, and the temperature drops that magic 10 degrees.

The Badgers band high-steps its way through the halftime show in front of 91,245 fans — and Lavrenz has his Rose Bowl record.

Afterward, young faces beam with relief. “You killed it,” someone says.

Thanks. Whew. Gasp.

Wisconsin loses the football game to Oregon, but even after the game the band plays on.

It’s just after 6 p.m. when the final note dances over the Arroyo Seco. And still their day is far from over.

The return flight leaves at 10, and it’s 20 degrees in Madison.

chris.erskine@latimes.com

twitter.com/erskinetimes