t was 4:40 a.m. Tuesday, Nov. 25, and four tour buses and a two-ton box truck loaded with instruments slipped out of Murrysville 10 minutes late. Parents stood outside their cars behind Franklin Regional High School and waved in the cold dark. They'd waited two years for this, and finally the teenagers were on their way east, to march in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade.

Most of the students were asleep by the time they hit the eastbound turnpike. Chaperone Sue Rybacki, mom to flag-twirler Lauren, was too excited to sleep.

	VWH Campbell Jr./Pittsburgh Post Gazette
	Members of the Franklin Regional High School Marching Band streams through upper Manhattan in front of hundreds of thousands of people on their way to perform before a national television audience in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. The whirlwind experience is captured in a special photo gallery "The Big Parade." Click on image to enter the photo gallery.

The flag-twirlers are called "silks," she explained. They're part of the "band front" -- the Pantherette pompom dancers, the honor guard, the majorettes. They're the flash, the performers, the ones required to smile. The band members march behind, straight-faced, concentrating on musicianship and keeping in step.

"I've never been to New York City before," Rybacki said. "Lived in Pittsburgh all my life, moved out to Murrysville because the schools were good. Never went too far. Never did much. And now, the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade!"

The Franklin Regional High School band was one of 10 in the country chosen to perform during the 77th annual Macy's parade. They entertained millions and returned home tired yet triumphant. But part of the experience was the journey itself.

6:28 a.m.: The buses pulled up to a seedy 24-hour truck stop. Band director Kevin Pollock jumped down from the front seat of the first bus -- riding in back gives him motion sickness. He stepped fast inside, turned and admonished his 168 young charges to behave themselves.

"I am like so starving," a girl murmured, standing in line in the ladies' room.

"I was sleeping. I had a nightmare I was playing the song, and I couldn't remember the fingerings," one said.

"Yeah, last week I dreamed my instrument didn't make it on the equipment bus," added another.

They checked their hair and makeup. Some had risen at 2:30 a.m. to apply their day's full complement of foundation, blush, mascara. They were shockingly beautiful in the concrete fluorescence.

7:30 a.m.: Back aboard Bus 4. The kids passed a bag among themselves, lifting it to spill the contents into their mouths. Skittles. Candies.

They settled back into bleary silence, with just the whisper of Led Zeppelin leaking from their headphones. Kurt Maneval, a 15-year-old freshman clarinet player, sat toward the back, surrounded by eight of his best friends. He's a storyteller, and his tales of "snack-food injuries" kept his clique in giggle-fits.

"We all know this is probably the biggest event we'll do in our musical careers," he said. "My family is thrilled. There's 40 people coming to my house on Thanksgiving to watch us on TV. I'm proud we were chosen, one of only 10 bands in the entire country. But I think half the fun is taking a bus trip with my best friends. I hardly sleep at all. I got two hours last night."

He said parades are "a focused magnitude of adrenaline." It's practice that makes this band so good, he said. "And we do it for each other. You do your best, because you don't want to let down your friends."

10:45 a.m.: Fast-food lunch break. The students complained about too-frequent rest stops. They told the lady behind the counter at Taco Bell who they were and where they were going.

"Wow! You're the second band in the parade! How cool is that?" she said enthusiastically.

The majorettes tittered. They're planning for the evening already. They're going to Times Square, to a Broadway play. "We're ironing Haley's hair," they said. "We're getting totally dolled-up."

Back aboard, the group drowsed. Just after noon, the Newark Airport exit signs flashed past. "We're almost there! Our hotel's at the airport!" said a girl in glasses. "We go past New York, don't we?"

"Over there! Look! The Statue of Liberty!" Students crowded to the scenery side of the bus. But the tall steel structure is a Port of Newark freight crane, not Miss Liberty.

"Look! A prison!" someone shouted. "Look! Our hotel!"

12:45 p.m.: They were refreshed and ready to roll. The buses toured the streets of Midtown, trailing past the United Nations, then up to the parade route, from Central Park West down to Columbus Circle to Herald Square, almost three miles of high-rent real estate.

"I don't have the stamina to dance that whole way," one girl said. "I don't think I can do it."

"Try doing it with a 40-pound drum hanging on you," a boy snapped.

"I couldn't walk that far. How can I march it?" another girl whined.

A taxicab honked at the bus and cut in front. "Aaaa, shaddap!" the boys shouted. "We're in a New York state of mind now!" one said, laughing aloud.

7:30 p.m.: Outside theaters, chaperones hand a ticket for performances of "Beauty and the Beast" or "Thoroughly Modern Millie" to each student, an easy method of accounting for everyone. The long hours are starting to show. Shoulders drooped.

"I haven't slept in 36 hours," said Mallory Merge, a Pantherette. "But look at this hat. I got it for $5!"

9:45 p.m.: The plays are over, the band crowded back onto their buses, exhaustion turning to giddiness and sometimes, youthful romance. Benjy Lombard and Matt O'Brien described their evening on Broadway.

"We went into a makeup store, and saw this scary salesman in there -- a guy, with makeup! We only stayed long enough to get some glitter," Lombard said. His eyelids sparkled silver.

"Look at my bling-bling!" O'Brien exclaimed. He donned a silver-tone wristwatch, a "diamond" ring and a fat silver chain with a dollar-sign medallion.

"Five bucks. I da man!" he said, strutting into the aisle.

"New York is fun at night. The later it gets, the better it is!" Lombard said.

9 a.m. Wednesday, Nov. 26: First things first: the equipment truck.

Inside the white two-ton box truck was a Chinese puzzle of odd-shaped boxes and racks of blue garment bags. The unloading was workmanlike choreography, with each person knowing his part in the 10-minute dance that overwhelmed the Sheraton parking lot.

Carla Gialloreto, head of the band front operation, opened a plastic box on the pavement. White feathers bounded out as each Pantherette took out her own sequined headpiece known to them as "chickens."

Band members collected cases, bucket-like blue leather hats, and sometimes the skeletal steel frames that hang drums from their bellies and shoulders. Silky banners were threaded onto candy-striped poles. Each youngster claimed his own kit and took it all up to his room to be ready for tomorrow.

11 a.m.: They were back on the bus to Manhattan. Wednesday was supposed to be an easy day, just walking tours of St. Patrick Cathedral and Rockefeller Center, and an afternoon performance of the Radio City Rockettes. The day was cloudy with expectation.

"We've got some kids sick with the pressure," said Larry Silvestri, an assistant band director. "We'll have to keep our eyes open during the parade, in case someone hits the deck."

"We've been warning them as far back as band camp that this is the biggest parade on the planet, that you've got to be ready," said Phil Wonderling, another assistant. "But it doesn't always hit you till the last minute. It's not really something you can fully prepare for."

There were scattered sore throats and upset stomachs. Mark Scheinert a color guard member, broke a bar off the back of his wheelchair. "I'll have to be careful I don't fall over in Herald Square!" he said. "If I tip backward, I won't stop till I hit the ground."

5 p.m.: On the bus back to Newark, Pollock stood up and cleared his throat for yet another admonition.

"You are on the eve of the biggest performance you will do with this band," he said. "I know some of you are really wired. You have worked too long and hard to put it all at risk. Please, go to your rooms and lie down now. Sleep," he said, almost begging. "Just get two hours, three hours. Our reputation is on the line. You've got to be on tomorrow. Fifty percent is not good enough."

"Wake-up call is 12:45. We leave here at 1:45. I want you all in full uniform, everything on, zipped-up, gloved, hats on, so we can check the fit of your things in the lobby before you board the buses. I want you ready, like the parade starts the moment you step out the door. Girls -- heels. Earrings. Full makeup, and your chicken on your head.

"And if we are late, they will put another band in our spot, ahead of us. At 4:30 we'll have breakfast. We can catch a nap before we have to be at the parade start at 7 a.m."

And so it was, the 189 students boarded their buses on minimal sleep, and so it went the following day, Thanksgiving, a bright, blue sky, 50 degrees. The parade stepped off on time. The students whirled down the street at an almost-run, with a giant inflatable Big Bird at their heels.

An estimated 2 million people lined the parade route, including several students' families. Another 62 million watched on TV.

In an hour's time, it was over -- 21 repeats of Gershwin's "Strike Up the Band" took them down the route, and a single show-stopper verse of Louie Prima's "Sing Sing Sing" for the Herald Square TV cameras.

Round the corner and up West 34th Street they played "Jingle Bell Jam," then broke into hugs and high-fives and a few tears.

6 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 27: Hundreds of parents and friends convened at the hotel for Thanksgiving dinner, topped off with a screening of the morning's performance.

The students watched, rapt. An overhead shot captured the band doing a complicated crisscross movement in perfect time. The kids cheered for themselves. They feasted, then cut loose and danced until 10 p.m. to disco tunes.

Friday, Nov. 28, 10 a.m.: A drizzly, dark morning. The students checked out and headed back to the city for one last tour. They drove past the Ground Zero site, and listlessly shopped at the South Street Seaport.

"We're ready to go home, I think," said Wil Bair, sitting on a bench in the fog.

"It was all too fast. All that work, for an hour," said his friend Chris Weiss.

The buses took hours to cross the Alleghenies in a snowstorm. Just after 11 p.m. they headed up Route 66 toward home. A fleet of Delmont and Murrysville police cruisers met them, sirens wailing, lights flashing. A firetruck joined the parade, and well-wishers lined the road to the high school, waving, flashing headlights, honking horns.

"I feel so famous!" a girl shouted from the back. The band members sang out "Sing Sing Sing," off-key and loud.

And by midnight, the sidewalk outside the school was empty. The buses headed through the snow back to their garage.

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Rebekah Scott can be reached at rscott@post-gazette.com or 724-836-2655.