#ImOnBoard with the Anderson Monarchs

The invitation was equal parts enticing and mortifying.

Steve Bandura offered me an opportunity to shoot for his Anderson Monarchs Travel baseball team during a 23 day, 4,000 mile odyssey through the heart of civil rights history. The circuitous barnstorming route through 16 states in the eastern half of the US would be made on a 1947 Flxible Clipper bus. No A/C. No bathroom. Twenty-nine seats, with one in the front row reserved for the mechanic! A mid-summer excursion through the south with all the amenities of the 1940's. I've photographed 13 Olympic games, but even those last only 16 days!

This is my first blog post from this trip. Filmmaker Pat Florescio, (whose film about the Monarchs 2014 trip to Cooperstown premiered just last week) and I have obligations to the team as well as numerous other requests and personal ideas. We are still finding our workflow legs.

We boarded the bus yesterday evening in Philly. The Monarch's families and friends gathered at the Marian Anderson Rec Center in South Philly for an spirited sendoff. The drive to DC through the cool evening air was uneventful.

Here's a quick video introducing the kids making the trip...

Thursday morning's rain simmered into a hot, muggy day. The Monarchs were decked out in matching blue blazers, khakis and custom-made Monarchs ties for a tour of the White House. Despite a flurry of calls and emails in the last week, Pat and I could not get an exemption to the no photography-or-video-on-White-House-Tours rule. We stayed back to watch the bus.

The tour, which only lasted a few minutes, went largely unrecorded. However, Steph Ramones , Pat's associate producer got in, shot a few iPhone pictures of the Monarchs, and got them posted on Instagram before she was escorted out. Steph can scratch getting thrown out of the White House off her bucket list.

After a quick tour of the Department of the Interior (named, I think, for the wonderful, air conditioned interior that spared us from the rising DC humidity), we trekked to the office of legendary Georgia Congressman John Lewis.

His staff served the Monarchs Georgia peanuts, and then for forty minutes Lewis mesmerized the room with his recollections of the earliest days of the civil rights movement. The Monarchs, who have been required to attend weekly study sessions at their rec center in anticipation of this trip, sat spellbound, and then asked several thoughtful questions. Having just all watched the news reports of the capture of the South Carolina shooter during our lunch break, this was all too timely. John Lewis' office is a time capsule of photographs and memorabilia that took you back to that seminal time in our country's history.

The adults on the trip gathered out in the hall after the meeting and discussed the fact that when John Lewis started his civil rights journey, he was still a teenager...."what were we doing in our teens?" we asked. It was, to say the least, a humbling experience.

Monarchs coaches (R-L) Alex Rice (the manager of the 2014 Taney Dragons), Curt DeVeaux and John Bromley, and Monarchs players, listen to Congressman John Lewis in his DC office

The kids gave the Congressman a wristband and Monarchs tie, and soon we were walking back to the bus for the drive back to the hotel. A quick turnaround to change and back on the bus for the drive to Nationals Park where a timely downpour pushed BP inside where the Monarchs met with Nationals players and were honored on the field before the game.

Nat's Anthony Rendon signs autographs for the Monarchs

Tomorrow it's REAL game time. The Monarchs test their chops against a Nats Baseball Academy team.

Follow the team on facebook and Instagram @TheAndersonMonarchs