The fruit sales. The exhausting practices. The extra pushups.

The big parade is only two days away.

For four years, the Broughton High School Band has been waiting for the opportunity to march in Pasadena, Calif., in the Tournament of Roses parade -- "The Granddaddy of All Parades."

In 2004 and 2005, Broughton submitted audio, DVD, resumes and recommendations. Twice, it was rejected.

Then, in 2006, parade organizers asked the band to reapply. That fall, Broughton found out it was finally in.

The reward: the chance to march on New Year's Day before more than 40 million TV viewers among rose-studded floats, high-stepping horses and 21 of the world's best marching bands. The 2 1/2-hour parade precedes the Rose Bowl college football game.

Broughton is the first band from Raleigh to march in the parade in its 119-year history.

The 186-member band has been practicing up to the very end.

The day before they left for California on Friday, band members spent all morning running through the foot-stomping, Latin-flavored, seven-minute field show they will perform at a "Bandfest" in Pasadena this morning. They also marched about four miles around the high school track to rehearse the songs they will play over and over in the televised parade -- "Grand Ol' Flag" and "The Stars and Stripes Forever."

"I felt like passing out," said Jon Edwards, 16, a bell set player.

The band is using special arrangements for the parade -- cutting out two of the most difficult parts of "Stars and Stripes Forever" -- the piercing piccolo part and the brass "dogfight."

When you are lugging a 30-pound tuba or just trying to hold a petite piccolo to your lips for 5 1/2 miles straight, playing any tune is hard enough.

About 2 a.m. Friday, students boarded buses at Broughton to catch planes from Charlotte to Los Angeles. That evening, they filled the paved lot behind the Hilton Hotel in Costa Mesa, Calif., where they are staying with the South Dakota State University Band and Zurich City Police Band.

Broughton's band members lined up in a semicircle below palm trees and parking lot lights. They filled the night air with warm-up scales and festive beats, drawing out curious neighbors, parents with camcorders and fans applauding on hotel room balconies.

They squeezed in one more rehearsal Saturday at Bonita High School in La Verne, Calif., between previewing parade floats and visiting Mann's Chinese Theatre to check out movie star handprints.

An epic undertaking

The sightseeing is a reward for traveling the long, hard road of preparations.

To help pay for the $700,000 trip, band members began as early as last year hawking $100 grocery store gift cards, from which they got a $5 cut. They sold magazine subscriptions, Chick-fil-A calendars, the band's own "Eat to the Beat" cookbook.

And they hit up "fruit lists" of customers passed down through generations of band students. This winter, they sold 4,059 boxes of Florida citrus and 1,112 pieces of smoked ham and turkey.

Students say the band director, Jeffery "JR" Richardson, also cracked the whip more this year.

He docked time from lunch if they weren't performing up to his standards. He made them walk a mile every day during lunch for about two months.

And Molly Le, 18, a senior, said Richardson doled out more pushups. Once, the whole horn section got 10 pushups as punishment for playing poorly, she said.

One student complained, she said, and Richardson tacked on another 10. Another student laughed, and Richardson said, "That's 30!"

At a recent practice at Fred Fletcher Park in Raleigh, Richardson prowled the field, clad in a black leather jacket. He blew his whistle and barked over a loudspeaker.

"What are you waiting for over there, white-pants piccolo player?" he shouted at one student.

After the military-sharp finish of one song, he yelled at another student, "Mr. Kier, tell me, why you move around so much. Did you have Mexican jumping beans for breakfast?"

Kier Hellgeth, 14, said he had just turned his head to look for his band director when Richardson called him out. At the beginning of the year, the freshman saxophonist fumed whenever Richardson unleashed his inner drill sergeant, but Kier said, "You get used to it."

Tough love

"I'm like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," Richardson admitted. "You have to be, to get through this."

But he said such tough love should make a difference.

At the last meeting with parents before the band's departure, Richardson wagered that only two bands would make it through the parade without anyone dropping out -- "the Marines and us."

In the weeks before the parade, students packed tubas and drums to be sent by FedEx to California. They taped medical insurance forms into hats or sewed them into uniforms in case a student got sick during the parade.

And students were required to get haircuts to lop off shaggy locks.

"It's like moving a small army," Richardson said.

Not all students will march. Ashleigh Spicer, 16, a junior piccolo player, snapped her left femur after falling off a horse Dec. 2. Because the break was so bad, a surgeon inserted a titanium rod in her leg.

"I was looking forward to playing ...," said Ashleigh, who has moved from crutches to a cane and still practices with the band.

Her doctor cleared her to travel, but not to march. She looks forward to cheering the band on from the sidelines.

The band has never before played continuously for a full 5 1/2 miles. The closest it has come was about 5 miles in the Raleigh Christmas Parade in November: The band walked from Broughton High School to the start line downtown and did the parade twice. But it wasn't playing the whole time.

As trumpet players' arms sink lower and lower and the color guards' flags grow heavier, it is uncertain whether everyone will make it to the end of the Rose Parade. No pressure.

"The minute you put on that uniform, you're representing this school, this community, this county, this state," Richardson has told them.

The members can count on one thing. Richardson, who has directed Broughton's band for 30 years, will be leading the way.

And the band will march on.

BY THE NUMBERS

1929 - The year the Broughton High School band was formed

186 - Broughton band members

370 - People in the "official" party, which left Raleigh with the Broughton band on Friday

20 - Approximate number of students who had never flown before this trip

127 - Hotel rooms the Broughton group is occupying at the Hilton Hotel in Costa Mesa, Calif.

8 - Buses the band has chartered in California