(11) Melbourne, Florida

Saturday, October 11th: We left Orange Park and drove 182 miles(1439 total miles) to Melbourne, FL. Eric and I left well before everyone else because we had to take the truck to a Ryder Shop to have it looked at. We were having problems with the fan for our A/C. Can you imagine driving around Florida without A/C? It had been a hot couple of drives with the windows down. We got to the shop and the repair guy couldn’t figure out what the problem was. He kept asking how we were going to get to our hotel and I said we’d call a cab if we needed to. After about 20 minutes of work, the repair guy pulled open the air circulation panel and pulled out a completely dirty air filter. The filter looked like it had never been changed and this truck has 93,000 miles on it! He replaced the air filter and the A/C worked great. We made it to the Hilton Hotel and were happy to see that it was on the beach. You read that correctly, our hotel was on the beach. We had a 30ft wooden walkway from the pool side to the beach. We were staying on one of the skinny Islands just over the intracostal waterway from Melbourne. After we made it to the hotel, Eric and I walked over to a little dive bar near the hotel call Lou’s Blues. We had a fantastic lunch and the great conversation with the bartender. We told her that we would definitely be back for another meal. The rest of the cast and crew showed up and everyone ended up going for a swim in the Atlantic Ocean. It was really warm and the waves were pretty big upwards of 5-8ft tall. I rode a couple of waves in and scraped up my knees on the rough sand. It felt great and was a lot of fun. People were looking for food and we convinced everyone to go to Lou’s Blues for dinner. Eric and I had no problems eating there twice in the same day. It was much more crowded when we returned and they had karaoke as well. We went back to the hotel and everyone wanted to go swimming in the pool. There were a bunch of young kids running around the pool and playing in the hot tub so nobody wanted to get in. Finally, we went over to the hot tub and just got in with all the kids. They eventually left and I only stuck around for a bit then headed back to my room for the night.

Sunday, October 12th: Our first official DAY OFF! In the morning, Caroline, Eric and I went to the laudromat. We got lost on the way because the Laundromat that the GPS wanted to take us to didn’t exist(yet another GPS problem!) We were near a shopping center and stopped outside a Starbucks to ask for the nearest Laundromat. It was a quick find from there and we were back at the hotel by 12:30pm. I wanted to go into downtown Melbourne, so most of the cast and crew piled into one van and we drove into and all the way through downtown Melbourne without even knowing it! Apparently most of Melbourne shuts down on Sundays. We found an open Pasta restaurant for lunch and crowded all 11 of us around the bar to eat. It was a really good Pasta/Jamaican place and I had cheese tortellini in alfredo sauce with red grapes and bananas. It was really really good! We walked around a little bit and I found a neat little antique store. The gentleman who own the store also serviced broken phonographs and record players. He had an amazing collection of records and said we could take 10 or so with the purchase of a record player. Carolyn had followed me into the store and I’m pretty sure she would have bought a record player if she had somewhere to carry it on the road! After the short tour of downtown, we went over to Manatee Park, where you’re suppose to find Manatees. All we found was a bunch of catfish and a couple of turtles. We knew this before we went to Manatee Park. The woman at the front desk of the hotel said that we’d have to come back when the Manatees are mating. I took everyone back to the hotel and went out again to drive around the island we were staying on and the city of Melbourne. I found my way to the mall and just walked around a bit. When I went to leave, there was a torrential downpour outside. I sat just inside the doors for a couple of minutes and decided that it wasn’t raining hard enough not to run to the van and slowly make my way back to the hotel. It rained pretty good the whole way and most of the rest of the evening.

Monday, October 13th: I tried to do some work this morning before our load in and failed miserably! This was mostly because it was Columbus Day and no one else was working! We loaded in our show at the King Center in the afternoon. When we got there, we learned that they had a major event going on that Friday in the same theatre. As the load in went on, we learned that John McCain’s campaign had called and he was going to speak there! Through the rest of our time there, we heard all about what they would need to do for the Presidential nominee to come visit. This included taking out 300 seats from their orchestra for the press and also pouring a new concrete slab for the main camera!

Tuesday, October 14th: We had a 10:00am(8) and 11:45am(9) shows. Both went very well and load out followed without any major problems. The loading dock here was on an incline, with the cab of the truck higher than the end of the truck. This made it a little difficult to load up our truck and took a little more sweat and blood to make it all fit. In the early evening, I went down the beach and found Rudy walking around. I am so glad that he was down there because it was like Oceanography 101 with Rudy! We found a baby turtle who was trying to get out to the ocean. It was really awesome to watch this tiny creature get thrown around the waves. We also found a couple of washed up jelly fishes that were still alive and a tiny bullfish which Rudy threw back into the ocean. That night, Eric, Rudy, Carolyn, Johnny and I went to play pool at a local pool hall. Johnny and I were destroying Eric and Carolyn until Johnny sunk the cue ball while trying to sink the 8 ball. I was on the winning team for the next two games and then Carolyn and I played Eric and Johnny. This was the only game that Carolyn and I were on the same team for and the only game that I actually lost! It was so nice to go out and just relax over a game of pool. Almost felt like I was back in Mountain View!