(9) First Venue, Sarasota, Florida

Check out the slide show! I updated it with some new pictures!

Sunday, October 5th: On the road… FOR THE FIRST DAY! The US Amry had a Ten Mile run that Jen Howard(who is the Program Assistant for the Tour) and David Kilpatrick(we call him DK because of all the Davids) were going to run in. The run went down Virginia which is in between my apartment and the Kennedy Center. Dave McLellan(one of the cast members) went down to cheer on DK and Jen. I met him down there and we searched the crowd of runners. I think we missed DK, but Jen saw us and we gave her a good cheer as she ran by. After that we went back to the apartment and with bags packed we made our way down to the vans and truck parked outside the Kennedy Center. The company met there and had bagels, donuts and coffee before departing. Eric and I got in the truck, blasted “Roll Out” by Ludacris, and pulled away from the Kennedy Center. We drove 521 miles to our stay at a Holiday Inn Express in Walterboro, South Carolina. We saw a lot of signs for Bojangles Chicken and Biscuts. It looks kinda disgusting, but hey it’s a southern thing. We also saw a sign for “F’real Milkshakes” at a truck stop. I wondered what’s in a f’real milkshake but we didn’t have time to stop and get one. There is a large stop on the North Carolina/South Carolina border that has a ferriswheel and a bunch of shops and what not called South of the Border. It looked a little intimidating but the vans stopped there. We just barreled on through. As the sun started to go down, the screen on our Magellan GPS turned dark like it was night time. That’s when Eric and I both took of our sunglasses. When the Magellan says it’s night, it must be night!

Monday, October 6th: We woke up, had a free continental breakfast at the hotel and then got back on the road. We drove 479 miles(1000 total miles) to our stay at a La Quinta Inn in Sarasota, FL. Along the way, we hit rain in Jacksonville, just after Orlando and then again right before Tampa. I haven’t been in a thunderstorm in close to 3 years(since I left Cincinnati) and it was just great! The GPS took us this really bad way once we got off the high way. We drove a 26’ box truck through this slightly run down neighborhood that we probably should not have and it spit us out a couple of blocks away from the hotel and told us that we were there! My Aunt Cathy met me at the hotel and we had dinner, which was very nice. We talked about everything that was going on in the family and she kind of convinced me that I should go our family reunion in a couple of weeks.

Tuesday, October 7th: The morning was taken up with a bunch of phone calls and paperwork. As you can see, I rarely have any real time off. Any free time is taken up by advancing the show to the future venues. I got a phone call in the early afternoon from the Van Wezel Performing Arts Center(where we were loading in today) saying that they didn’t have some of the gel colors for the lights. Eric and I hopped in the van and drove down to the venue to meet the local crew and drop off some gel color. We only stayed for a few minutes, but we could tell that the local crew was going to be good. Around 2:30pm Caroline, Jill, Eric, Rudy and I loaded into one van and the truck and drove over to the venue. The Van Wezel Performing Arts Center is this large purple building right on the Gulf of Mexico. They have a beautiful view from the loading dock in the back of the building. The load in went very well with no major problems. As I said before, the local crew at the Van Wezel is really good and was a huge help. It was nice having skilled people to help us get used to loading the show in and out. We finished around 8pm and had to go run some errands and get dinner. Eric, Rudy, Carolyn(one of the performers) and I drove over to Wal-Mart to get a fan and could find the kind we wanted. We didn’t really want to keep running around because we wanted to watch the Presidential Debate at 9pm, but knew we had to try the Target as well. We found the target, found the fan and ran home as quick as possible! Everyone was gathered in Dave’s (another performer) room watching the debate so we joined them for the fun.

Wednesday, October 8th: Our first two shows on the road! We had a 10:00am(4 total shows) and 11:45am(5) shows. The first show went great and the cast took a picture in front of the curtain after the first show. Right before the second show started, the woman making the preshow announcements tried to walk onstage before Caroline was ready to start the show! The venue’s Technical Director really wanted to get the show started because we had to take an hour lunch break after the show before starting strike. The show ran without any problems. During our hour lunch break Eric and I ran out to get ratchets and lunch and had to rush back to make it there in time to start load out. It took just about 2 hours to load out, which was really exciting because we were expecting it to take closer to 3 hours. The local crew did a fantastic job and we were back at our hotel before 5pm. That night, I took one of the vans and drove down to Siesta Key. There were some restaurants and shops on the “downtown” street(which was about 3 blocks long). I got some post cards from the Beach Bazaar and food from The Broken Egg, which was really good. It was really nice to have the first venue under our belts!