Wednesday, October 22nd: Today is the first of three REALLY long days! We were up at 8:00am for another 10:00am(16) show and then strike, immediately following, which went pretty well. Then we had a 121 mile(1801 total miles) drive to Wilmington, DE. Eric and I arrived there in the truck around 4:00pm and had just 1 hour until we were suppose to start our load in at The Grand Opera House. We checked into the hotel and then ran out with Rudy to try to find food. I had just enough time to eat ½ of my sandwich before we started unpacking our truck. The load in was very interesting because this was the first venue, since our trial venue, that didn’t have a loading dock. We brought all of the pieces down on the truck’s liftgate and then rolled it onto an 8’x14’ hydraulic lift that went up to stage level. The lift is right at the back of the Opera House which has really tall loading doors. The couple of pieces that were longer than 14’ stuck out onto the side walk as the lift took them up to stage level. Overall the crew was really good and load in went without any problems. Finally around 10:00pm, I was back in my hotel room that I would be checking out of just a few hours later.
Thursday, October 23rd: We were up at 8:00am and had one show at 10:00am(17) in the beautiful Grand Opera House. It had natural wood floors and a magnificently ornate ceiling that I took a bunch of pictures of. There was a smaller theatre in the venue that was call the Baby Grand, which everyone thought was a really cute name. It was also a really quaint little space. The show went well and strike went pretty quickly as well. I crushed my hand pretty good during the truck pack. Bad enough that I put an ice pack on my hand during the drive, but not bad enough that it bruised or even hurt the next day. We started on our 125 miles drive(1926 total miles) to Staten Island, NY. In each van and the truck we have these books called “The Next Exit.” It has every highway in the country, separated by state, and tells you what is at each exit and on each side. Eric and I wanted to stop for gas, so we got off the New Jersey Turnpike at an exit that had a large Pilot truck stop with a Wendy’s. We got off and started driving and didn’t see anything. The road continued on and then turned into a highway that put us back on the New Jersey Turnpike. We were a little pissed but kept on driving until we got to the next Service Station. In New Jersey, you can’t pump your own gas. So when we pulled up to the diesel pumps, one of the pumpers came over and filled us up. We parked the truck and went inside for some lunch/dinner(since it was already 3:00pm or so.) We arrived at the hotel around 4:30pm and didn’t even have time to go inside. Caroline, Jill and Rudy were in one of the vans ready to leave. We headed over to the venue, which was a pretty slow trip through the hills and streets of Staten Island to our venue, the St. George Theatre. We parked the truck on a pretty steep hill(with the nose of the truck downhill) and got ready to start load in. The inside of the venue was a little run down but had some amazing architecture and paintings. It’s mostly used for rock concerts, so their accommodations for us weren’t great. Caroline suggested that we use the map drop again instead of the truss and grudgingly I agreed. It was a great decision because we didn’t have as many local crew members as we are use to and they only had 1 large ladder to focus, which takes more people than usual to help with the lighting focus. By using the map drop, we freed up people and had the time to complete focus better. By the time we were back at the hotel it was almost 10:30pm and we had completed our second straight 14 hour day. Eric and I were in the elevator on the way up and He hit the 6th floor button. When we got to that floor, we realized it was the wrong one. The elevator started back to the lobby and when we got there, we hit the 7th floor button, which is the floor we were actually staying on. Eric said “I can’t remember what floor we’re on anymore.” I said “We were on the 6th floor last night. There are only two things I do remember, what room number I’m in and what channel MSNBC is on.” Since we had missed dinner, Caroline ordered us some pizza and Eric, Rudy and I went to her room to relax for a bit. It was a long day to say the least.
Friday, October 24th: Another early morning starting at 7:45am. We had to leave the hotel a little earlier than normal because we weren’t sure how Staten Island traffic would be in the morning. We got to the venue with plenty of time before our 10:00am(18) show. The show was ok, but not our best performance, and we only had about 150 students in this rather large venue. We packed up the truck as quickly as possible after the show and got off the Island with lots of speed. We drove a quick 192 miles (2118 total miles) to Baltimore, MD. We have the next two days off in Baltimore, so most of the cast traveled away from the group for the weekend. Caroline, Eric, Jeffrey, Rudy, Rudy’s friend Janine and I had dinner at the Mt. Washington Tavern, which was fantastic. Then we came back to the hotel and played a little Wii in Caroline’s suite. As a side note, Caroline’s the one who checks us in at every hotel and she often is upgraded to a suite because they think she is personally paying for everything! This ended our first 4 days in a row of shows. It was a good start, but we’ve got a few more of these before the end of the first leg of this tour.
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