(27) Back to Work

Thursday, January 1st: HAPPY NEW YEARS! This year started off really quickly with a New Years Day flight back to DC for the second leg of the tour. I left around 12:40pm Pacific Time from San Jose and flew to Chicago-O’Hare airport. I sat next to a very nice Polish girl. On our take off from San Jose, we flew up through the low cloud cover and could see all the surrounding mountain tops. It was like a field of perfect snow with a couple of small brown hills; what a beautiful sight. I had a two hour layover in Chicago where I called Stephanie and play a nice game of catch up. From Chicago I flew straight to DC, which is only about 1 hour and 40 minutes in the air. On the take off I could see the Hockey rink in Wrigley field from the annual outdoor game, this year played between the Chicago Blackhawks and the Detroit Redwings. I landed in DC at 11:30pm Eastern Time and was picked up by Wes and Caroline, who I went to college with. They took me back to my hotel and dropped me off. It was 12:30 and I wasn’t tired at all. I laid down in bed but didn’t really fall asleep until 1:30am.

Friday, January 2nd: I woke up at 7:00am Eastern Time and felt quite exhausted. I got ready and went downstairs for the complimentary continental breakfast. Minutes after I sat down, Rudy and Jill walked in for breakfast. Then Eric joined us and finally Caroline. It was very nice to see everyone. We had good breakfast conversation and then walked down to the Kennedy Center. It was a long day of work getting everything ready to got back out on the road. We repacked the tool box and sorted through a lot of the props. The performers came in and had a refresher run through of the show, which was very funny, and then had a short rehearsal with Tim, Karma and Derek. The crew continue to pack stuff and then to repack the truck. At the end of the day we had a meeting with the crew, David Paige, David Kilpatrick and Jen Howard. We did a little more paperwork and then called it a day. On top of all this, the Tech Crew for the other show, “Blue’s Journey” was also there getting ready to go out on the road. It was a good chance for everyone to talk about how things have been going and help the new crew get a better footing on their tour. After work, Jeffrey, who is in our cast, had a cocktail party and then we went to a bar right next to the hotel we were staying in called the 51st State. When we got there, the “Blues Journey” crew was already there so we joined them for some drinks. Just after 10:00pm, I decided it was time for me to head to bed. I said my goodnights and went off to the hotel. When I got back I couldn’t quite fall asleep so I did some work on my computer then took a shower. When I went to pull out my new shampoo, I realized that it had spilled all over the bag it was in. Luckily it was in a bad with my extra moisturizer and aloe so it wasn’t too bad to clean up. I was finally asleep by 12:00 midnight.

Saturday, January 3rd: Everyone met at the Kennedy Center by 10:00am where we had Dunkin Donuts, bagels and coffee as a send off. Eric and I hopped in the truck and everyone else piled into the vans and we were off on the second leg of our tour. We drove out of DC into Virginia, then Maryland, Pennsylvania and finally into Ohio. After our 541 mile drive(4950 total miles) we landed in Montpelier, Ohio, which is just West of Toledo. At our last truck stop for gas, Eric parked the truck after filling up and noticed that there were handicapped parking spots for trucks. This raises a very good question about why and how handicapped people are driving big rigs. At the Holiday Inn Express that night, I got into the elevator with a family of 4. The doors shut and the father noticed my SF Giants hat. He said “San Francisco huh.” I said “Yep, that’s where I live.” He said “Oh yeah, so do we.” I said “Well actually I live in San Jose.” He said “Yeah, we actually live South of Sacramento, but I grew up in South San Francisco.” That night, I watched the St. Louis Blues beat the Columbus Blue Jackets 5-2 in Hockey.

Sunday, January 4th: We woke up, had breakfast and got back on the road. It was very snowy(but not on the roads) and fairly wet. Most of the hotel parking lot was iced over. For the first half of the day we had some light rain. After we passed through Chicago, we hit some gigantic pot holes that really shook the truck. The drive through the rest of Illinois and Chicago went pretty well and we at the hotel at a reasonable hour. We drove 483 miles(5433 total miles) to Wausau, Wisconsin. A huge group of us went to the Wausau Mine Company for dinner and then to the Country Market, which is a big grocery store, for some cold/cough medicine and food for breakfast.