(41) Chicago and Cedar Falls, IA

Sunday, February 15th: DAY OFF in Chicago! A group of people took one of the vans into Chicago for the day. I was amazed at how fast we got into Chicago from Glen Ellyn(where we were staying). I met up with Stephanie Barasch, who is a long time friend from Youth Group. It was the first time I’d seen Stephanie since she moved to Chicago just over a year ago. For those of you who don’t know, I went to school at DePaul University in Chicago for a short time and know pretty well how to get around the city. We met up downtown and walked over to Grant Park where they had an snow sculpture exhibit. It was definitely cold enough t keep the snow frozen. We then walked back up Michigan and got some tea at a little café where we sat for a while talking. We then went down to the Merle Reskin Theater, where DePaul University produces most of their shows. Stephanie’s Brother, also named Brian, goes to school there and was working in the box office. I hadn’t seen Brian in probably 4 or 5 years so it was quite a treat to see how he’d grown up! We went into the theater and looked around a bit while Brian and I reminisced about the Theater School. They were doing “Dancing at Lugnasa” which I worked on when I was in school in Cincinnati. The performers were doing some crazy warm-ups in their typical theater school ways. After that, Stephanie and I took the L(elevated train) up to Lincoln Park and walked over to Clarke’s Restaurant for lunch. This was where I had had numerous meals while in school there. From there we walked over to the Lincoln Park Zoo, which is free. We walked around the zoo and went into most of the houses. Most animals were inside because it was pretty cold outside. While we were there, it started to snow a little as well. We left the zoo and hopped on the bus up Clark St. to Belmont, which is where Stephanie lives. Her apartment is REALLY nice! She has two roommate, one of which owns the apartment. It’s in a really nice neighborhood and is decorated very well. And amazingly she found it on CRAIGLIST! Finally it was time to go. I took the L back downtown to meet up with everyone else and we headed back out to the hotel.

Monday, February 16th: We finally left Glen Ellyn, after what felt like another week sit down. Rudy and I drove the truck 310 miles(9906 total miles) to Cedar Falls, IA where we were staying in the Blackhawk Hotel. This is the same hotel that Rudy and Caroline had both stayed in with their past tours. It didn’t have an elevator, but I was luckily on the first floor. It was a pretty nice place with large screen tvs and bath robes in the bathroom. There was also a nice restaurant attached to the hotel where I got something to eat before leaving for load in. We were performing at the Gallagher-Bluedorn Performing Arts Center on the campus of the University of Northern Iowa. The directions that I had gotten off of Google Maps lead us our into the middle of a corn field and were about 8 miles out of the way! Finally we arrived to find a crew of college students. They were more or less good workers but there is a lot of explaining that goes on when we work with college students. It can make for a very long and slow load in. We finished up and headed back to the hotel for the night.

Tuesday, February 17th: As we were eating breakfast, Eric told me he wasn’t feeling so good. He had traveled away from the group on the way to Cedar Falls to see his family and go to his cousin’s birthday. He said he didn’t sleep very well and was worried that he had picked up a cold over the weekend. We left for the theater and had two shows at 10:00am(65) and 12:30pm(66). We had more microphone issues during the first show and had to change Kevin’s microphone during the show. The microphones that we use are near the bandwidths that are being used for the digital TV conversion that was supposed to happen today. We did a bit more of a mic check in between shows to see if we could get rid of the problem and which helped a lot. Also, right before the first show started Caroline was told there would be tours of kids onstage between the shows. Once the show came down, we learned more about the tours and when they started we were a little overwhelmed. As we were trying to reset for the next show there were literally hundreds of kids in groups of 20 walking on the stage, in the back hallway, going up to the loading gallery and in the audience. Apparently an entire school said that they would only come if they could have a backstage tour. We’re all about giving tours, but this was totally ridiculous! Eric was also getting worse as the day wore on we decided that he would ride in a van that afternoon and that Rudy would drive the truck with me. When strike started I could tell we wouldn’t be making any records. Unfortunately, we also had an accident. As we were taking down the truss, the flyman lost control of the piece and it slammed into the deck pretty hard. There was some damage to the scenic pieces but everything is fixable. The flyman got some rope burn from the lines and his ego was pretty bruised, but everyone else was ok. It was pretty upsetting and difficult to think through the whole thing, but we finished our load out and drove the 130 miles(10,036 total miles) to Des Moines, Iowa.