(60) THE END!!!

Thursday, April 23^rd: Eric and I left the hotel at 6:30am to finish up load in at the venue. The light board hadn’t taken any light cues so Eric had to go in and write about 30 cues out of the normal 170 cues. The rest of the company arrived at 8:00am. We had our LAST TWO SHOWS at 9:30am(117) and 11:30am(118). We had to be out of the theater by 2:00pm so we burned through load out and were out in 44 minutes(we think it was record time) at 1:18pm. Jill and I hopped in the truck and took off for the 306 mile drive(19,895 total miles) to Lexington, Kentucky. When we arrived, I immediately turned around and left with Carolyn, Eric, Jamie, Jonny, Rudy and Scott to go to Todd’s Karaoke Bar in Lexington, KY for one last night of fun. I sang “A Murder of One” by Counting Crows and then Jonny, Scott and I got up and san “I Want It That Way” by the Backstreet Boys. Everyone had a lot of fun and we were home by 1:00am.

Friday, April 24^th: My alarm clock was set to go off at 6:00am but I was suddenly awakened at 5:52am I got a phone call from Eric. The truck warning lights were going off, the truck was shutting itself down again, and he wanted to know where the bottle of anti-freeze was. I told him where the anti-freeze was and then threw on some pants and went down to the truck to make sure everything was ok. The rest of the drive was pretty normal. I was in the Red Van so I navigated for Dave a bit and then slept in the back a bit and then navigated for Caroline as we drove back into DC and to the Kennedy Center. The White Van got there a little bit ahead of us and was having a dance party on the sidewalk. When everyone got out of the Red Van, the White Van attacked us with silly string and made a mess everywhere! After we took our stuff back to the hotel, the Tech Crew and Scott went down to the 600 Restaurant for a cocktail dinner and debriefing with DK. Later that night, we met up with Michelle, who is the Lighting Director for the other tour, and went over to the 51^st State, which is a bar next to the hotel.

Saturday, April 25^th: The Tech Crew met at the Kennedy Center and took everything out of the truck to be packed or thrown away. Eric and I did quite a number on some of the panels when we tossed them into the dumpster. Eric also took apart and destroyed the tollbooth while I did some work on the bed. It was quite a stress reliever to break everything apart, but also a bit sad because of the number of times I’ve handled all the pieces. We had lunch at Cup’a Cup’a and then went back to the KC to finish everything off. We calculated how far we had driven the truck, from city to city and venue to hotel. On the first leg we drove 5,600 miles. The second leg was 16,392 miles. The total mileage was 21,992 miles. That’s like driving from one coast to the other coast 7+ times. We had another debriefing with Paige that went pretty well and then took the truck back to the rental shop. That night, Jill, with Caroline’s help, made a fantastic lasagna dinner. We hung out for quite a bit and then I called it a night.

And here ends the Kennedy Center On The Road again Blog. I’ll leave everything up for a while so that you can read any blogs that you missed or look at pictures from the tour. I hope you’ve all enjoyed reading about my exploits as much as I’ve enjoyed running around the country!