A Message from My Sister

Dear Avid Readers of "On The Road Again,"

I am excited to report that when I visited Brian in Irvine, in addition to seeing my brother I also got to see the famous red van, white van and Ryder truck we have heard so much about! I took a picture of them, since that seems to be where Brian has lived for the past year. I also made him take a picture of the sign below...it may not be his name in lights, but it is a start (although I am pretty sure that Technical Directors' names are never actually in lights).

Carrie Frank Vogel

(54) Cerritos, Irvine, Glendora

Monday, March 30^th: We drove back up to Cerritos, CA and Eric, Jill, Rudy and I went to the Cerritos Center for a partial load in. We got there at 4pm but the venue wasn’t quite ready for us. The theater is convertible into a number of different set ups and they were still finishing up that when we arrived. It meant that we were a late starting, but the size of our crews made up for it. We worked until 6pm and headed back to the hotel. Jill, Rudy and I walked over to In-N-Out Burger for dinner, which really hit the spot.

Tuesday, March 31^st: Caroline, Eric and I headed over to the venue to continue load in at 7:00am. Eric was finishing focus, Caroline was setting spike marks and I was finishing the backstage set up. We had an 11:30am show(94) and then immediately struck the show and drove 25 miles (16,504 total miles) to Irvine, CA. We got in early in the afternoon and we were staying at a Hyatt Regency, which is by far one of the nicest hotels we’ve stayed in. They had a tennis court with a basketball net at one end! I went down to shoot some hoops and Eric, Lindsay and Scott were already there. I had a compy date with Michelle and then we watched a couple episodes of “Lost” and headed to bed.

Wednesday, April 1^st: In the morning, I hung out around the hotel doing work. Rudy and I had planned to shave our beards today as an “April Fool’s” joke, so he came over to take a picture with me. In the late afternoon, Carolyn planned a trip to the Huntington Beach Boardwalk. I went with them and walked around the pier and beach a bit. Right before we left, I saw Rudy in the hallway and he had already shaved his beard, so I ran back into my room and shaved mine in about 10 minutes before leaving for the beach! Everyone was pretty surprised to see us and my face felt SO much lighter! The weather was a little breezy and cool, but felt great because of the sun. I saw this younger guy with headphones who was dancing his heart out in the sun. We headed back to the hotel before our 5:00pm load in. We went over to the Irvine Barclay Theater on the campus of the University of California-Irvine. Load in went well. Caroline, Jill and I went shopping for a bit and then we dropped Caroline off at the hotel. We finished up load in at 9:00pm, an hour early, and went for food. I went to In-N-Out and got a strawberry shake and fries and it was great!

Thursday, April 2^nd: We had a 10:00am(95) show which my sister, Carrie, came to see. After the show we had a tech meeting and then Carrie and I went over to the Whole Foods for lunch. In the afternoon, I went over to a local production rental house to purchase some duvytine fabric and spike tape. People were going over to The District, which is a nice shopping area that I’d been too a couple of time since getting to Irvine, to hang out for a couple of hours so I hopped on trying to waste some daylight hours. I went to a coffee shop and sat and read for a bit. At the table next to me, the woman was talking to one of the barista’s about living the San Francisco Bay Area. They were trying to describe where San Jose was and were doing a bad job, so I jumped in to explain. Later, I started talking to the woman who was in school at UC-Irvine and was a TA grading papers. She had grown up in Sunnyvale and we had a very nice conversation about the great places to live in the South Bay. The group finally left The District and went back to the hotel. Carolyn, Eric and I ordered some Chinese Delivery and watched a couple episodes of “Lost” with Margo and Jamie.

Friday, April 3^rd: We had another 10:00am(96) show and then loaded up and headed to Glendora, CA which was only 52 miles(16,556 total miles.) It was quick drive and we had a couple of hours before leaving for load in. I layed down and took a nap for a bit before grabbing some food and headed to the Haugh Performing Arts Center on the campus of Citrus College for the load in. Load in went well and Jill and I went out shopping for a bit. Eric’s load in went a little slower than normal and we ended up leaving a few minutes late.

(53) Northridge, CA Shows & San Diego Area

Thursday, March 26th: We had two shows at 9:30am(91) and 11:30am(92). They went over very well. The weather was beautiful and I really wanted to go play basketball but unfortunately no one had a ball. Today was also Rudy’s birthday. Caroline and Jill had gotten him a cupcake cake and candles, so at the end of mic check, Eric and I lit up all the candles and took it on stage. Everyone sang happy birthday and Rudy blew out all his candles in one breathe. After the shows and load out, Caroline, Margo and I went over to the local mall and did some shopping. I got a new pair of shorts, since I hadn’t brought any on this leg of the tour. That night, my cousin Hannah, who I had seen in Seattle but actually lives outside LA, picked me up and we went to see “The Watchmen.”

Friday, March 27th: We drove 153 miles(16,380 total miles) down to Poway, CA and had a load in. Everything went pretty well with the load in except for the lighting board. It was a type of light board that we had only used once and we had never tested the computer disc from it. Well, it turned out that disc didn’t work. One of the local guys spent almost all of load in trying to get the files off the disc and then trying to convert other files that we had to match this file type. It was really scary for a while. If none of the files had worked, we would have had to rewrite the entire show. We already have the information to do it, but it takes a good 5-6 hours to write in all the cues. Caroline, Jill and Rudy had left early to pick our new performer, Scott Lupi, and Rudy’s Girlfriend, Janine, from the airport. Eric and I finished up and Jill came back to pick us up.

Saturday, March 28th: I went out for coffee with Kate Olmstead and Pete Thornbury who I had gone to college with. We had coffee and played with Kate’s puppy, a wire haired dachshund, and caught up on life. In the afternoon, we loaded into the vans and headed to the venue for a put-in rehearsal with Scott Lupi. It went well and we all went on break before our show at 7:00pm(93). After the show and load out, almost everyone in the company, and all the significant others in town, went into downtown San Diego for drinks because it was Kevin’s last night with us. We started at a bar called Gaslamp Bar and Grill. Then we headed down an Irish Pub where people drank some more and hung out for a bit. Finally we ended up at a place call Jimmy Love’s which had an 80’s cover band. This was by far the best place we had been. We dance and drank for another 45 minutes or so and then headed back out to the hotel. We were all a little sad that we hadn’t started at the last bar because it was so much fun.

Sunday, March 29th: DAY OFF! I slept in quite a bit more than normal because we weren’t home until 2:30am or so. At 10:45am, Carolyn and her boyfriend Michael, were heading into San Diego so I hopped a ride. They went to the Natural History Museum and I met up with one of my oldest friend Alex Jarman. We walked through the Rose Garden and then through the Botanical Gardens. Then we headed over to the San Diego Art Museum where Alex works. He is the Manager for Public Projects which means he works on programs based around what is being displayed in the galleries. These include docent tours and a summer film festival. He gave me a personally tour of the entire museum. We even went down to this office where he and his assistant work. It’s so strange to see how we’ve become these grown up professionals. We got some lunch and went down to the large outdoor organ in the park. They do free concerts there on Sunday afternoons so we ate and listened to some great music and a really sassy British Organist! After that, we walked the 20 minutes or so back to Alex’s apartment where I met some of his neighbors. We hung out for a bit, walked around the neighborhood and then hung out a while longer until he drove me back up to the park where I met up with some of the company who had gone to the zoo. That night, I did my laundry and had a compy date with Michelle before going to bed.

(52) Avon, CO to Northridge, CA

Saturday, March 21^st: DAY OFF!! I sat and layed around all morning while I finished my George Stephanopolous book. When I finished, Dave was taking a van to Dillion, Colorado, which is about 45 minutes away but was the closes major bookstore to Avon. To get there, we drove over the Vail Pass which is about 10,600 ft elevation. When we stopped at the Borders Bookstore, we were about up about 9,000 ft elevation. We hung out at the bookstore for a bit and I found the third book in a series that I’ve been looking for. I took some time to read the last chapter of the second book so I could remember what had happened, and then I bought the third book! We went to the grocery store, which was in the same strip mall, for some food before heading back to Avon. That afternoon I did even more work, had dinner, watched some more NCAA Basketball coverage and went to bed.

Sunday, March 22^nd: This was our hardest day of driving by far. We drove 507 miles (15,524 total miles) to Tuba City, AZ. I drove first and down to Moab, Utah where it was absolutely beautiful weather. Then Eric took over and drove us down into the desert where the weather turned pretty bad. We drove through a wicked dust storm with high winds and red sand. It lasted for about 4 hours of our drive. We were also driving through the desert. There were only a few small towns and we were on a two lane US route the entire time. We stopped in a place called Kayenta, Arizona for gas and we were on the outskirts of the dust storm. The pumps weren’t working at the first gas station that we stopped at so we went across the street to another gas station. The wind was blowing hard and there was a little sand in the air as well. The pumps were barely putting out any gas and we eventually got back in the truck to wait for the pumps to finish. After about 20 minutes of waiting, we got out and decided that we were done(the tanks were almost full.) We got back on the road and continued to our hotel in Tuda City, AZ. Once at the hotel, we had another problem that had nothing to do with the weather. The state of Arizona doesn’t change time zones, but we were staying in the Navajo Nation, which DOES change time zones. Some people’s phones had changed times and other people’s hadn’t. Our weekly schedules said that we were on Mountain Time(Navajo Time) which was a mistake I made(because we were suppose to be on Pacific Time(Arizona Time). There was a large amount of confusion that was slowly cleared through some very serious conversations. We had a tech meeting and then Carolyn, Eric, Rudy and I watched some “Lost” episodes.

Monday, March 23^rd: Tuba City felt very strange and gave me an uneasy feeling. We were so far out into the country that it made me realize how much I enjoyed living in a city. Eric and I left for a 261 miles (15,785 total miles) to Gilbert, Arizona. It was a much nicer drive and the weather was warm and beautiful when we got to our hotel. Finally we were back in warm weather! We had a load in that night and then went back to the hotel.

Tuesday, March 24^th: We had two shows in Gilbert; 9:30am(89) and 12:15pm(90). Between the shows we had another venue meeting. After the shows, we hoped in the vehicles and drove 187 miles(15,972 total miles) to Blythe, California which is on the border of California and Arizona. It was even nicer to be back in California! Carolyn, Eric, Margo, Rudy and I watched a couple of episodes of “Lost” and then it was bed time.

Wednesday, March 25^th: Eric and I drove the van 255 miles (16,227 total miles) to Northridge, California. It had been a goofy drive and I was pretty annoyed. First we stopped at a weight station and they had us pull to the side to be inspected. When we went into the station house, the guy told us he forgot to turn the arrow off and we were free to go. It was a nice waste of 15 minutes. Then, when we stopped for gas, we stopped at what must be the ONLY truck stop in LA. There were huge lines and it took forever for us to get gas. THEN, I walked over to Jack in the Box for lunch and they got my order wrong! It did not bode well for the load in that night. Luckily, load in went very well and we were out a little early!

(51) Avon, Co

Friday, March 20th: I was up at 4:45am for our 6:00am load in. I had breakfast in my room and went downstairs around 5:20am. We left the hotel around 5:30am and drove up the hill in the pitch black to the venue, which is part of the Beaver Creek Ski Resort. When we arrived, we walked through the loading dock and down 4 flights of stairs to the stage level. The theater is literally inside the mountain! We then took the elevator back upstairs and started to unload the truck. Most of the pieces were taken down in the elevator but some of the pieces had to be lowered by chain motor which took some time. We quickly learned that most of the stage helping us today were foreigners who work around the Ski Resorts. Apparently, these ski resorts(we are about 15 minutes from Vail) are world renouned and people come from all over the world to work and live here. Most of the people who work at the hotels, restaurants and shops are also foreigners. They were a good group of guys and the fact that English was not their first language didn’t hinder the process at all. Most of them spoke Spanish and I had fun listening to them and trying to figure out what they were saying to each other. We also had way more people than normal so things went very quickly for me once all the scenery was inside. On the stage, they have oxygen tanks incase the performers are having trouble with the lack of oxygen. Joan Baez had a concert there the night before and had to come off four times to get oxygen. The stage is at around 8000 ft elevation. Caroline, Jill and I had a long discussion about where the two oxygen tanks needed to be during which parts of the show. We were most concerned with Dave and Margo because they are running around for most of the show. Caroline and Jill left and I went back out to do some more set up. Around 9:40am, I realized that Rudy was still work and he was suppose to be on a break. I went back to the booth to see if he was close to being done, but he was having a lot of problems and was in the process of testing out all of the house wireless equipment. I went to call Caroline to see if she could pick Rudy up some food but they were already back. So we decided that when Eric and I went on break we’d pick up something for Rudy. I went back onstage to see how Eric was doing. I told him we had about 40 minutes and he looked at me funny. He said “Don’t we have until 11:00am?” I said “No, 10:30am is sound check.” At that point I knew that none of us would be getting a break before the first show. I continued running around trying to get things set up for the show. The performers showed up around 10:30am for mic check and Rudy had just finished getting the whole system to work. Eric was just starting to work on cues for the show which is normally something that he’s done with at this point. We also learned that Margo, who did not travel with us to Avon, was very sick. She had flown in the night before and had a stuffy nose and couldn’t pop her ears. She was having trouble breathing because she was sick and even more so because of the altitude. We finished up sound check and presets with about 30 minutes to spare before the show started. 5 ½ hours after we started we got a brief 30 minute break before the 12:00noon(87). The show started off fine. Jill and I had a number of confusing moments where we were trying to figure out what our next cue was and where the oxygen tanks needed to be. At one point, I forgot a cue and had to move the pieces late. At one point we had to force Carolyn to take some oxygen because we were worried that she was going to pass out onstage. She said she didn’t want any cause it scared her. Jill demanded she take some I told her it’s not pure oxygen, put the mask on her face and told her to breathe normally. We paid extra special attention to Margo and gave her oxygen every single time she left the stage. The show ended with no other major problems, we reset for the night show and headed back to the hotel by 1:30pm. I got Chinese for lunch, made a bunch of phone calls and did some paperwork. I took a short nap while watching some NCAA Basketball tournament games and then got a light dinner from the deli across the street. The company loaded back into the vans around 5:15 and headed back to the venue for a short sound check and a show at 6:30pm(88). This show went much better except for our general confusion. Because we had walked away from the show after the first one, we hadn’t completely processed the changes we had made for this venue! This meant that Jill and I were constantly looking at one another for the answer to what we should be doing next. The show ended and we started load out. Everything went very well because we had a huge crew and it was all of the same people from the morning. We drove back down the mountain and were back at the hotel around 10:00pm successfully ending our 14 hour day.

(50) Bellingham, Drive to Avon

Sunday, March 15^th: This morning I woke up and had plenty of time to relax and watch my morning news shows. We have an early load in later in the week, so I’ve started setting my alarm for earlier and earlier so I can train my body to wake up really early on Friday. We had a load in that morning at the Mount Baker Theater. It was a 1:00pm load in, which is a little earlier than normal. Nothing too exciting happened and we were out of there by 6:00pm and the sun was still out! We were pretty excited to still be in the sunlight.

Monday, March 16^th: We had two shows 9:30am(85) and 12:15pm(86) and the packed up and got back on the road. We drove 168 miles(13,804 total miles) to Cle Elum, Washington. When we left Bellingham, it was sunny and nice out. As we got to the eastern side of Seattle, it had started to rain, but was also sunny. We saw a number of rainbows stretched across the highway. As we started to climb the Cascades Mountain Range, the rain turned to snow and there was snow everywhere at the top of the Snoqualmie Pass. When we made it to Cle Elum it was snowing pretty good. The woman at the front desk told me that there was no where to plug the truck in outside, but we were more than welcome to drop an extension cord out our room window. So Eric and I turned the truck around and dropped a cord out my second story room window for the night! As we were setting this up, we started to play in the snow and made some snow balls the throw at Caroline’s window.

Tuesday, March 17^th: Rudy and I drove 559 miles (14,363 total miles) through Washington, Oregon and Idaho to Twin Falls. It was a pretty simple drive. There is a grove that runs through Twin Falls that is one of the most beautiful views in the world. I had seen it about 3 ½ years ago when I drove back from Seattle with my friend Paige. I made sure that everyone saw it!

Wednesday, March 18^th: We got up and drove 513 miles (14,876 total miles) to Grand Junction, CO. I was in the White Van and was the first one to drive. It was only Jonny, Jill and I which was very nice. We had a small dance party when we first started out on the road. We Finished up Idaho and went into Utah. As we passed Salt Lake City, I wished that we were at a stopping point so we could all go to Temple Square, where the Mormon Temple is located. We ended up stopping in Price, Utah, which is another place I’ve been! When I moved to California, Alex and I stayed in Price, Utah. Later in the afternoon, we stopped at a rest stop with a beautiful view. Dave made me get out of the van to see it. Looking out into the expanse, we wondered what it was like for the explorers riding horses and seeing the mountains and valleys before them; how daunting! We finished up our drive and ended in Grand Junction, Colorado which is where Caroline and Jill went to college, and where Jill grew up. We were staying on Main Street, which is a cute little street with shops and restaurants. I walked down the street and noticed that there was a lot of public art. I got some food at the Rockslide Bar and Grill and took it back to the hotel.

Thursday, March 19^th: I woke up super early in training for our early load in tomorrow morning. I did some work and walked down the street to Main Street Bagels for some lunch. Eric and I then drove the truck 141 miles (15,017 total miles) to Avon, Colorado. It was a short drive up into the Rocky Mountains. In Grand Junction, we were at about 4600 ft elevation. Our hotel in Avon was at around 7400 ft elevation. The venue that we were performing at has a page in their tech packet that talks about how the elevation effects you. The biggest things are that there is 20% less oxygen, causing you to feel a little light headed, and 50% less humidity, causing you to drink more water than normal, and it’s really easy to get sun burned! I felt a little light headed but otherwise it didn’t seem that bad. I had dinner with Dave at a place called Bob’s Place where they were showing the NCAA Basketball Tournament games. After that is was back to the hotel and off to bed!

(49) Hell Week #2

Wednesday, March 11th: We had two shows at 10:00am(81) and 12:15pm(82) and then load out. Load out went much slower than I had hoped but we packed up the truck as fast as possible, grabbed a sandwich at the Subway across the street and took off like a bat out of hell. This was because we had to drive 202 miles (13,310 total miles) to Salem, Oregon and load in that night at the Historic Elsinore Theater. Eric and I decided that we should drive directly to the venue to make sure we weren’t late. I ate milk duds on the way down to keep myself awake and we ended up getting to the venue about an hour before load in. Caroline, Jill and Rudy showed up a little before 8:00pm with pizza for dinner. We burned through load out, although probably not as safely as we should have been and at 10:30pm I took Caroline and Jill back to the hotel to get some sleep. By the time I got back, Eric was finishing up, which was exactly what we needed. By 11:30pm, Eric, Rudy and I were on our way out the door headed for the hotel. Four load ins in four days is a lot of work and extremely exhausting, but we had made it!

Thursday, March 12th: We had a 10:00am(83) show. We were limited on wing space which made the show backstage almost as humorous as the show onstage. We made it through pretty well though, reset for the night show and went back to the hotel. We had a tech meeting in one of the conference rooms at the hotel. After that it was nap time! Later in the afternoon, Carolyn and I went to the grocery store where I got some dinner, breakfast and snack food. We went back for our 7:00pm(84) show and the loaded out right after which went fairly well. The weather outside was nice and crisp and felt very good. Finally we were finished with our fourth venue in five days and we were all ready for a break. The performers had done 9 shows as well, which is more than we’ve ever done in this short a time period so far. The whole company was wiped out and ready for a break!

Friday, March 13th: DAY OFF! And yet another Friday the 13th! I woke up early and went with Rudy to take the truck in for its regular maintenance. I spent the morning doing work in the hotel. At 1:30pm, Dave, Eric, Rudy and I drove over to the Oregon State Capitol here in Salem. There were no tours that afternoon, so we picked up some guide pamphlets and walked around looking at the art work and displays. We looked in both the Senate and House Chambers. There was a housing bill that had just passed so some group was passing out cake. They had a number of really interesting displays about the geology of the state which I took some time to look through. After that, Rudy and I went over to the truck shop to pick up the truck. Once we got back, Dave, Rudy and I went to the driving range and hit some balls. It was a beautiful day and it felt great hanging out at the range. We walked over to the putting green and worked on our short game for a bit before heading back to the hotel. There was talk of going to play lazer tag at a place across the street from the hotel, but it fell through and we ended up just getting pizza there. Later that night, Dave, Eric, Rudy and I played poker. It was a rough game for me. Very few of my hands were good, and none of my good hands were good enough to win big. I ended up losing everything.

Saturday, March 14th: HAPPY BIRTHDAY MICHELLE!! Jill and I drove the truck 326 miles(13,636 total miles) to Bellingham, WA. It was an easy drive because we’ve crossed most of that highway 3 times in the last 10 days or so. Once we were in Bellingham, a big group of people went out to Mi Mexico for dinner. When we were there, Margo had them that it was Kevin’s Birthday, but when they came out to sing Happy Birthday with the Birthday Sombrero, they stopped that table next to us. There was a group of younger girls sitting there, and we were really confused when they stopped at that table first, but it was a great joke of who gets the sombrero next.