I Got them Greensboro Blues

A very unusual pattern is starting to emerge here, ladies and gentlemen. Great shows, crappy mornings, usually at the hands of our stage manager. It's disturbing, considering this has happened now every day for three days. Yep, you read that right. Even today started off stupid and ended up being a great show. Every single night, the first thing that happens once we check into the hotel, is that Levitt and Schneider go in the van to check out the next day's venue, so they know a) how to get there, and b) How long it'll take so we know when to make van call for the next morning. Reason a is the salient one here, so keep it in the back of your mind as you read further. We get up this morning, and after what has to rank as the most pathetic free breakfast known to man (You SUCK, Ramada! I mean, nothing that was low in carbs, not even fruit. Just waffles, pancakes bagels and the like. They did have oatmeal, so I figured what the hell. I dumped it into the bowl, then went over to the hot water dispenser and dispensed what I thought was hot water into the bowl. After stirring, I tasted, only to discover that the water was, in fact, cold. I then moved the bowl to the microwave, which, unbeknownst to me, was placed on power level Chernobyl, and within 30 seconds has cooked the oatmeal to the consistency of a rubber hockey puck. Undeterred, I threw that bowl away and tried again, able to make this serving only resemble wet concrete. I decided to cut my losses and thin it out with coffee, since I knew that was hot. Thus ends the longest parenthetical statement in the history of blogging...) I got into the truck and headed off to the venue with Schneider next to me and Levitt driving the van in front of me. I decided to follow the van. After all, they knew where they were going, right? After all, Levitt had done venue run. So we follow them. Because of this, Schneider doesn't tell me what the route actually is, like he usually does when we're not following the van, until the van drives straight through the intersection that they are supposed to turn at. We are a little concerned, but figure that Levitt is using the GPS (why we're not sure since a) she already knows how to get to the venue and b) she's always bitching about everyone relying too much on technology to get them places, yet does it all the time herself) and it must be taking her a faster route, so we decide to follow. (Plus, we are operating under her stricture--follow my call even if I'm wrong) As we continue down the road further and further, I actually start to worry that we somehow lost sight of the van getting out of the hotel and are mistakenly following a completely different white van which is leading us astray. But no, it's them. Finally, they make a right....right into a blocked off driveway off the main road in order to make a U-Turn. Yep, they had messed up. So we drive all the way back to the first turn they missed and head off to the venue, which is twenty minutes away. And it's not like we can make up any of the time because Levitt drives like old people fuck--slow and sloppy.

So we arrive at the venue--Guilford College, an absolutely gorgeous campus--only five minutes after load-in was to start, and all I have to do is pull the truck back to the dock. Yes, we had a DOCK! It was glorious! The only problem was that the dock was right next to a wooden porch that I had to back around. So there I was, slowly pulling back and forth, making cuts trying to avoid scraping alongside this porch while maneuvering against the dock. Remember the scene in Austin Powers, where he was trying to back that cart out of the hallway? That's how I felt. ANd I've got Schneider making motions in one direction, the crew guy from the venue making motions in another direction, and Levitt gesticulating wildly and yelling about how far behind we are, as if I was the reason we were behind. But I held it together, calmly got the truck where it needed to be, briefly entertained the image of giving Levitt a hydrochloric acid facial, and moved on to unloading the truck. That went with the speed of Superman on crack. The crew at this place was quite possibly the most together, well-oiled yet non-intrusive crews I have ever worked with. Even with the late start, we had everything ready to go by 9:20. It was amazing. And the nicest guys you could ever hope to work with on top of it. Even Levitt couldn't make them angry, and she makes EVERYBODY angry. And the crowd was great as well. The venue was about half-full--the orchestra level was full, but the balcony was empty. But again, the kids were awesome. Not AS responsive as yesterday, but they definitely came alive during Sleepy Hollow. It was another one of those audiences that I think we intimidated into silence with our curtain speech and it wasn't until the silliness of Ichabod that they realized they were allowed to react vocally.

Load-out went just as swiftly, if not more so, and before you knew it, we had eaten lunch (at a very nice little diner in Greensboro that is open 24 hours a day, has awesome food and a name which I cannot for the life of me remember.) and hit the road for Charlotte. We arrived with plenty of time to relax and unwind. But fate had other plans for me. ABout an hour or so after we arrived, Flo wanted to see if there was anywhere nearby to get coffee, so I, a long-time caffeine aficionado (some might say addict) I agreed to accompany her in her quest for joe. There wasn't much around the hotel, at least in the coffee shop strata, so we headed off down the road. Down a side road looked to be what might have been a strip mall, the natural habitat of Starbucks. We soon found out, however, that the side road was in fact a frontage road and took us parallel to the freeway our hotel was near, then curved away from it. We, feeling like one direction was as good as any other, continued to follow it, confident that at the other end, we would be rewarded with some place where the art of straining hot water through beans was practiced. We arrived at the other end one exit further down the road from the hotel and no closer to anything resembling a coffee shop. At this point, we decided to cut our losses caffeine wise and got to the Mobil On the Run mart we were near and get coffee from them. Once this was accomplished, another question loomed before us like a monolithic.....uh...monolith. How to get back to the hotel. True, we could go back the way we came. That option was safe, known, guaranteed to end in success. OR we could try to figure it out by walking in the general direction we felt the hotel to be and hoping to get lucky. This option was risky, completely unknown and had about as much chance of being successful as blindfolded brain surgery. Anyone want to guess which option we chose? Class? Anyone, anyone? Bueller...Bueller... That's right--we chose option B! So, pointed in what we were reasonably sure was something akin to being nearly almost certainly kind of the right direction, we headed back. 

Charlotte is a lovely city. At least I assume it is. The skyline looks lovely. The sections of Charlotte that Flo and I traversed were not quite up there on the loveliness scale. But let me say thins and be very clear about it--it beat the hell out of Auburn, GA. Beat it the way lifers beat a new inmate. But it was still not pretty--mostly because we somehow managed to never make a decision to go down any road that wasn't primarily industrial in nature. I don't know how we managed it, but we did. We're just that good. We passed many fenced in lots and were barked at by many dogs, though I'm not sure how intimidated I'm supposed to be by a dog barking like he wants to rip my face off and wagging his tail like he wants to play fetch. I did manage to be worried enough by telling myself what he wanted to play fetch with were my balls. Though I did feel bad for the last dog who barked us away from his very valuable junkyard. He was barking like a good bloodthirsty killing machine, then when we were out of sight of him, I heard whimpering. I felt so bad for him. Obviously he didn't feel we had been suitably frightened and was feeling very down. I did my best to pick up his flagging spirits by assuring him that I had been terrified of him and had, in fact, wet myself. I don't know if he understood me, but the whimpering did stop. Hopefully that kept him in good with his union.

We had left the hotel at 7 p.m. By the time 9:30 rolled around, we were starting to despair of ever finding our way back. I shit you not , gentle readers, we had been walking non-stop for three hours. It was so crazy that I actually pulled out my brand-new cell phone because I knew I had navigation capabilities on it. Of course, as I was getting ready to do that, we discovered the main road we had originally walked down, so I put the phone away, since not only had we found the road, but we were both confident that we knew which way we had to turn to get to the hotel. Remember that, gentle readers--I PUT THE PHONE AWAY. So off we go pointed in what we are absolutely, 100% sure is the right direction.  When 10:00 rolled around, we started to wonder if perhaps we were NOT, in fact, going in the right direction. I then pulled out the phone and went through the lengthy setup process to get the navigation to work, all the time continuing on in the direction we were going. Finally I was able to punch in our destination to find out that yes, we were, in fact, going in absolutely the WRONG direction, and had been for the last two miles, putting us a full three miles away from the hotel. So around we turn, our aching bodies groaning in protest, and trudge back the way we came. Three miles, people. On top of the god knows how many we had already walked. And if I had just not put the phone away, we would've discovered we were a mere 1 mile away from the hotel back at 9:30. It is the little choices one makes that your life hinges upon. Major choices mean nothing, because you have given great thought to them and are therefore protected to a certain degree from their outcome. But the little choices, the minor decisions, like do we go left (yes, yes, go left for the love of all that's holy) or right (no! That way lies madness and fallen arches!) those are the ones that can affect the rest of our lives, because we pay them no mind and are therefore unprepared for their consequences. As we were. Finally, we shuffle our way up a hill and around a curve and we see things that are familiar! Yes, we've made it! I can only imagine that we felt something like what Lewis and Clark felt when they first beheld the Pacific ocean and realized that their long, painful journey was at an end and they were going to have to find some way to keep Sacagawea quiet about what had gone on in that tent. I have never been happier to see a Wendy's in my life. In fact, we were both so happy that we extended our trip by crossing the street (OUCH! why the running?) and going there to get something resembling fuel for our poor drained, beaten bodies. It also let us get off our feet for the first time in 3.5 hours.

And there was our final mistake. For when, filled with Wendylicious goodness, we started back on our trek, the pain which lanced through our recently relaxed feet made us gasp, we realized that sometimes it's better not to rest. But we persevered, and finally, at 11:00, we returned to the hotel and to our rooms, where we could do the one thing we had been dreaming of since we made the first fateful mistake--LAY DOWN. But it is good to know that with absolutely no planning and no safety net, we were able to turn what could of been a horrible disaster into a slightly less horrible disaster. Oh, and may I say--we walked what had to be about 15 miles or so in many different directions (sometimes all at once) and we did not see one single coffee shop. If cities were coffee, Charlotte is decaf.

But all in all, gentle readers, I am impressed by what we did. I have been laughingly called "retro" by a friend of my wife's since I am actually willing to walk further than out the door to my car, but I haven't walked like this in a very long time. But I did it. And I think that says something. I think it says that I am the type of person who will push through the hard times, no matter what is thrown in his way. I think it says that I am dedicated and single minded. I think it says that I hate to ask for directions. And I think it says that in 2012, vote for Pond--He'll walk that 3 extra miles for you.