TOUR!

Well Here I am out on the road, currently in Orange Park, FL (a suburb of Jacksonville). I have promised that I will be better about blogging on tour and hopefully I will live up to it.

I currently can not post any pictures on this blog to make it more interesting, sorry, but I left my camera cord in Baltimore so I will retrieve it from Michael in 11 days in McLean and then pictures shall be available.

SO! The beginning. We began by driving about 16 hours in two days to Sarasota with a stop in South Carolina on the way where I saw a bumper sticker that said "nuke Iraq" reminding me how much I love people. Sadly, the long hours of Air Conditioned Van Driving made Margo a sick little girl :(

So upon arrival in Sarasota Kevin and Lindsay joined us (both had auditions preventing them from enjoying the first 16 hours of driving and met us down there) and we had a full fun happy group. Tuesday morning Jonny and I ventured to Siesta Key (about 7 miles south of Sarasota) to Rent bicycles for our days in Sarasota. My logic to this was there were about 4 places of interest as well as downtown Sarasota within 2-5 miles from the Hotel and it seemed, by renting bikes, we could go to as many of these places as we pleased without worrying about Van usage and get some fun outdoor exercise while we were at it! I sent a text to everyone in the group, as is customary, but Jonny seemed to be the only one to agree with my logic. So to the bike store we traveled! The man at the bike store was very nice and helped us select two "beach cruiser bikes" on the logic that road bikes can only go on the road but beach cruisers can go on the road and the beach. We didn't intend on going to the beach but it sounded like a nice thought. That is until we decided to bike to the Aquarium 4.7 miles away over a very large bridge in a headwind... gears would have been nice. But damn it was good exercise. We saw all sorts of fun fish and petted sting rays and overall had a very nice time. Pictures to come later.

So that night Me, Jonny, Margo, Rudy, and Jeffery went to downtown Sarasota and had some Mexican food. It was quite tasty. Sarasota is a very very pretty place but I find it funny that the majority of dining downtown is Italian. Curious.

Anyway the next morning we had our first two performances of Tour at the very pleasant Van Wezel building. We mentioned constantly that we would be happy just planting ourselves for a couple weeks and doing the show there. The building was great, the staff was so smart, kind, and accommodating it was really a pleasure. The audiences were HUGE though I am not sure entirely as responsive as our DC children's audience, they still seemed to enjoy it very much. It was a pleasure.

Upon returning to the Hotel we dissapointingly realized that a trip to the Dali museum in St. Petersburg would not be happening because of Van usage and time and such so me and Jonny decided to get the most out of our bike rentals before their return and biked downtown to have lunch. We wanted to go to this homey looking Irish Pub called O'Malley's so we walked up the stairs to its second story home and stood there for at least 5 minutes wandering around calling out "HELLO" to no response. I even peaked in the Kitchen, and there was noone. Potentially the most awkward thing I have ever seen. So we went to a little, slightly more expensive, place called Patricks which was very nice. We then drove our bikes back over to Siesta Keys and returned them. That evening, after not being able to make any decisions, a group of us decided to venture back downtown and see if anyone was at O'Malley's this time. SURPRISE! they were. We enjoyed a late dinner, but they were in the process of changing the menu so most things we ordered were not available. And then the manger was trying to clean out a drain and upon opening it unleashed the smell of unholy hell. But he gave us a free round of Washington Apple shots as an apology and the food we did order was very enjoyable. Afterwards everyone wanted to go to this gay bar, but Jonny inquired to their underage attendance and they were strictly against it so I went back to the hotel. Luckily, it was a bust anyway and everyone was back by 11pm.

I spent the evening chatting with Michael on the phone and putting all my receipts in order for tax purposes before nodding off to sleep for our departure this morning.

We drove to Orange Park today (250 miles back in the direction we came from, one of the unfortunate aspects of touring is by no fault of anyones due to availability at venues we end up backtracking a little bit from time to time. for example on the 20th we are in McLean then we go to Deleware and Staten Island then back to Baltimore then Virginia Beach then back up to Mass.)
It seems like a pleasant place here. The people at Panera were possibly the nicest people I have ever encountered in my life and they commented on the pleasure of my pleasantness as well. One thing I do like about the south is the southern hospitality. They can be a bit blunt though... a woman got on the elevator with me in Sarasota and the first thing out of her mouth was "so who are you voting for". Awkward.

Everyone else has just departed for the Gym, and the Technicians are at the space doing Load In. I am staying here to work on a voice over for Michael and then who knows!

Ciao from Orange Park!