Chapter 13 - ONWARD
It
was around ten or eleven in the morning when we boarded the
bus and bid, a not so fond, farewell to stormy Hilton Head
and started rolling on to our next show down in Raleigh, NC.
It was just a mere 328 miles down the highway, a virtual breeze
compared to some of the drives coming up later. But after
our show in Raleigh, we were going to have to travel another
404 miles to Atlanta, Georgia! It would be another night of
trying to sleep in the bouncing bunk beds. I don't want to
say these bunks were small, actually they're an ingenious
use of space, just don't try to sit up too quickly or you'll
get a concussion. I think this is why I would prefer to be
cremated rather than buried. Being buried would be too much
like spending eternity in a bunk on a tour bus. Yeck!
We
finally made it to our hotel in Atlanta and after the long
drive in the bouncing bunk; I was more than ready to crash.
I was so tired and the long elevator ride, followed by the
long walk down the long hall towards my room, reminded me
of Road Rule # 43 which states, "When exhausted, your
room shall be the furthest from the elevator, unless you're
a light sleeper and then your room shall be between the elevator
and the ice machine." Anyway, we had a gig that night
and I was trying to catch some zees when and where I could.
Our
gig in Atlanta was at Chastain Park, a really beautiful outdoor
amphitheater. I've played there numerous times over the years
with various artists so I knew what to expect. This was going
to be another sea of linen tablecloths, candelabras and champagne
bottles. But unlike our concert at Hilton Head, these were
people who were also there to listen. These were Dan fans!
They were there to see Dan Fogelberg and they made us know
it as soon as we hit the stage. Dan wasn't about to go through
another struggle like the last gig, so he had changed the
set list. Now we were opening with the full band! We kicked
everything off with "Part of The Plan" and it just
kept getting better! As I recall, it turned out to be one
of our exceptional performances.
Our
road bible said that Dan was to fly to New York the next day
to take care of some promo stuff, and the band was supposed
to leave immediately after the show in Chastain Park, drive
673 miles to Baltimore and then travel another 215 miles to
Long Island the following day. Well, after discussing it with
Jeff The Invincible, and since it was just the band on the
bus, we decided to something really crazy. We were going to
do it all in one long humongous drive! We would stay another
night at the hotel, leave around noon the next day and drive
all the way to New Jersey, where Jeff could get some repairs
done to the land yacht while he got some sleep. That would
take a couple of hours and then we'd hit the road again and
continue on to our hotel in Long Island. Of course, that meant
that we would have to contend with the bouncing bunks again.
The
morning traffic from New Jersey to Long Island was a nightmare
but we finally reached our hotel in Long Island around eleven
o'clock that morning. We were all pretty exhausted and in
need of some sleep before the show that night. But when we
went to the front desk to check in, I was reminded of road
rule #14 that states, "If you're exhausted and you arrive
early, your room shall not be ready." Sure enough, I
had to figure out how to kill an hour while they made up the
room so I went to the restaurant. Unfortunately, they were
now only serving lunch so I had a cheeseburger for breakfast,
washed it down with ice tea and then went to bed. And by the
way, there's a whole set of road rules regarding restaurants
and food in the Great Book of Roadzilla but that's another
story.