Chapter 3 - NOW IT BEGINS
After
we touched down in D.C., I grabbed a cab at the airport and
headed off to my hotel. The route to the hotel took us by
most of the major monuments in Washington. And although I
had seen them many times before, I had never seen them at
night. The stark white lighting which illuminated the monuments
made them stand out even more than usual against the night
sky. It had rained earlier in the day and the city looked
clean and beautiful but I was tired and hungry and eager to
get to the hotel. By the time I finally got into my room it
was a little past 10:00 p.m. and, of course, the first thing
I did was call room service. Remember, the only thing I had
to eat on the flight coming in was that wonderful Sourdough/Turkey
surprise and a Bag'o'Chips which was all washed down with
a couple of Gin&Tonics and that was quite a while ago.
I needed real food!
As
I was calling room service, I noticed the message light on
my phone was blinking. Ha! Did I say notice? You can't help
but notice! Some of those message lights are like having a
blinking left turn signal mounted on the night stand. Anyway,
I had a hunch it was probably from some of the guys in the
band. I was right. There were a couple of messages from McEntee
and Zoot welcoming me to D.C. At this point I figured I would
continue to unpack while I was waiting for room service and
I could call them after I had procured some nourishment, which
came to my room in the form of a Margarita pizza and a cold
beer. What can I say, choices get slim at that time of night.
After
wolfing down the beer and pizza, I gave a call to the guys
and we naturally ended up hanging out together for another
hour or so catching up on all we had been or had not been
doing as well as all that had or had not happened to each
of us since we'd last seen each other. Although we were pretty
excited about seeing each other again and about getting on
stage for the production rehearsal the following day, we were
also pretty tired from the long travel day and mutually agreed
it was time to catch some Z's. So, each of us retired to our
temporary road dwellings to get some well deserved rest. It
had been a long and exciting day but I was ready to crash
and as I fell asleep hearing a loop of the set list playing
in my head, I thought to myself, "Yes, were definitely
shifting into Road Mode." Now it begins.