So that’s the last time I’m ever ending a post with “Let’s hope something exciting happens soon.” We have certainly not been short on excitement this trip. As Jack put it yesterday, “Val, will you please blog about all of the crappy stuff that’s been happening to us.” It would be my pleasure Jack. But I honestly don’t even know where to start.
First off, as I mentioned in the earlier post, this was our first run of 3 shows in row. We all survived…for the most part. It certainly wasn’t easy, but we made it. Our first show was in Johnsonville, SC- also known as Middleofnowheresville, SC. For that show, I was told we were staying in a hunting lodge. In my mind’s eye I pictured a resort type setting perhaps at a private deer farm, you know, one of those places that offer guided hunts for nearly a thousand dollars. I was mistaken. What we found instead was 2 old tobacco barns converted into a living space with 3 bedrooms and 1 shower for 11 people. It was actually a great place that I would love to stay in when it is warm and I am looking to hunt or fish. However, it was unseasonably cold in South Carolina and the no insulation in the lodge was not helping matters. Plus, I had no time to hunt or fish because I had to work 13 hour days 3 days in a row. Also, all of the girls slept in 1 room with a partial wall that stopped 6 feet short of the ceiling which meant that whenever someone turned a light on in the neighboring room, our room lit up too. Plus, because of the aforementioned lack on insulation, one could hear everything going on in every part of the house. This prompted me to sleep on the bus for our second night- a night so cold that ice cubes left on the bus didn’t melt. But at least it was quiet. Also, because of the singular shower, I got up extremely early both days to guarantee that I would have enough time and hot water. Yes it was early, but in the 2 hours we had after our showers, I had some great bonding time with Paco and Chase as we scanned the DirectTV for early Friday morning entertainment.
The show in Johnsonville was a whole other fiasco. We have specific electricity requirements because of all the equipment we use. As per our tech rider, those requirements must be met with house power or a generator. They brought in a generator for this show. Our “power guy,” Jeff, told me before the show that he loved shows with generators because he can just plug the leads in and we’re good to go. I replied “Yeah it’s great until it quits working in the middle of the show.” I need to keep my mouth shut. Thankfully it didn’t go off in the middle of the show, but it shut off about 7 times before the show. We finally switched to house power, but we lost most of our moving lights for the night. The rest of the show went fine.
On the way back to a lodge, the whole bus was singing Christmas songs and everyone was in a relatively good mood considering all that had just happened. We were zipping down the driveway when we hit a bump that sent people flying out of their seats, on to the floor, at other passengers, and in to other contents of the bus. I’ve spent over 700 hours on this bus and I’ve never experienced anything like that. The next morning we discovered that we went into a ditch. We also discovered that we cracked the back of the bus during all of that.
The next day, we had to leave the lodge at 8:30 to get to the area of our next shows. These two shows were in the towns of Irmo and Elgin. Yes, those are real places and not rejected Sesame Street characters. On our way to Elgin, we were driving through a small town when Paco got pulled over in the truck. In his defense, he was just following Jeff who was driving the bus. I was asleep in the bunk when all of this went town, so I’m not entirely sure what happened, but Chase was gracious enough to act it out for me.
After that we stopped to get fuel in the same small town. About 30 minutes after that, the bus started smoking and we lost power every time we went downhill. The “change oil” light has been on for several weeks, so we thought maybe the bus wanted us to change it’s oil to keep this very thing from happening. Two guys took the truck to the next exit and got some oil and came back to give it a try. It was still smoking a lot, but we had power again so we kept going- we were only about half and hour away from our venue. After we got all of our gear unloaded for the show, we called a garage and toke the bus there to see what was wrong. At first they thought it was water in the fuel and they told us they would have to drain the tank. While draining it, they discovered that it was unleaded gasoline in our diesel engine that was causing all the trouble. A check of our receipt confirmed that we had indeed saved money on fuel, but nearly blew our engine.
At the end of the show one of our girls sprained her thumb tearing the screens down and had to go to the emergency room. That made a late night for everyone, but at least I got a trip to Waffle House out of it! We decided a Waffle House would be more fun than a hospital waiting room.
The next morning we had our final show of this trip. We got to the church just as the service was letting out. After looking at the sanctuary, we decided that we should do the show in the gym. Things actually went quite smoothly for that show. However, Missy was sick and asleep in the bus all day and Jess fell while loading the truck and bloodied her knee.
After yesterday’s show we said farewell to Chase as he flew to be with his family for Thanksgiving. His brother plays football for Ole Miss so Chase is going to the game and I wish #52 Chris Bowers and the rest of the Rebels the best of luck on Friday. This morning we said goodbye to three more, one of which will return for the 3 shows before Christmas.
I’m in West Virginia now and headed for Pittsburgh. I’m looking forward to a few days at home before going to Charleston, SC the day after Thanksgiving and doing two shows in Michigan the following week. I have so much to be thankful for this Thanksgiving: God’s love, mercy, and protection, my family, my friends, and all of the blessings I take for granted every single day. One of the things I will be definitely be thankful for this Thanksgiving is having a day where I don’t smell like Subway, Red Bull, and Diesel…or was that unleaded.
