San Francisco to Minneapolis to Atlanta (5/1 – 5/10)
It’s been a flurry of travel these past couple weeks. The 1st of May I flew from SF to Minneapolis for Midwest Lindy Fest. I flew overnight on Sun Country – an airline that only flies in and out of Minneapolis and arrived at 5am Central Time (it was 3am Pacific Time for me). I trucked my luggage across a parking lot to the light rail which shuttled me across the city to the Warehouse District. Andrew picked me up and I proceeded to sleep for half the day.
I got up, grabbed some coffee, found out Jo wasn’t going to get in until after rehearsal for the show. We hadn’t practiced or even run our routine since Lindy Focus and we had hoped for an afternoon to drill it back into our heads. Instead we got about an hour in between changing, eating and rushing to the venue.
Thankfully Davis and I had time to practice our Do No Evil routine which went off quite well. Despite being short the lighting and costuming (thanks for the shirt Peter) fit perfectly and it’s our goal to finish it and perform it again.
I haven’t been part of a full scale show that has felt this professional in a while. Competition performance is an entirely different affair than putting on a show. In a show it’s not just about which tricks you perform or how complex your routine or how bad-ass you look (although that helps) it’s about taking the audience with you on your story.
And it’s all pieced together by the M.C. – this one did an exceptional job. I forget his name… A something.
It’s a rare experience to get to work on a show with such exceptional characters like Stefan & Bethany, Falty & Casey, Adam, and many more. Some of them have a lot of show experience and some have very little (me) but the encouragement and professionalism more experienced performers exhibit draws the rest of the performers in.
Anyways, Midwest Lindy Fest was a blast. One of the best small events I’ve been to in a while and I haven’t danced that hard for months. The bands were killer (particularly the Southside Aces) and we even got a late night jam going Saturday night where Robert Bell joined us for a bit.
I got to spend Monday mostly on my own as Andrew worked late. I spent about 8 hours in Espresso Royale, a cafe about a block down from the apartment. It entertains me when I see two shifts of staff come in and out of an establishment. If you are ever in Minneapolis I recommend trying the breve latte. Deliciously sweet and seductive.
I went out in the evening to Famous Dave’s BBQ for dinner (at around 10pm) and to see the band there with a couple dancers. The band was playing Rockabilly – poorly – and I think they should have stuck to the bluegrass country sound they played well. As for Famous Dave’s… I recommend the happy hour appetizers (2$ for nearly any appetizer) and their ribs were pretty good, I’ve yet to find a place that truly tops Dinosaur BBQ in Rochester, NY though.
Tuesday I flew out to Atlanta in the afternoon. I had the opportunity to be driven by Clay Collins, one of my favorite internet people. He used to run a successful lifestyle design blog but abandoned it when he didn’t feel it fit him anymore. Instead he created Finance Your Freedom and Project Mojave just launched today. It’s a project with an excellent array of faculty to help you create an online business to free you from the burdens of a typical job.
Enough proselytizing. Clay was kind enough to meet up and drive me to the airport and I’m bummed we didn’t have the chance to sit down for a proper drink and chat. We talked the entire way to the airport, asking questions, talking about business, and the life paths we had chosen (why we lived where we did – or in my case out of a suitcase). It’s always great to meet someone who has that curiousity. I look forward to our next meeting.
Best compliment he gave me (to gloat a moment): “you’re the real deal.”
Bus Trip to Austin (1/21)
Not many people take the bus anymore, it’s almost a forgotten mode of transit, with their cars or plane travel being the primary mode. My experience taking the bus has rarely let me down. I’ve been all over the Northeast on buses and have now added my longest trip to date – a 22 hour foray from Atlanta, GA to Austin, TX.
It started at 2pm yesterday, I PackageExpressed some excess clothing back to Maine, and boarded the bus (again the last person on). PackageExpress is probably one of the cheapest ways to ship boxes and baggage long distances.
We traveled into Alabama and stopped in Birmingham for an hour. I posted a brief update from Java & Jams, a cafe I found via Yelp, where I sat down for a coffee and some wifi.
Alabama was far more Apalachian than I had imagined it would be, full of scraggy conifers and rugged albeit not massive hills. I thoroughly enjoyed the scenery from my window and will definitely make a point to travel back through Alabama in the future.
As we departed night settled down and I kicked back to finish Vagabonding, scribbling notes in Moleskin for SlackerReform.
We rode through Mississippi, a state I’ve only ever spelled out loud for the entertainment in that process, with an hour stopover around 9:30 central time. I grabbed a chicken sandwich from the Union Station cafe in Jackson, MS. The woman behind the counter inquired about my washboard and we chatted a moment about music which I think landed me a free batch of fries.
Once back on the road I settled in for the night with The Weepies strumming me to sleep. I recently discovered The Weepies while flipping through artists on AllMusic and I have two of their albums, Say I Am You, which is my favorite and Hideaway. Lovely little duo of musicians from California playing a mellow but entrancing pop-folk style.
I woke up about 6am CT as we drove in to Dallas. Perfect timing as the sun climbed up across the vast openness of Texas (it’s amazing really).
We pulled into Dallas late, I unloaded, grabbed my checked bag and stepped on to the Austin bus. I had slept fitfully overnight yet, like a cat, put me in a patch of warm sun and I’m out.
I woke around 9am and watched the flatness roll by. In the ways of geography and ecology Texas is strange yet when you add the clutter of big box stores, Starbucks, McDonalds and all the rest of our consumer life it isn’t that far off from the drive I would get through New Hampshire.
The greatest relief of the trip: stepping off the bus at 10:20am into 65° F weather.
