Run, Harriet, Run! Part III
By Jackdaw
On Sunday, August 19, we left
Massachusetts and headed west across New York state. The guys were going to play at a festival in Geneva, NY, a gig that wasn't on the list of tour dates, something called a "Whale
Watch" at the north end of Seneca Lake. Race fans, take note: Watkins Glen is at the south end of the same lake.)Hundreds of miles from our goal,
the Road Trip Gods decided to have some fun with us by landing us in a
three-hour traffic jam; miles and miles of cars inching along at 2 mph. when we
got to move at all, under a nice hot sun. I was driving (if one can call creeping along in first gear driving) with the doors hanging open, trying to get a little breeze on our legs. When I had the chance to stop (which was more often than not), I'd shove it neutral and hop out of the car to hand out
Red Elvises pencils to anyone in a red vehicle, or to anyone who seemed interested.One lady asked me,
"are these guys related in any way to Limpopo?" Yet another example of it being a Red, Red
World after all.
Once past the accident that had caused
the traffic jam, we made good zippy time in between the many construction
zones, until we hit a weather front that tried to drown us in torrential,
can't-see-where-the-road-is thunderstorms.Ron bought a calling card at a rest stop and called Phelan, who filled
us in on what was happening.
It turned out that the reason the band
had driven out of Boston before stopping for the night was that the unlisted
show in Geneva was in the afternoon, a little detail of which we were
unaware.They got a head start on the
long drive, thereby missing the traffic jam caused by the accident.They'd managed to play most of one set at
the festival before being rained out by the thunderstorms, and planned to make
an early night of it, resting and doing laundry at the motel.Ah, the glamorous life of rokenrollers.
We caught up with them at the motel,
after getting lost a few times in downtown Geneva.The place was called the Chanticleer, and looked like it had
started out as one motel, then taken over the motel next door, so that it had
two separate buildings, completely different in architecture, set back-to-back
with a dark and creepy narrow grassy space in between.We ended up in the building the RE were not
in.Following what has become standard
procedure for us, we asked for a smoking room, late checkout, and no neighbors
to disturb; I think they gave us the dungeon room.Ron's bed had a broken frame and sagged nearly to the floor on
one side, and the TV didn't work at all. But it had real windows that we could
open, a rarity these days.
It was just after dark; Igor was
already asleep, Zhenya was e-mailing girls from his laptop, and Oleg was two
steps from dreamland.We gave Phelan
our room number and told him the bar was open, but he looked pretty bushed,
too, so we toddled off to our den.Ron
ran across the street and got us a couple Big Macs and fries, after which we
realized that we, too, could do with a few extra hours of sleep.
The phone in our room rang at 1:30 AM;
it was Mr. Fabulous calling, asking, "Whassup?"I told him to come on over; we'd had a nice
nap by that time, and were ready for company, sorta.The three of us had a mini-party in the wee hours, drinking
screwdrivers and eating beef jerky, and then Phelan went back to his room to
catch a few more zzzzzzzzzzz's.We went
back to sleep, too, and later it seemed to us almost as though we'd managed to
squeeze another "day" into our trip.
The next morning saw us all off to a
leisurely start; Buffalo, the next show, was only a couple of hours away.Oleg had a video camera, and pointed it at
me to ask "how you like Red Elvises?" and other fun questions which
immediately caused my brain to freeze, so, if anyone ever sees that tape, please
have pity.Igor meandered around with
his guitar, working on new songs.Phelan hung on the phone, doing those things that big fat road managers
do, while we waited for Mr. Rock to emerge from his lair.I've noticed that Z is often the last one to
get to the van in the mornings, clutching his special pillow.He modelled a marvelous fake-fur rockstar
coat for us while Phelan wrapped up his phone calls.
After noodling around a while longer,
we all went to a nice bagel place for breakfast, where everyone except Phelan
had some lox and cream cheese.If
you've ever wondered how the guys manage to exert so much energy on stage night
after night, part of that mystery is solved by watching them eat.And eat.While they'll tackle junk food if it's all that's available, they all
seem to prefer "real" food.They choose more wisely than most people I know, always including things
like salads, vegetables, fish, and fresh fruit whenever possible.This is not to say that any of them would
turn their nose up at a nice steak.Also, probably so they can get on the road in good time, they tend to
order as much or more than they think they'll want in the first place, rather
than waiting for another order from the kitchen.This worked out well for me, because I'm not shy about saying,
"you gonna finish that?"More
than once, my lunch turned out to be the second half of someone's second
breakfast sandwich, that I'd wrapped up and shoved into my purse!
A stop for gas, during which Igor once
again stepped out of the van and plunked away on his guitar (he does this a
lot), and we were on our way to Buffalo.Run, Harriet, run!
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