100 Monkeys Indiana Fans
 
Our Tuesday started with a trip to one HUGE salad bar.  Food had been negotiable on this road trip as well as the last, but we knew we needed some vegetation to get us through the day.  After a slight run in between my shirt and the blue cheese dressing, we may have left a few presents behind in the bathroom and then headed on our merry way.  

University of Central Florida.  Well...THAT was interesting.  UCF had THE most used and STAFFED campus library I have ever seen, making flyering there an impossibility (bathrooms, aside).  Public events boards are LOCKED on the majority of the campus.  We discovered, to our surprise, that the chemistry building was open for posting while the theatre building was not.  Regardless of the difficulties in remaining legal while promoting, we got another couple hundred flyers out there.

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What did we do before cell phones?

My webmaster email held a request from the national street team director when I checked it on my phone Sunday:  she was looking for people to flier a few high-profile targets on Monday.  It took little bouncing of the idea as we rode to Gainesville to decide that this would be how our Monday was spent.  I returned the message and received our assignments.

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“I am pulling a Louisville. It may not be a Starbucks, but we’ll be able to park somewhere to put on makeup.” Gainesville was a bit of a drive from Orlampa (yes...I saw the signs...), and my counterpart was wise beyond her years in this statement, so I followed suit.

Quiet conversation gave way to less quiet singing...and Tin Tin Can gave way to RENT.  The mossy trees and palms seemed to demand a different sky, but their protests were answered by cool drizzle.  We knew it would be hot inside the venue, regardless of the weather outside.  Sweat is a staple of 100 Monkeys shows, and this would be no different.

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Airports are interesting places.  They are not microcosms of human interaction at all.  They are the places stories are written.  They are the settings of major plot points in the lives of thousands of people every day.  They are the ports of innumerable hopes and dreams.  They are where “hello” or “goodbye” is said for the first or last time.  Witnesses to tears of love and loss, joy and sorry, hope and fear.  

That is because everyone is either a “to” or a “from” in an airport.  That is what I wonder about as I look around.  Is that man reading the newspaper while his laptop bag sits in the seat next to him heading to a somewhere....or heading from one?  Is that mother of 2 whose 4 year-old is wearing a Disney princess tiara heading TO an amusement park?  Or is she heading AWAY from making their beds for a week?

What motivation wins?

In my case, I will admit that I was as much one as the other on both ends of this trip.
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Or rather...in the air.

I am heading to the Sunshine State for 3 shows and some much-needed R & R.  The site will be pretty stagnant until I return, and for that you have my apologies.  However, more blogging and picture-ing will transpire once i get home...so it'll be worth the trade-off, I think.  ;)

Enjoy your week...and say hi if you see me at a show!
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By Monday morning, several realities of the road were establishing themselves.
  1. Sleep is entirely negotiable and easily replaced by coffee.
  2. Miles spent with good music and good company are mere inches.
  3. In band tour culture, there is no such thing as a stranger.
  4. Cars and hotels are not at all that uncomfortable when you want to be doing what you are doing.
  5. Food is good.  Water is better.
  6. Whether lasting a lifetime or merely the time spent in line, friendships are valuable.
  7. Illinois interstates are terribly dull.
  8. GPS is the best invention of the 20th Century...even if the voice on my phone isn’t all that thrilling.
  9. Hearing, “Continue for...two hundred....sixty....three...miles” is funny.
  10. Overpacking is for amateurs.
  11. After a night like Sunday, there is no choice but to focus on the art.  It is about nothing else.  Well...the art and the people.
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Well, I guess this brings us to the disposable camera, no?

For those new to this concept, during the first leg of the tour, the band started getting disposable cameras, taking pictured on them, and then auctioning them at shows.  This didn't happen at every stop, but I always thought it was a fun idea - one I hoped to take advantage of eventually.
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Returning to downtown from Vintage Vinyl (via TRULY accidentally following the band away from the venue), we decided that some tourism was needed.  We took a wee break from the Monkey world to wander down by the river.  A few pictures were taken and fewer raindrops fell, but many words were shared.  There may have been some Katrina and the Waves danced to and there could have been some Monkees-style dancing.  I will neither confirm nor deny our involvement.  We learned that pictures of the rear of a horse will never be pretty and that pictures of the Arch against a gray sky take a MUCH larger flash than my Canon has.  

We returned to the hotel with a fateful plan for the night – a plan that sends shivers through me as I remember how it all turned out.  Not excited shivers.  Not scared shivers.  COLD shivers.

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St. Louis was a perfect storm...a conspiracy of fate...what have you.  Basically, it was a dream I am still not all that sure was real, and were it not for the pictures of one form or another, I would assume it was not.
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Between Live and Wasted, GRAPE, and the cacophony of my own thoughts, the drive from Indianapolis to Chicago took place in a fully packed car in spite of the single passenger.  I made an Apollonian offering of the stress and worries that school had brought the last week, leaving the day job behind on I-65 and embracing the music and the road.  Taking in the sites – though limited – along the way, I became more and more eager of what lie beyond the toll booths and rush hour backups:  old friends reunited, new friends made, and Monkey addiction fed.
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