In the Bunk(ers)

Last night's final run through of the Ethnicity show went well. It will be great to be back in front of a live audience tonight. Show time is 7:30 at Albuquerque's Tingley Coliseum.

It has been snowing off and on this morning, but it's a bit too warm for any accumulation.

I was wondering about the origins of the name "Albuquerque" and learned via a google search that it was named by the Spaniards, from Albuquerque, a town in Spain, near the frontier of Portugal, which took its name from Alphonso d'Albuquerque, a maritime conqueror in the early 1500's.

I posted a few pictures that a friend took for me last night using my camera. They are all from our opening number "Sacred Ground." As always, use the Photographs link to see them.

I plan on getting in a good swim before we head to the coliseum this afternoon. A funny thing happened while I exercised yesterday. I was the only one in the workout room so I turned off the hotel radio, and put on my headphones. One of my favorite albums is an old one, by a group that used to be called 2nd Chapter of Acts. The album is a tribute to "The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe," by C.S. Lewis. It's about 40 minutes long which is just about perfect for a good workout. Anyway, I was about 20 minutes into it, red-faced, sweating profusely, breathing heavily in the high altitude, and bobbing my head to the music with my eyes closed. I suddenly felt like I wasn't alone any more and popped open my eyes to see Yanni and his assistant Don Bath looking at me with big grins. I shouted "I must be hallucinating, I think I see Yanni in shorts!" We all got a good laugh.

Angie is flying into El Paso this afternoon to join me for our day off tomorrow. We'll reach El Paso after a four and a half hour bus ride after tonight's show.

We drew for bunk choices on the way home from rehearsal last night. I'm on bus 2 this year which is driven by Lance. My bus mates include Hussein, Dana, Alfreda, Pedro, Walter, Ramone, Zach, David, and Richard who is the accountant on the tour. There are twelve bunks on the busses and 10 people. The driver, of course, doesn't sleep. The two extra bunks are called 'junk bunks' for, well, junk. Those who get the first choices always choose the center bunks. The top bunks sway the most, the bottom bunks are the noisiest because of the proximity to the tires and engine. The bunks on the Driver's side of the bus tend to be the warmest. The one closest to the bathroom door gets disturbed the most. The list goes on and I won't bore you anymore with the science and psychology of bunk choosing. It didn't matter for me any way, I was the next to last person to get to choose, and I ended up in the same bunk I had last year - top-rear-cool side.

David's passport issues have finally been sorted out but he won't be here in time for the first show. We'll see him in El Paso.
¶ 1:01 PM