Eric Herman - Travelblogue: 2008 Spring/Summer Tour

I had a show this morning at the Pflugerville Library. As I was setting up, Roseann was about to turn on the generator so Tiggy would have the AC running during the show (it was already very hot in the morning) and discovered that it didn't work. Apparently, when we went over some abnormally large speed bumps last night, one of them knocked out a set of cords which then dragged on the ground for a while and became mangled. Roseann was able to solder it together quickly to get the generator working, but once we moved the bus again it came apart, so she had to fix it better later at Karen's (with the bus elevated up on one of the offending speed bumps).

I've mentioned this before on my Cool Tunes for Kids blog, but among the many talents Roseann has is a great mechanical ability. She is clearly the Bob Vila of our family. I've just never had that ability or knowhow. It's not for lack of training... my father was often fixing and building things around our house and would involve me and try to teach me that stuff... but I think once I picked up a guitar and started filling up my brain with chords and licks and solos and lyrics and all of that, there became less room for things of a nonmusical nature.

The show was terrific. A packed audience and a really fun time. This was my last scheduled show until the series of Baton Rouge shows begins in early June, so I was glad to have a particularly good one to end on for now. There were a lot of CD sales, too, which is always nice. That's something that is often hard to predict... sometimes there might be a huge audience and a show that seems to go very well, but there aren't that many CD sales, for whatever reason, and sometimes there might be a small audience, but most of them buy multiple CDs. This one was a medium-sized audience and many of them bought CDs, and we nearly ran out of what we brought in with us. Woo hoo!

Karen and Aunt June had come to the show (they kept an eye on Becca and Evee while Roseann was soldering under the bus), and Karen's husband, Lance, met up with us afterwards and we went to Dairy Queen for lunch. We talked while the girls played on the playground there, then we all went back to Karen's. Roseann redid the soldering for the bus while I sorted through the box of mail we received from home (thanks, Jean!). It was mostly credit card offers and music catalogs and such, as expected, but I did receive a really awesome Yellow Submarine tie from Tito of The Hipwaders. How cool. Thanks, Tito! Roseann says I'm allowed to wear it to church and for some of my shows. (wink)

Evee had a nap while Becca and I went to the pool with Aunt June, Karen and her kids. The temperature reading on Karen's car thermometer said 106, so it was indeed a pleasure to jump into the pool. Roseann and Evee joined us after Evee's nap and we hung out there for quite a while. We went back for dinner and then I gave Lance a beginner's guitar lesson. He just bought a new guitar and was kind of looking for some direction as to how to get started with that. I showed him a few basic chords and about tuning and told him that at this point, it's going to be very painful on his fingers, especially with an acoustic guitar (I'm glad I learned on an electric!). He definitely has a good feel for strumming and positioning his left hand to make chords, so I think he'll do fine.

We drove back to the RV park and watched House and American Idol and went to bed. (Notice I didn't mention anything about being sick today?)