Eric Herman - Travelblogue: 2008 Spring/Summer Tour

My show this morning was at the Scotlandville library, and that went really well. We made a couple of stops on the way to the next show and then I had a sudden "Oh, noooooo!" realization... I had noticed a sign that said "Gonzales 14" and remarked to Roseann that this one was on the way to Gonzales, where we were last week, and then when I saw a sign that said we were in Prairieville it hit me, that we were going to the same place as my gig last week. Last week when we first got to the area, I had punched in all of the addresses for my upcoming gigs, and added a brief description to the end like "Wed10" or "Mon230", to indicate what day and time each one was. Well, when selecting where to go after the morning show, I saw "Thu2" at the end of one and thought that was it, when really it should have been "Thu230", which was way at the end of one of the lines, too far to be seen on the GPS display. When I realized what I had done, I chose the right location and discovered that it was over an hour away from where we now were and the estimated arrival time was 2:35, five minutes after the show was supposed to start! We called the librarian right away and told her what happened, and asked if she could set up a table with some crayons and paper and keep the kids busy until we got there. It was a branch (Pride-Chaneyville) that was out of the way from the city, and they weren't expecting more than a few kids, but we didn't want them to have to wait.

So we started driving and there were a lot of stop lights on the main road out there, and I was disappointed to see the ETA on the GPS creeping ever later, getting as late as 2:49 at one point, but then once we hit a stretch of 55 MPH, we gained most of that back and ended up arriving at 2:36. I set up everything in about 7 minutes (it's nice to know that I can set up that fast if I need to, but of course I'd much rather have the 45 minutes or so that I usually account for) and the show started at 2:45. There ended up being about 8-9 kids, more than they had expected, and we gave away a CD to all of the kids who had been there waiting since 2:30. All things considered, the show went great. Some kids were a little reticent to participate at first, which is sometimes more likely to be the case if there's a really small crowd like that, but they really got into it after a few songs, and the parents, too.

We went back to the RV park and I had a shower and Roseann gave the girls a bath. Becca noticed that one of her lower front teeth is really loose (another one is kind of loose, too), so she was excited about that, and a little nervous about it, too. That's a weird feeling, especially the first time it happens.

We went out to a fine Cajun restaurant called Boutin's, where Pabby had invited us to have dinner with her and some of the other librarians from the area. We had a really great time there. The food was delicious, and they had a band playing zydeco music (how can you not feel happy when that kind of music is playing?) and we all did some dancing, though we couldn't keep up with Becca and Evee. They also had a pond out back with more turtles than I've ever seen in my life. You could feed them some catfood and they would gather together or come up on the land to eat it, which the girls really enjoyed seeing.

We said goodnight to everyone and headed back to the RV park and went to bed.