2008 Spring/Summer Tour - Day 103

We went to Karen's for breakfast, then drove over to the mall. The ladies and girls all went shopping together while my Dad, Peter and I went to see Indiana Jones movie. I've always been a big fan of that series, and my father and I went to see the first three movies together, so we had to go this time while we had the chance. I thought it started out really well, but kind of lost steam after a while and wasn't quite as good as the other three, though still very entertaining.

After the movie, Christina and Peter came with us in the bus to my show at the Ute Pass Library in Cascade. This was the one branch I didn't get to perform for the last time we came through here in the spring of 2007, and it turned out to be a really tiny library, probably among the three or four smallest I've played in. But there ended up being 27 people in the audience, which the librarian said was a huge crowd for that place, and they were a lot of fun and very enthusiastic. I did another "bug songs" show (most of my shows coming up in the next couple of weeks will be that program) and it went much smoother than it had in Tulsa, though I'm still working out a few details with the transitions and patter.

Cascade is actually quite a bit higher up than the main part of Colorado Springs, which is already one of the highest elevations in the U.S., and I definitely felt the difficulty of performing at my usual level of activity in the high altitude. When we came here in 2007 I made the mistake of booking four shows a day over the four days we were here. I had been to Colorado Springs a few other times over the years and knew of the altitude situation, but when we got to town I thought, ah, I feel fine! But halfway through the first song of my first show, I realized that it really effects you most when you exert yourself (it makes sense that the US Olympic training facilities are here). I remember singing "Hot Sand" and doing my usual frenetic running through the audience and thinking, whoa, am I moving in slow motion, or what? It always seemed to be the first show of the day that was the hardest, and then I was okay, so tomorrow I'll have to drink some water and have a Power Bar before the first show. That seemed to help last time.

After the show, we stopped at Walmart and the post office before going back to Karen's, where we had dinner and talked for quite a while as the girls did some chalk drawings on the driveway. They made everyone's names in our family (who is currently here), with corresponding pictures. Afterwards, we broke out the sparklers we had picked up for the girls (on July 5th) and Becca, Evee and Peter enjoyed waving those around.

We said "goodnight" and headed back to the RV park and went to bed pretty quickly.

An appropriate shirt that Karen picked out for Becca...