Day Off in Atlanta

Woke up at 4:20am on the bus because the air went out. Steve had forgotten to turn on the generator A/C system before he shut off the main engine. When I made it to the front of the bus to see what was going on, I was told that we had bigtime engine problems. He was trying to see if he could duct tape enough of it together to get us to Atlanta.

I went straight back to my bunk. Ten minutes later, he cranked up the engine, then the A/C.

Got to the hotel around 11:30. Steve had to take the bus in for emergency engine repairs. We may or may not have the bus back in time for it to take us to the venue tomorrow morning.

Several folks tell me about the shenanigans that went on in the back lounge late last night. Lots of folks stayed up real late and got real drunk. Whole lotta liquor drinkin' goin' on. Evidently (unnamed audio tech) was shooting off his mouth about Sooner, our LD (and a simply lovely young lady), dropping the ball on a cue during the show. Fine, but he kept it up. Our head security guy, Marcel, told him to back off, at which point he shot his mouth off at Marcel. Call me crazy, but Marcel is a 5'10", 260 pound, former military, extremely muscular man. I am certainly not going to tell Marcel to go fuck himself. (Unnamed audio tech), in his drunken, belligerent condition, wasn't capable of exercising such restraint. So Marcel beat his ass. Right there in the back lounge of the bus. Our rigger Knuckles had to pull him off of (unnamed audio tech).

Big fun on the tour bus!

Spent the afternoon putzing around the room. Watched a couple of TV shows on my computer.

Just before 6pm, Brent Carpenter (our monitor engineer) and I met in the lobby to walk down the street to Carrabba's, where we met my buddy Chris and his wife Leslie for dinner. Chris is the Marketing and Media Manager at the Gwinnett Arena, where we're playing tomorrow. He used to be my personal trainer back home in Raleigh back in '97 and '98. That dude tortured me and got me in the best shape of my life. Sure wish he was still a trainer.

So anyway, the four of us sat there for 4½ hours drinking and eating and talking. Drank a shitload of beer - strangely enough, in full rounds. Everybody was toe-to-toe, beer-for-beer, the whole night. Got tore up from the floor up. And lucky enough for me, I was back in my room by 10:45.