Saturday, October 25, 2008

Prague to Houston

My Alarms went off at 3:00 am.... The Iphone Alarm, The Travel Alarm, The Television alarm, all of them screaming at me to get out of bed.
I got to sleep around midnight, so, three hours just wasn't enough. Some of the guys believe the best way is to stay up all night when you have such an early flight, but I have always thought... if you can get an hour or two of sleep, you should take it.

My flight was at 6:00 am and I fell asleep before we even took off. Landed in Frankfurt and had to go out through security and then back through Security and passport control to get to my next flight to Houston. I finally got to the Lufthansa Business Lounge and found a couple of small turkey sandwiches to wolf down. Boy they were tasty.. a little spicy mustard and a few small glasses of coke, and it was time to board the plane.
I changed into some pajama pants and then took my seat against the window and read my Clive Cussler novel, "Skeleton Coast"
I read to keep myself sleepy, but I didn't want to fall asleep until we had taken off because I wanted to sleep in the reclining position. As soon as we hit the air, I put the seat in the flattest position it would go and crashed for about 4 hours.
I missed the first meal that they served so, I was glad about getting a turkey sandwich for sure.
The flight went without any problems, and I landed in Houston 10 hours from when I left Frankfurt. I took a cab to the hotel from the airport that took about 40 minutes and found that they did not have a reservation for me.
I decided to deal with that later, and went up to the ball room to see how far the crew had gotten along.
I was pleasantly surprised with the progress they had made, so I went back down to the concierge and mailed my passport to Rick in NJ Fedex Priority Saturday delivery. Rick is going to take our Passports into NY on Monday and get us Chinese Visas for Shanghai.

We finished setting up and I finally got to take a shower and then had a burger in the bar with Matt and Joe.
After a quick dinner, I fell right to sleep and woke up around 3:00 am.. turned over and went back to sleep till about 5:00 am.

Call was at 6:30 so, I went to the ballroom and fired up the sound system and did a couple of mic checks.
Now we are in the show and it is going very well.
Here is the view from my hotel room last night. I know it is not the greatest shot ever, but I liked the sunset, so I snapped off a frame or two... then realized I needed sleep more than I needed the perfect shot.

Houston Sunset

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Steve, I'm enjoying your dispatches from the road. Quick question: How do you get your gig bag from venue to venue in in a travel situation like you just described. I assume you can't bring it on the plane. Do you check it with your luggage? Do you ship ahead via FedEx? Do you bring it at all?

Thanks again for sharing your stories,
Lee

Michael S. said...

Hey Steve,

Mega traveler! When it rains it pours huh? Look forward to seeing you all in Singapore and heading out on a few photo missions!

Stay safe :)