Major Harrisburg

It's raining, of course. The rooms are not ready yet, and it's 9:00 a.m., so we wait on the bus and drink coffee and watch the Weather Channel. I guess there's a top-notch Civil War museum here, but I'm not much into it. Think I'll take it easy today and read my book...

Well, I moved into the lobby for a while and finally got a room at 11:45. Nothing like wasting the entire morning waiting for a shower. We're usually at the mercy of how busy the hotel is and how fast housekeeping gets the rooms cleaned, and on days like today, it takes a long time. The showers at the venue last night were rather nasty, and I prefer to be cleaner after a shower than before, so I planned on taking one this morning. This is the unglamorous side of the business we call "Livin' the Dream".

The good news is that it stopped raining (woo hoo!) and the wireless internet access in the room is free and much faster than the bus internet. The room is fine, nice king-sized bed, large desk and the usual Crowne Plaza ammenities. They are offering a Sony Dream Machine radio/CD player, earplugs, eye mask, lavender armotherapy spray and a "sleep CD" full of relaxing sounds and whatnot, so I'm burning it on to my MP3 player to use it on the bus. That's kinda neat, though I usually don't need too much help getting to sleep after a show. Maybe I can use it on airplanes.

I was talking yesterday about how much of the everyday physical space is shared by my crewmates, and it brought to mind my theory of why it's nice to spend a day off away from the pack. Every experience is shared out here - the weather, the food, the gig, the TV shows, the movies - everything. Sometimes there is simply nothing to talk about because everybody in the potential listening audience was witness to the topic at hand. It does make for the opportunity to tell more "war stories" and tales from other tours and and provides a forum to discuss different artists, musicians, crew guys and their quirks, but recapping the current day's events is almost pointless. It's good to spend a day off in small groups or alone. There are eight of us living in a 45-foot long metal tube, we need to get away from each other on a regular basis.