After we touched down in D.C., I grabbed a cab at the airport and headed off to my hotel. The route to the hotel took us by most of the major monuments in Washington. And although I had seen them many times before, I had never seen them at night. The stark white lighting which illuminated the monuments made them stand out even more than usual against the night sky. It had rained earlier in the day and the city looked clean and beautiful but I was tired and hungry and anxious to get to the hotel. By the time I finally got into my room it was a little past 10:00 pm and, of course, the first thing I did was call room service. Remember, the only thing I had to eat on the flight coming in was that wonderful Sourdough / Turkey surprise and a Bag 'o' Chips which was all washed down with a couple of Gin & Tonics and that was quite a while ago. I needed real food!

As I was calling room service, I noticed the message light on my phone was blinking. Ha! Did I say notice? You can't help but notice! Some of those message lights are like having a blinking left turn signal mounted on the night stand. Anyway, I had a hunch it was probably from some of the guys in the band. I was right. There were a couple of messages from McEntee and Zoot welcoming me to D.C. At this point I figured I would continue to unpack while I was waiting for room service and I could call them after I had procured some nourishment, which came to my room in the form of a Margarita pizza and a cold beer. What can I say, choices get slim at that time of night.

After wolfing down the beer and pizza, I gave a call to the guys and we naturally ended up hanging out together for another hour or so catching up on all we had been or had not been doing as well as all that had or had not happened to each of us since we'd last seen each other. Although we were pretty excited about seeing each other again and about getting on stage for the production rehearsal the following day, we were also pretty tired from the long travel day and mutually agreed it was time to catch some Z's. So, each of us retired to our temporary road dwellings to get some well deserved rest. It had been a long and exciting day but I was ready to crash and as I fell asleep hearing a loop of the set list playing in my head, I thought to myself, "Yes, we're definitely shifting into Road Mode." Now it begins.

More later............... Botts

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