Rose Lane found her gown this morning at Luly Lang, a store right next to the hotel that wasn’t open yesterday. It fits her just right and looks fantastic…now we’re ready to boogie at the White House! She had to have one minor alteration done, which was taken care of in an hour and we were ready to load up and go to Portland.
Arrived in Portland in the late evening, and we had dinner with our friends Scott and Keith Jones. Blondie Chaplin joined us for a while as did Bernard. We really only had appetizers…several of which we passed around sharing between us. We wound up in Scott’s hotel room staying up rather late talking about music, politics and such. Didn’t go to bed until about 3 a.m…late for Chuck and Rosie!
Last night we gained an hour due to the “fall back” time change for daylight savings time. It was nice to have the extra hour to just take our time getting up. Ordered coffee and read the paper…lots in there about the recent scandal of Louis “Scooter” Libby, VP Dick Cheney’s Chief of Staff that has been indicted on purgery and false statement charges concerning the Valerie Plame CIA case. There was also an article about Prince Charles and Camilla coming to the US. I went to the fitness room and did an hour on the treadmill. Thank heaven my foot has gotten a lot better and I can now get back into long walks and jogging a bit. I just hope this nodule thing…whatever it is…doesn’t come back on me. I can still feel it a little, but it’s definately gotten a whole lot better.
After that Rose Lane and I went to look for her an evening gown to wear at the upcoming White House dinner in DC. Being Sunday, not all the stores were open, but we did find some that were. However, it was not a successful venture. The gowns we found were either not right or not her size. So we’ll have to try again tomorrow morning before we leave. She does have a dress with her that might work and she was going to go try it on and see about it as I was leaving to go to the Key arena. I arrived at the venue and as I was a good couple of hours earlier than the band, I went to our dressing room where it was really nice and quiet and managed to get in about a half our nap before working on the set list. We had planned on a sound check, but Mick cancelled it earlier this afternoon.
There were quite a few celebs in the backstage at the show. Ryan Stiles, the great comedian on “Who’s Line Is It Anyway?” was there, and as Motley Crue opened, Tommy Lee and Pamela were around. Allan White, drummer with Yes, Ian McKellum (the famous English actor) as well as top executives from Starbucks Coffee and others were milling about. I got to meet Stiles…I’m a big fan.
Motley Crue had quite a lot of….”extras” going on during their performance. Girls scantily clad as nurses and some “little people” on the stage. It made for a circus atnosphere, and the crowd was livened up when we took the stage. The show rocked steady and hard, a total groove.
Got up, did the gym thing and showered to get ready for a meeting with Dan Lowe and his son Michael. Dan has a couple of Calgary-based companies on the leading edge of some entertainment technology. My writer/director friend Jeff Craig – who helped me with my memoirs, Between Rock and a Home Place (buy it here from my online store!) told me about the company and suggested I might meet with him while we were there. Jeff has suggested to them that I be on board as a consultant, which would be interesting. Rose Lane and I went down to the lobby to meet Dan and Michael at 1 p.m. and we went to the hotel restaurant for lunch. Had a really good meeting, listening to him talk about what they are into and what the possibilities are.
Rose Lane and I had just enough time to walk around before doing the final packing of our carry on luggage…so we went out to stroll around downtown Calgary for a bit. We ran across a cool Western store called Lammle’s. I bought a couple of pair of black Wrangler jeans and a John Deere T-shirt, and we bought a couple of other t-shirts for presents for Mike and Mark back home. We didn’t have a whole lot of time, but we did manage to walk around just a bit more before we had to go back to the hotel, check out and meet everyone to take the bus to the airport. The flight to Seattle was pretty short, about an hour…but as we had to wait to go through customs in Seattle, we were on the ground for another good hour before we could head to the Fairmont Olympic hotel. We finally got through all the formalities and arrived at the hotel around 5. Our friends David and Diane Russell were to meet us for dinner, so I called him to confirm everything. It was all set, so we had a bit of down time to relax before meeting them. They arrived at the hotel at 8 and we all walked to the Union restaurant a few blocks away.
David is a consultant for wine merchants and we’ve had some wonderful times in the past going to restaurants and wine tastings with him. He selected a Santa Barbara white to begin, and a French red to compliment our dinner. We caught up on our respective lives and had a nice time. Rose Lane and I headed back to our hotel as they did, and it was lights out.
First show in a week. I did my “morning” stuff…finally making it to the gym which was a relief (not having worked out in six days). Had some emails and phone calls to deal with, and decided to go down to the gig early, leaving at 3. It was good to see all the crew after the short break, and I greeted them as I entered the venue and came across them a few at the time. This is a large arena…the Pengrowth Saddledome. I walked around a bit, finally settling into my dressing room and went ahead with writing up a set list. The guys arrived a couple hours later and we did a sound check. Ran over Rocks Off, Rain Fall Down (tried a new ending that worked better), and a couple of others. Good to see everyone and to play after the break. The band hasn’t played here in decades…never since I’ve been with them, as far as I know. So I made the list with a few more well known numbers thinking they would like to hear that. Gig was smooth and it was a great feeling to be back together rockin’ and rollin’!
We had a reasonable flight time out of NY…a 1:30 flight. Tracy had arranged for a car to take us from the Surrey to Laguardia airport at 11:30. We had done most of the packing the night before, so it was just a matter of throwing the last few things in the suitcases in the morning. I also had two more interviews to do by phone, one … well, it’s lost among the dozens I’ve been doing … and the other in Omaha, Nebraska. I took care of those and we called the bellman to come get our luggage. The car was waiting and we loaded up, headed to the airport. We did hit some unexpected traffic which caused me to worry a bit about getting there on time, but after we crossed the bridge it all broke up and we got there in plenty of time. We boarded the Air Canada flight to Toronto and were on our way. Had a connection in Toronto for the flight to Calgary, made that fine and found ourselves in Calgary in the late evening, and to the Hyatt Regency around 8pm. We laid back in the room for a little while before going down to one of the hotel restaurants, The Catch, for dinner.
Afterwards back in the room I found my mandolin and pulled it out and piddled around with it for an hour or so before my eyes started closing and I headed to bed.
