Sunday, July 13, 2008

July 13 Load in and move out

Sir Galehad (Miles)
Freckle Face makes 4,000,000,000 Balloon animals
Princess Amelia takes in liesure time with a dart toss...she won a samll dolphin.
(The nice carney lady let her do it for free...Victor Jr too)

I suppose today started last night after our last show in London. We performed daily at 6:30 PM, 8 PM, and 10:30 PM…not to do hard as our bodies are on West coast time. London is on Eastern Time (strange thing about Kentucky the time change line is right smack down the center of Kentucky. That means our day is ending in the Central time zone in Bowling Green…but I am getting ahead of myself.

The last show ended at 11:30 and we spent the next couple of hours tearing down the stage, tents, and baking them and all the tricks, and equipment into the trailer. Actually Jim and Miles did most of the loading…dad took the Princesses and Victor Jr back to the hotel to get a jump on sleep. Packing up, especially when there is a stage involved is no simple task. You have to use you back, legs, arms, shoulders and head. By head I mean everything has to be loaded in a smart fashion or the trailer will wobble down the road with an uneven load. The trailer has to start off empty since the four 4X8 stage units that once stood 18” tall but now are only 4” tall with the legs folded have to go in first then the rest….carefully and thoughtfully. What made this load up a bit tougher is that it had rained earlier in the day so the tents, back drop and stage were still moist. ( That moisture can turn to mold if we don’t unpack it and air it out soon….fortunately we will use it all at Beech Bend Park in Bowling Green. )

Sleep came quickly and easily.

We slept late…almost until noon. Today we took it easy with our drive. Before leaving London we had a quick stop to the Walmart then off on the 2 hour drive. Ooops almost forgot to mention the real last stop in London. Right off hwy 75 at exit 41 is Dog Patch Trading Post where anything Hillbilly can be had. Albeit most of it made in China. We did get a real made in the USA little brown jug and post cards.

Two and a half hours later we are in Bowling Green, KY. Our hotel (provide by the Park) is a little non-brand joint. No morning b-fast and no microwaves or fridges. To our credit we carry a microwave, a George Foreman grill, coffee pot and hot plate. The place is clean, relatively quiet (so far) and the house keepers leave the bible open to their favorite pages in the bible on the table in the room.

We dropped our show off at the park and after a tour decided to set our show up in the old carousel gazebo thingy. It was that or share with two other magic acts on an already crowed stage. The two other acts are a 4-man (two guts and two gals---early college age?) who sing and do three illusions), the second is a short man and a beautiful girl- his name is Dinky Gowan. His act was well received and fun. He reminds me of Danny Banaducci. I met him while we were setting up. Seems like a nice guy….I will get pix later.
We will do three stage shows daily and some strolling to help make the days more entertaining. We will start each day meeting and greeting folks at the front gate in our strolling gear.

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