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| Missoula |
We are on as of this date seven of our thirty-three days into this tour, with 2,200 miles and seven of our sixteen performances behind. We broke 200,000 miles on the odometer of our Ford Escape Hybrid this afternoon. I’m the tour manager. If anyone wonders why we have in past years missed important events such as family and class reunions and shared holidays, I can tell you that I begin planning these tours up to two years ahead and put countless hours into them before they even begin. This year we have a “cloud”-y assistant recommended by the sage of tour management, Mary McFaul. It is Google Sheets. As she points out, the columns on this app put the tour together in such a manner as to allow a tally of expenses versus gains, making the questions of whether the tour is financial folly clear at a glance.
That leads to the subject of how I make my decisions about lodging, which
is kind of an obsession for me. I’m not
one to leave to the last minute my plans for the place where I lay my head at
night. Call me insecure; that’s just who
I am. On this tour my motel reservations
weren’t determined strictly by price. I’m
thankful for on-line feedback as it helps me determine where to avoid noisy
rooms and bad beds. Sleep is ever-more
vital to our ability to perform these days.
So far so good; we’ve had only one noisy night in a motel.
The weather has been good too with no snow so far. A dark, rainy, late drive from Spokane to
Missoula is bound to be a little creepy over Lolo Pass in February but the
worst we had to worry about were big trucks on wet, winding, steep hairpin
curves. Today’s drive was a three –hour breeze
from Missoula to Bozeman. I make very
careful calculations to avoid long driving days that conclude with performances
as soon as we arrive. I recently heard
Lyle Lovett talk about this problem in a story about a tour he did with Guy
Clark. Exhaustion plays nasty tricks
with our concentration and memory skills. On this epic drive to Kansas City I’ve planned the last legs of the
journey with daylight drives not to exceed six hours. We both get some sort of circadian rhythm
affect at dusk that makes us dangerously sleepy behind the wheel. And that has nothing to do with how
well-rested we are at the beginning of the day.
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| My new costume for performing. |
Today I finally got good use from my new “costume” shoes
purchased for this trip. Much to my good luck
I see young women wearing just what I need for wading in parking lots full of
slush. Bozeman has such slush. Call them
clodhoppers or shit-kickers; Steve says those terms are synonymous. I bought them in the men’s department of a
shoe store and they were labeled “Heavy-duty steel-toed work boots”. Steve suggests we go dancing together in them
as his grace and agility on the dance floor are somewhat challenged. That is to say my toes would be safe.
Steve’s observations about Spokane couldn’t be
much different from mine. While there is
some truth to the notion that all Midwest towns look a bit the same, Spokane
has deep roots for me and each trip is a personal pilgrimage revealing something
new these days. For a few decades the
trips back were uneventful and unchanging until my family passed away. Then I began reaching out to discover the
city it had become in my willful ignorance as I had concentrated my attentions
all those years exclusively to them.
Suddenly I’m seeing so much I can’t help comparing to Tacoma
constantly. It’s growing and with the
growth I see more traffic, a larger homeless population, a much improved
downtown, wonderful public art, and generally a pretty similar demographic. There
are a few minor differences though. I speculate that the two most expensive
neighborhoods in each town are Spokane’s South Hill and Tacoma’s North
Slope. And I suspect that in Spokane
those aforementioned neighbors are mostly Republicans whereas in Tacoma they’re
Democrats. I should add that the most recent statistics
show Tacoma has more crime and twice the count of homeless people that Spokane
has. And I truly believe Tacoma's natural beauty makes Spokane pale in comparison, though Spokane's greater sunshine ratio can make everything look better. Of course I continue to ponder
whether I could or should have chosen Spokane over Tacoma as a home. At this point it looks like I could be
equally happy in either place, though I’m now firmly and happily anchored in Tacoma.
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