Austin via San Antonio

Saturday morning I said goodbye to Mick. His flight was a few hours after I had to leave on the bus. It was a good visit and I am glad that we were able to work it out for him to get here. Once on the bus I was finally able to test out my new headphones and once again I will say they are amazing! If you travel a lot this is worth the money…but I digress…we were on our way back to San Antonio to play two shows. I was hoping to connect with another college friend (Paul, Shay’s best friend from BU) but due to my schedule and wanting to be on stage early I didn’t get a chance to catch up with him.  Up until now we had had mostly the main assistant conductor, Lucas, as our director. Mark(another assistant conductory) subbed in a few times but today we were finally getting to work with the tour’s main conductor, Dirk Brosse. I think we were all a little nervous about playing for him and it seemed as though everyone was on their best behavior! The two shows went by quickly. Funny thing though. We are not allowed to have our cell phones on stage with us….this seems like it would be an obvious thing but they announce it almost every night! During intermission of the second show I went back to the women’s dressing room and looked at my phone for any messages that Mick may have sent saying he made it back to Chicago. He still hadn’t arrived yet but I did have a face book message from an old friend of my sister's, Melissa. Tasha had sent me a message saying she was at a Star Wars in Concert show and could have sworn she saw me on the screen! I tried to email her right back and have her meet me at the stage but the cell phone service in a concrete dressing room isn’t so hot. We didn’t get to meet up but she’s planning on coming to another show out East. Lesson learned here? Let me know ahead of time and we can meet up!

View from my room in Austin.  Pretty much the only picture I took these two days!

After the San Antonio show we hopped back on the buses and drove straight to Austin. A bunch of people were going out for “pride” day….there was a hug block party I guess. I really wanted to go but I was feeling pretty under the weather so I instead decided to eat at the Friday’s in hotel and go to bed. I had high hopes for seeing some of Austin but with a double the day we drove in and a double that Sunday AND getting ready to leave for Mexico Monday…I just didn’t have it in me to go out and see anything. I guess I will have to put it on the “come back here” list.

Shows to date: 20
Number of hotels stayed to date: 16
Best hotel to date: Omni Hotel, Ft. Worth TX (though the Embassy Suites in SD Bay had the best view!)
Miles traveled to date: 7,242