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Journal Excerpts: From 1997-1999 Online Journal, Oklahoma 8/31/97. The philharmonic started its season last night with its annual outdoors concert at a local arts festival. For some reason, as I was driving home, the image of the memorial service for the victims of the OKC bombing came to my mind. I was remembering playing my violin as the President, the First Lady, Janet Reno and the rest of their entourage entered the auditorium. When I came home I learned that Princess Diana had just been killed an hour earlier in an automobile accident. This morning as I was watching the coverage of the tragedy, the term "dead princess" prompted me to take a look at the CD the orchestra produced as a result of the bombing. Ironically, the music we were playing as the President was entering the auditorium was entitled "Pavane for a Dead Princess". 06/14/98 ...The weather has been weird too. One day last week it was 107 degrees. The next day 65. It's really quite spring like actually. We've had several thunderstorms as well. Nothing however, was as bad as last night. I was playing an outdoor gig with the band. We were expecting that we'd have to pack up early in the event of rain but we were starting to think it was all north of us. Then suddenly we heard the sirens go off and Joe's wife runs out and says there's a tornado a mile away. We went inside to catch the weather, where I was noticing that a really bad cell was passing over my apartment on the other side of town. We disbanded early and I headed home. On my way, I saw from the highway where a tornado had just made a path. It was awful. It reminded me of after the bombing. There were roofs ripped off of the houses, trees broken in half, debris all over the roadway, a semi truck had been tossed over along with a car or two in the ditch and the fence along the highway was twisted. When I got home, I found that the tornado had passed south of my apartment by one mile. This storm was really horrible too. There were several tornadoes in this one cloud system. It had also hit an amusement park that was in operation. Those people were so lucky to have survived. 07/22/98 Wow, what a whirlwind vacation! ... We got into Colorado Springs around 1 am and found a cheap motel. ... We had to check out at 10 am so we had to wake up earlier than felt right. My sister was tired and grouchy so I opened up the hotel door and told her to look outside. We had a spectacular view of the mountains! We nibbled on some muffins and checked out then headed to Pikes Peak. Now I know this is a *tourist* thing, and I was hesitant but I'm glad went! The rental car did great scaling the 14,000 ft. mountain in overdrive. It was fun driving the car over the timber line and seeing snow. When we got to the top it was unbelievable. The air was thin, as expected. But it was strange to see children and pets, who normally jump around with obnoxious energy, going around as if in a trance. You couldn't walk very fast up there and it was like everyone was in slow motion. It was the most amazing etherial feeling. The view was spectacular and we both took alot of photos, as well as picking up the mandatory souvenirs. When we got back down the mountain, we had sandwiches in the car and drove west. We took a small highway down to Cripple Creek, which is like a turn of the century mining town you might see in a cowboy movie. We didn't stop but we got an eyefull. There was a group of horsebackriders who we had to wait for while they crossed the road. My sister, the horse nut, loved the minor inconvenience. Next, we took the Phantom Canyon road South towards Florence. The unpaved canyon road was the scariest bit of driving I've ever experienced and the most beautiful road I've ever been on in my life. My sister had the optimum view as passenger, getting to see the dramatic drop offs on one side of the road and the tall rocky mountain sides on the other And at the bottom were tall pines and aspens clustered around a beautiful creek that wound through the canyon. As I said, the road was unpaved and it was dangerous as hell. There were no gaurdrails, and there was only room for one car really, but cars would come from the other direction and scare the hell out of you. Every curve was either downhill or uphill and the radius of the curves was extremely tight. I was driving in overdrive for control, but I could have easily at any moment gone off the edge of the road. At the same time I was trying to negotiate curves, I was also trying to see the scenery. There were a couple of places in the road where it actually went right into a mountain side and the tunnel was dark and rocky. Those tunnels were definately large enough for only 1 car, so I was always on the lookout for oncoming cars. At one point my car and and a van came face to face and we didn't have room to pass. There was a car behind me too and I couldn't go forward. Finally, the van passed us so close that I could have whispered in the driver's ear. When we got to the other side, we drove to Canon city and got a room. We went for Chinese food, had a few beers and crashed. 11/22/98 ...Ok, now for the really cool stuff. Our band opened for Leon Russell last night. For those too young to know who he is, he's a rocker from the 70s who's still touring. Now, I've had fun with the band playing bar gigs and especially arts festivals, but this was my first rock concert. Not only did it go great, but is it ok to say....I kicked ass?! At least that is what I was told. I was too nervous to worry about it at the time. I just wanted the audience to not feel like "ho..hum....another opening band...when does the real show start". I wanted them to think that being local doesn't mean we can't be as good as the rest. It was so cool to have people hollering after I'd take a solo in the middle of the song! (sorry, I'm just not used to that, and it happened several times). Then, during our last song, Joe was introducing us. I played my break and when he announced me they cheered really loud. It was awesome, baby!!! Right after we left, we had to go play a 4-hour bar gig. I had a back-ache, neck-ache, killer headache, and was hungry. Needless to say, I was roadkill by the end of the night. |