My First Day Off

Today marked my first day off. Some people would consider this a perfect time for a little “R & R” but it has been marked with boredom and procrastination (though certainly not on my part). I awoke at 10 this morning in a parking lot somewhere in New York state and began working on re-mastering the past three shows on a company laptop. A couple of hours later, my companions awoke and decided that it was perhaps time to get on the road seeing as we have a 6 hour drive ahead of us excluding traffic surrounding New York City.

Simple math would put us at our destination around 8pm, right? Wrong. It is now 8:30pm and I write as we speed down the interstate towards the Big Apple. Our estimated time of arrival: midnight. Our departure in earnest was delayed by a stop at Friendly’s, a chain mixed with Denny’s, Cracker Barrel, and Baskin Robbins, and a detailed hands-on lesson in a motorhome’s holding tank unsoiling, as it were. Both experiences were about the same if you catch my drift…

Tomorrow is Tuesday. Tuesdays among the Allman Brothers Band crew means Hawaiian shirt day (so if you want to go ahead and wear a Hawaiian shirt and, uh, jeans). Rumor has it that the uglier the shirt the better. FOH assistant Michael Jackson reputedly got his Hawaiian shirt for $4.99 in a gas station in West Virginia. Therefore, I believe the prized Hawaiian shirt just may have a NASCAR theme. The reason this does not bode well for yours truly is that I do not own a Hawaiian shirt. Even if I did, I would never have found any reason to pack it among the jeans and t-shirts I did choose to bring along. I will apparently be very out of place and may very well receive ridicule tomorrow for it (how ironic).

I’ve spent years of my life distancing myself from this fashion faux pas and now I will be committing one without such an article. How embarrassing, though for whom I’m honestly not sure. If cameras were not viciously banned from the stage at all times, I would sneak as many photos as I could but alas, I will have to rely on the one thousand words instead.

Stay tuned for stories of Long Island, NY. Hopefully it is as funny to a Southern boy as I’ve dreamed. I’m praying for gold chains, slicked back or spiked up hair, muscle tees, huge sunglasses, and tans that would make George Hamilton seem pale. If that doesn’t happen, then I suppose I’ll tell stories of funny shirts from our nation’s youngest state.