Well I made it through all the shows in South America without getting sick.
That was an accomplishment I thought considering all the intense travel and unusual conditions we had to deal with. I DID get sick however on the way back to Caracas after all the gigs were over. When we were about 40 minutes from Caracas I came down with a very bad stomach virus and the details are to upsetting to mention in this diary!
What is not upsetting is the fact that the Venezuelan show rocked!! What a great way to end the tour. The audience was intense and totally into it. There are some things that you never think about I’m sure when you come and see us play, like my riser for instance! When I walked onto it for sound check my first thought was that I would fall through it if I bounced up and down! It was so shaky.
Ace tech to the rescue of course. Robert found a way to fix it before the show started – thankfully! The other kinda strange thing that happened behind the scenes has to do with food. It was not a good food day! Usually I try to eat very healthy but I was really thrown off track today. Snickers bar for breakfast starting things off badly. When I got to the venue there were hot dogs and hamburgers for the catering.
I tried to bite into it the two choices but got grossed out pretty quickly.
So I ordered McDonald’s. That arrived after sound check and was grosser then any of the other choices. So before the show I had 2 or 3 carrot sticks from our veggie tray!
After the show we all ordered Tony Roma’s. That was really exciting to the band and the crew. It’s the little things on the road that seem to matter!
When we were ready to leave, we all said our goodbyes to our crew and piled in one of these 10 person type vans for the 3 hour drive back to Caracas. We did not make it back to the airport hotel until about 3:30 in the morning. That was tough, but even more tough was waking up at 6:00AM to go to the airport!
When we got to the airport it was a very busy scene. Everyone in Venezuela was leaving for their Easter vacation obviously. It was strange waiting in line and feeling that delirious!
All in all the SA tour was a big success. The shows were awesome and it seems like SA is really a Dream Theater hot spot! It is a bit rough traveling there though because for a person like me who likes to walk around the places I visit, the cities don’t lend themselves easily for that type of adventure. Some of them seem a little dangerous or unknown (I did venture out in a couple of places though).
Now I am home and recovering from the tour. Starting to re-learn some LTE for the shows in June and the web cast for Keyboard magazine on March 27th!
That’s it for now!