The Garden State

Mobile wi-fi is so cool! Being able to do this on the road makes so much of a difference, all of a sudden I have so much time to do things that I might not do if I had to do it when we were off the bus. Of course I’m not getting any of my book read but there’s always time for that. Yesterday…. Our bellies full of NY bagels, our band of rabble rousers bid adieu to our gracious and effervescent host, Mark, leaving him with bountiful amounts of M4 gear, and lots of hugs. We cruised over the Hudson River via the George Washington Bridge, and into the Garden State, New Jersey. The ride was fairly quick, about an hour later we pulled up to the doorstep of yet another fabulous and gracious host, Carolyn. She is a friend of our Portland family member, Yvonne. (Yvonne is the best! She makes us food at practice, sews us blankets and pillows for the bus, and does MANY other amazing things) As a 30 person band of -ahem- energetic people, when you pull up to some random woman’s house in the middle of New Jersey, it’s good to asses the situation and feel out what is a proper behavior for the current environment. Well right away we knew we had nothing to worry about, she gathered us all together in the driveway and set the rules: no peeing in the hot tub, no smoking in bed, don’t let the cat out, and give the dog a cookie every time you come in until he gets fat or pukes. We got along with her famously. She lives right on a river and estuary, affording a beautiful view and she had a speedboat and paddle boat docked off the back porch (none of which we had time to use) She and her daughter Kim and her granddaughter Shayna had prepared a feast for us. We ate well and then headed off to the show, Carolyn in the bus with the band. Our show was at a place called Asbury lanes, a bowling alley that has a stage right in the middle of the lanes. It was so cool! The audience took a little warming up and by the end they LOVED us! One man came up to me and said in a thick Joisey accent,’ my friend told me there was a crazy marching band here, so he calls me up and says, come on down, and a boom and a bing and here I am!’ And of course after we had all the bowling rounds we could ask for. After the show and bowling, a few of us walked to the beach, which happened to be a block away. It was a perfect Atlantic beach, complete with wooden boardwalk. I was worried we were gonna get whacked by a made man but Jason said that probly wouldn’t happen. ☺ He was thinking we might find some washed up bodies but I said they usually dumped them in the Hudson.
There seems to be some sort of illness going around, people are dropping like flies. It is some sort of cold or flu; we have a few people down right now. So everyone is taking all sorts of immune boosters and trying to get lots of sleep (yea right!) when we got home several of us took advantage of the hot tub… it was amazing!
Today we are driving to DC where we play a free show at the Kennedy center. We just stopped at flying J to clean out the potty… ech! We have a woman on board from NPR’s Morning Edition, she is doing a piece on March Fourth… so keep an eye out for it! I am looking forward to the show tonight, my friend Jessica from high school lives in Washington DC now and I think she is coming to the show! I haven’t seen her in like 10 years so it will be a real treat. Right now we are cruising down the highway, somewhere in Delaware or Maryland, cruising the internet and listening to last night’s show….2007!