100 Pictures of the Caribbean, Airplane Wings, and a Barn

Crazy week of gigs! Tuesday was a travel day, Wednesday was a corporate gig in Nevis (waaaay down in the Caribbean), Thursday was a travel day, Friday was Thriller, and Saturday was a wedding in Bogart, GA. Here we go:

Tuesday: A painful day spent in planes, taxis, and boats, all the while fighting some sort of achy sickness--not quite a cold, but some sort of fever and discomfort. Definitely not a great day to get up at 4:30 AM and head to the airport.

We flew Atlanta to Miami, then changed airlines/gates/terminals and flew Miami to St. Kitts, which is almost all the way to Venezuela. Quite a long ride in a small seat.

After customs and baggage claim, we piled into a couple of taxi vans for the ride down to meet the water taxi.

not the water taxi

After a 20 minute ride, we docked at the Four Seasons Nevis and were taken to our individual rooms. I made the perfunctory call home and then crashed for several hours. I awoke around 10 PM, approximately an hour after everybody else had called it a night.

clever

My late night wake up meant that I'd missed any chance of food (other than buffalo wings or a hamburger through room service), so I made a meal out of things in the kitchenette/coffee station thing in my room.

I went back to sleep around midnight and tried to shake whatever was ailing me.

Wednesday: Up around 9:30 AM and feeling a bit better, I attempted to run up the shoulder of Nevis' main mountain. It didn't go very well; a combination of sick, not eating well for lunch or dinner on Tuesday, not eating breakfast Wednesday morning, the incline, and the heat crushed me.

Monkeys on the 10th fairway!

there were also goats

the view

the tunnel under the main island road

Soooooo...I had my own room at the Four Seasons Nevis. Obviously, it's one of the nicest hotel rooms I've ever been in.

the view off my balcony

A few more pictures of the resort, you ask?

Oh yeah! So, at some point we DID have to go to work. We played a corporate party (revival style with the yacht rock "originals"--Robbie Dupree, Elliott Lurie, Matthew Wilder, and Peter Beckett) in the cultural center of the main town on the island. This was a pretty snazzy little set up that made me slightly less angry about the local crew setting up the backline almost completely wrong for me--it would've been faster for them to open the cases and just step aside.

Anyway, we got it all worked out, and the gear wasn't too rough and everything worked, so all is forgiven.

This was kind of amazing to me: the backline came from Puerto Rico and it worked. I thought the whole island was closed for business until further notice, but the gear worked just fine.

The green room hang:

Monkeyboy's new guitar pedalboard

The gig was pretty good--it's always a good time playing with the old guys, and our set without them was equally strong. Happy client, and we ended pretty early (10:30, maybe?), so I could quickly return to my bed.

 Thursday: Our travel day in reverse! But first, one more attempt to run up the mountain! I was marginally better than Wednesday morning. The monkeys were out again, but I didn't get any good pictures.

steeeeeeeeeeeep

We had a noon lobby call, and by 12:45 we were down at the dock, boarding the water taxi back to St. Kitts.

not the water taxi

in the taxi van

the St. Kitts International Airport

refrigerator magnet

back over Florida

over the Everglades

over Miami

deplaning

We had time to eat dinner in Miami at a really terrible Mexican place, and then it was time to run on board the flight back to Atlanta.

crazy condensation on the plane

leaving Miami

 Home by 1 AM.

Friday: Our annual performance of Michael Jackson's Thriller at the Variety Playhouse! Success! The gig sold out, we had Keisha and Kourtney on background vocals plus a horn section, and I got almost all of my keyboard parts right.

Here's video in case you couldn't make it:

Saturday: Ouch. We had a long wedding in Bogart, GA (south of Athens). The venue was a real live Playskool barn with super cool neon signs with an easy load in/load out, and the catering (Bold American) was superb. Painless gig. Ganesh Giri Jaya did a good job filling in for Mark Cobb.

Check back in a week to find out how trip to Greece(!) was.