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TUESDAY, AUGUST 2ND:
I got up early
and hit the little “gym”. At least there were some free weights in there and I
was the only one in the room.
Had breakfast and then we “sat around” until 2:30 when we docked in Bergen.
But, there was a surprise “highlight” – there was a refinery on the Starboard
side right before we reached Bergen!!!!
We took a bus from the ship to the airport and got checked in on time. Short
flight from Bergen to Oslo and then another short flight from Oslo to
Stockholm. Kjell – my promoter – was there to meet us. We waiting for a couple
of hours for one musician to arrive and then we drove to the hotel in Furuvik.
Now it’s almost 3 am and I’m still up working. The big group from Nashville and
Texas arrives very early tomorrow morning. Guess I’d better try to grab a
couple of hours sleep before they get here. J
WEDNESDAY,
AUGUST 3RD:
Up early for a meeting and then to meet the big group coming in from the U.S.
Everyone made it “on time”. Patricia and I rushed downtown on the crazy little
bikes that the hotel rents. These are the bright red cycles with tiny front
tires and big back tires. Seems you have to pedal twice as much to get anywhere
and the seats are definitely HARD. We spent too much time looking at the
clothes and had to hurry back to the hotel to get ready for our trip to the Park
to “meet” the animals.
I was excited because there is a new “baby” in the park this year. It’s a
chimpanzee that they have “rescued”. Her mother died when she was born and the
other chimpanzees won’t accept someone else’s baby. So Inge-Marie (who is the
awesome lady who takes care of the animals at the Furuvik Park) agreed to take
her. A baby must stay on its’ mother’s chest for TWO years. So, Inge-Marie
must hold this baby (or strap her on) to her chest twenty-four hours a day
–hopefully for only one year instead of two years. Inge-Marie is married and
has taught the baby chimp to sleep between them. Her name is Monda and she is
beautiful. But she is very “territorial” about her “mother”. When I met Inge-Marie,
she gave me a hug and kiss on the cheek but the baby chimp let out this
high-pitched screech and tried to grab my hand and bite it. I must have jumped
back ten feet and everyone laughed. I also learned that you don’t extend your
hand to a chimpanzee with your palm upward. You turn your hand palm down and
curl your fingers under and offer your hand. Otherwise, they think you are
trying to “take” something.
Everyone got to meet the Orangutans and the bigger chimpanzees – Santimos,
Linda, and Penny. They are training Linda to be Monda’s mother and she is
doing well. She will “take care” of her for a couple of hours at a time before
she pushes her aside. Santimos is the HUGE “leader” and he makes sure everyone
knows that. He was screaming and pounding the bars and swinging around the
cage. He has the strength of 4 men. He also spit all over our promoter.
J
Inge-Marie says that they “groom” each other and they also insist on grooming
her. They don’t like water, so they can’t be “bathed”. They use their lips and
fingers to clean each other. Inge-Marie says it feels great when they groom her
– better than any massage.
Linda is very, very smart. If you hand her the set of keys for the locks in
the building – approximately 10 keys – she can pick the correct key for each
lock every time. We spent a fascinating couple of hours visiting with them and
then went to see the boas, pythons, spider monkeys, ring-tailed monkeys (only
from the island of Madagascar!) and several other animals. The park is being
enlarged and will have a more “natural” atmosphere for the animals living
there.
Then we all went to dinner at this wonderful restaurant right on the Baltic
Sea. The food is the best I’ve ever had in Sweden. We had an appetizer of
shrimp and something on toast then the entrée of three types of grilled fish –
flounder, mackerel and salmon. Everyone was commenting on how amazing the food
was. Drove back to the hotel and I stayed up until 1 am answering emails.
Jude
THURSDAY, AUGUST 4TH
Got up early and rode the bike for one hour.
Certainly not as good as jogging but at least I feel better. In only 5 days, I
get to see if I can jog again. J
I took the first group over to the park for sound check. For the first time in
my 3 year history with the park, they were set up and ready for us. There is a
new Stage Manager who is awesome. Dale Watson and group didn’t arrive at the
hotel from the airport until around 3 am this morning, so they blew off their
9:30 am sound check. Going to get them over there at around 5 pm for a quick
run through.
It has rained a little today and I’m praying it will clear up soon. There won’t
be a very good attendance if this weather keeps up.
Everyone made it in today. Last group came in from LA. So, now I have Bobby
Flores, Justin Trevino, Stephanie Urbina-Jones, Amber Digby, Augie Meyers, Dale
Watson, Little Big Town and Pajama Party (featuring Deborah Allen, Tammy
Cochran, and Anita Cochran) here to perform. Whew! It’s a big one and a lot of
work before and during. But a really nice group of people which makes all the
difference.
The park was PACKED tonight for the shows – Bobby Flores, Jill Johnson (Swedish
artist), and Dale Watson. I’ve never seen that many people attend. Jill
Johnson is evidently doing “well” because she had nine people on stage and a
HUGE tour bus.
After Bobby Flores performed, Patricia and I went over to the restaurant in the
park to eat dinner. The menu was in Swedish and the staff didn’t speak much
English. We thought we would be “safe” and order pizza – but they were out.
Then we tried pasta – but they were out! We slowly worked our way through most
of the menu items only to be told they were sold out. Finally we settled on a
baked potato and something with chicken in it. When we sat down and tasted it,
it was terrible. Pat went to try and find something to put on the baked potato
so we could at least eat it. While she was gone the owner of the park and the
production manager came over to sit with me. When the production manager
started to sit down, he dropped his tray and the cokes spilled all over me and
all over our food. We thanked him for destroying the food because we couldn’t
eat it anyway! So, I got an order of pomme frites instead (French fries) and
they were edible.
So, here’s another chimpanzee story. Early one morning many years ago, someone
forgot to lock the gate to the chimp house and Linda got out. As I mentioned,
she is very smart, so when she went out, she locked the door behind her so no
one would know she was out. But a worker saw her crossing the park and radioed
the owner. Linda saw another worker drive up in a golf cart and when she was
little Inge-Marie used to drive her around in the golf cart and she loves to
ride. So, she hoped up in the seat beside the worker and just about gave him a
heart attack. All the workers are scared of the chimps. He sat frozen in
place with his heart pounding out of his chest for about two minutes. When she
realized the cart wasn’t going anywhere, she hopped out and ran in a building.
The worker radioed the building to see if anyone was working inside. No one
answered but someone came back on and told him three of the cleaning crew were
inside having their breakfast. He locked the door from the outside and called
Inge-Marie. When she got there and went in, she found pretty much the same
thing with these men. They were all 3 sitting frozen in place around a table –
scared out of their minds. Linda was sitting in a chair at the table, too, and
had taken ALL their breakfast food and eaten it. J
Now, the boa that we saw yesterday only eats every 3 weeks. He lives in the
water and he sheds his skin and comes to the surface to eat. If you start out
feeding them live animals, then that’s all they will eat. Won’t eat dead
animals. They feed this particular snake 3 live rabbits every 3 weeks. And you
can see him digest them – the entire shape of them. They were having problems
with a goat once, so they fed him to the boa. It took about 10 minutes for the
snake to kill and eat him and they said you could see the entire shape INCLUDING
the horns. YUCK!
In one part of the “snake house”, the snakes are not in cages. I elected NOT to
go into that one because I could see them laying on branches that would have
been right over my head.
So, I’m at the venue now and Dale is performing. Should get back to the hotel
by 1:30 am. Dale and his group have to depart for the airport at 7 am. Short
night for them. Then we get up and do it again tomorrow and the next day with
different artists.
Jude
FRIDAY, AUGUST 5TH:
Rehearsals and sound checks at the venue this
morning. Everything ran fairly smoothly except for the fact that there were not
enough music stands. But we now have that issue solved. I counted everyone for
the trip over and thought we had the entire group. But, when we arrived, we
were missing one musician. Our drivers had to go back to the hotel to pick him
up. He didn’t get his wakeup call!
Patricia and I planned to ride the little bikes into town so I could purchase a
couple of long-sleeve shirts. It is really cold here at night. I rented the
bike for the week but when I went outside to unlock it, it was gone! Now you
tell me how someone unlocked it when I had the key! The hotel didn’t have any
idea what happened. There were 2 more bikes sitting there, but the hotel staff
had a hard time finding a key to unlock them. Since I had a very small window
on opportunity to ride into town, I was losing my patience. Finally got one of
them unlocked and then found that the seat was too high. I couldn’t adjust it,
so Patricia went in to get help from the hotel. He came out and started working
on it. There’s a little lever that has to be pulled up before you can move the
seat. He was pushing and pulling on it and just as I said, “Don’t break it!”,
it snapped off! I was truly frustrated by that time. I decided to try to ride
it anyway but I tried to keep most of my weight off the seat – which was not
fun. Anyway, we made it into town and I found a sweater and some jeans. Had
lunch at a restaurant in the little “mall” because they had a guy who spoke
English. We had some kind of “chicken kebab”. Kebabs are very popular over
here. Only, it’s not a “kebab” as we know it. The meat is on this skewer
behind the counter and they slice it off…sort of like a gyro only they serve it
with rice and different sauces. It was “edible” but that’s about all I can say
about it. Not as bad as last night’s adventure.
I left Patricia downtown because I needed to go back and work. We had parked
our bikes side by side and locked them with our individual locks. When I went
to unlock mine, it was locked to hers! I had no idea what I was going to do,
because she had already walked off and my key didn’t work in the lock. Then I
noticed that the bikes were from the Scandic Hotel but they weren’t the correct
numbers. (One of them was the one I thought I had rented for the week,
though!). Walked a little bit farther down and found mine. Easy ride back to
the hotel, only a bird “got” my shirt on the ride back.
Patricia had much worse luck. She got confused on the directions (neither of us
have ANY sense of direction) and couldn’t find the hotel. She finally had to
stop and ask someone for directions. Then it started raining on her. Big
adventures for both of us today. LOL!
Volvo is a sponsor of this year’s event and they gave the promoter beautiful
“SUV’s” that are totally “non-functional” for our needs. They have these
little fold up seats in the back and there’s no leg room for anyone to sit in
them. So instead of being able to transport 5 people and the driver, they will
only hold 3 people and the driver. It has been quite a challenge to get
everyone where they need to be on time. But, tonight, I had to act as
“driver”. The vehicle drives like a dream but I had to stay really close to the
other driver or I would have been LOST forever in Sweden.
We had a fabulous show tonight with Amber Digby (very traditional country),
Augie Meyers (what a SHOWMAN!), and Little Big Town (all the young folks LOVED
them). Crowd was not as big as last night, but it was still a “good” one.
Going to try and get in bed before 3 am!
Jude
SATURDAY, AUGUST 6TH:
There is a “chain lock” on my door and this
morning, it got stuck in the track and I could not get it open. I could open
the door about 3 inches and see out in the hallway. I yelled to see the maids
were out there but it was way too early. I finally took one of my shoes and was
able to “dislodge” it and get the door open!
Another early morning start with Pajama Party (Deborah Allen, Anita Cochran, and
Tammy Cochran) sound checking first while Stephanie Urbina-Jones and Justin
Trevino rehearsed with the musicians. I had to leave the park and go take care
of some business with the festivals coming up next weekend.
We took all the Pajama Party girls and musicians out to the park to meet Ange-Marie
and the chimps this afternoon. I went again because I LOVE seeing them and
listening to Ange-Marie’s stories. Little Manda is extremely “wary” of me.
She still thinks I’m going to “take her mama” and keeps her eyes on me
constantly. This group enjoyed the visit as much as the one earlier this week.
The skies have been dark all day and rain was predicted. But so far, it has not
rained. I don’t think there are as many people in the park because of the
weather though.
Justin goes on first, then Stephanie and we conclude the festival with Pajama
Party. The drummer is 50 years old today so we had a birthday cake as a
surprise for him. Actually we had two cakes with candles all over both of
them. Only, we lit them too early and they were burning down too quickly. The
entire cake caught on fire when we took it on stage to him.
It was a great ending for the festival. Only disappointment was the rain that
started right after Justin Trevino performed. It was intermittent throughout
the evening but we still kept a fairly large crowd of people.
Only one casualty – one of the young artists had too much to drink. But he was
a nice, quiet, funny drunk. He just went upstairs and passed out. Took us a
while to get him down the stairs and sober enough that he could ride the 30
minutes back to the hotel.
Overall, it was a great festival and we have a “planning” meeting before I leave
tomorrow to go over everything. It’s always sort of a let-down when the event
is over after working on it for a year.
Most people did not go to bed last night and were in the lobby ready to go at 5
am. Didn’t have any phone calls from the airport, so hopefully everything
departed on time. I’m off to Stockholm this afternoon for a couple of days
sightseeing with Patricia. Then off to Denmark, Germany and Holland for more
festivals.
Jude
SUNDAY,
AUGUST 7TH:
I went to bed
for 4 hours after I got the group off to the airport. Then had a meeting with
my promoters to go over this year’s event. Always better to do that RIGHT after
the event is over while everything is fresh in our minds. Lots of suggestions
for 2006.
Olle (the
Production Manager for the event) drove me and Patricia from Furuvik to
Stockholm. Our hotel is actually “IN” the airport. Kind of strange but we
can’t hear any airplanes taking off or landing. We took the express train (less
than 20 minutes) from the airport to downtown Stockholm. We walked down to Old
Town and looked around then had dinner at an Italian restaurant. Ordered our
food and waited and waited and waited….they didn’t even bring us any water. We
finally had to ask for water and bread. Then we waited and waited and waited.
I finally flagged down a waitress and asked what was going on. She went into
the kitchen and came back out and said our order had been “misplaced”. The food
finally came and it was just “okay”. AND, the restaurant didn’t offer any
compensation for their mistake. Won’t be eating there again.
We got lost
walking back to the hotel and had to stop and ask directions several times. Then
we got lost in the train station! Patricia has the same sense of direction as I
do – NONE.
I got into bed by 12:30 am and was absolutely exhausted from working the
festival. I was sleeping so hard when my cell phone rang at 1 am. It was an
F16 pilot buddy of mine calling from D.C. just to chat He didn’t realize I was
in Europe because he recently changed jobs and his email address changed and he
wasn’t getting my road kill reports. After we hung up, I went back to sleep
immediately and then at 2:30 am, the cell phone rang again. This time it was a
man and he said “Where are you”. I replied Stockholm. We had a horrible
connection. He kept asking the same question over and over and I kept replying
STOCKHOLM. I thought it was my pilot buddy calling again but wasn’t sure. I
finally just had to hang up because he kept asking the same question over and
over again!
MONDAY, AUGUST 8TH:
Got up and
went to the gym in the hotel/airport and it is fabulous. Worked out for an hour
and could have easily worked out for two hours. I feel 100% better after
getting in a REAL workout.
We took the train into town and then took the water boat around Stockholm. Got
off at the Vasa Museum to see this Viking ship that they had recovered from the
bottom of the Sea. It was truly amazing. Just like something out of a fairy
tale. Of course, we got lost just trying to find the entrance.
Took the water boat around to the shopping street and spent about 4 hours
shopping. Would have shopped a lot more, but the stores close at 7 pm.
L
I talked Pat into buying some clothes that are nor normally her “style” but they
look great on her. She dresses very conservatively and I got her into some
really hip things.
We found a great restaurant in the basement of a building but the service was
just as bad as last night’s. This restaurant was in Old Town, too. Someone
told us that they treat the tourists badly and cater to the locals.
Came back to the hotel on the Express Train. Last night, we got really lost in
the airport terminal just trying to find our hotel. We got specific directions
this time on where to get off…and we STILL got lost!
Going to bed soon,
Jude
TUESDAY, AUGUST
9TH:
Got in another
great workout in the hotel gym. We grabbed a cup of coffee and then checked in
for our flight to Denmark. When I checked in, I specifically asked the ticket
agent if my seat was bulkhead. He assured me that it was not. It was! I am
definitely jinxed. And, it was that seat that sticks out in the middle of the
aisle with no partition in front of it. I got trampled by the passengers as
they were boarding.
Short flight, thank goodness, to Copenhagen. We are staying at the Hilton at
the airport and it is a really nice hotel. Connected to the airport by a
walkway so it is very convenient. We took the express train into town and this
one was much less expensive than the Sweden express train. Both took about the
same amount of time. The man taking the tickets was very rude and said we
should have had our ticket “stamped” at a machine before we boarded. Said he
should charge us 500 Kroners. I told him that no one mentioned this when we
purchased the ticket!
Copenhagen is beautiful. I’ve driven past Tivoli Gardens many times but never
got to go inside. This time, we took a double decker bus tour around the city.
At one point, we got off the bus to take a photo of the Little Mermaid. After
we took the shot, Patricia and I looked at each other and said, “That looked
like an Angel, not a Mermaid”. So, we asked our driver and of course, we had
taken a photo of the wrong statute. But, we still had time to take the right
photo.
We didn’t arrive in Copenhagen in time to do much of anything before shops
started closing. We did go into one clothing store and I bought a pair of pants
and belt. Then we went to Tivoli Gardens and just walked around. The
landscaping is fabulous and there are little mini-concerts everywhere. This is
the 200th Birthday of Hans Christian Anderson, so the entire city is
celebrating. They have put down these “white footprints” that you are supposed
to follow to see various exhibitions about him. But someone has also put down
“fake” footprints to get people to follow them and then they end up in some porn
shop. Denmark is the “sex change capitol” of the world. There is even an
“Erotica Museum” in Copenhagen..
We left Tivoli and went into a restaurant that was recommended in our tour
book. But when we sat down, NONE of the items on the menu in the tour book were
on the restaurants menu. There was nothing on the menu that either of us
wanted, so we left and walked all the way to the end of the shopping street and
found a nice restaurant down there. Got back to the hotel at around 11 pm but I
had to stay up and answer emails until 1 am. Of course, this hotel has a
fabulous gym that I won’t get to use and breakfast was included with the room
rate – also won’t get to eat before I leave tomorrow morning.
Patricia and I said our goodbyes tonight. It’s amazing that we are still so
much alike. We were best friends from 7th through 12th
grades and never once had an argument. She still looks the “same” as way back
then and we still have so much in common. She’s staying over to sightsee again
on Wednesday and part of Thursday before flying back to Stockholm to fly home.
J
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