I'm in a brutal stretch of travel, which is not unusual for me but it's a physical and mental meat-grinder. I have no idea how any of us gets through a day!
Thursday, October 24, I wake up with a swollen right foot. Not my ankle, which I could understand (and what I've dealt with before). A tendon or a muscle on the top of my foot has been strained, and it's sore. It's so puffed up with fluid I can barely fit into my shoe. I have to cancel an early-morning flight and delay it for a couple of hours while I try and rehab my injury in a couple of hours.
Which doesn't work.
So I'm on a plane to Milwaukee. I land, get in a rental car and hit a gym. Yes, it's insane. Yes, I should just rest. Yes I'm a zealot. But the frustration of the injury, a problem at the rental car company and the unexpected cold weather (it felt like WINTER) have stressed me out. I relieve all of it in 50 minutes at Anytime Fitness, a national chain that I use because they seem to be EVERYWHERE now, and I shower at their facilities.
Then I'm off to the Wisconsin Convention Center where I perform for teachers and administrators. There are 2500 Lutheran Education Association members in the room, and they're an incredible audience. One thing I can tell you about teachers: They love to laugh. They have to, considering their job! They need to find the humor in their daily lives as much as I do! THANKS LEA!
I'm back in the rental car at 10:30 pm driving to Indiana. Unbelievably there is a traffic jam at 1:00 am just south of Chicago on the Dan Ryan Expressway, a decades-long road construction process that has cost billions of dollars - and tonight it costs me an additional 30 minutes sitting in traffic.
I arrive in Mishawaka, Indiana at 2:30 am. I'm up at 8:00 preparing for my performance at Bethel College. I walk into the venue which is a stage set for a production of "The Diary of Anne Frank." Cool, huh? Well, it would have been but...
The stage is angled down toward the audience. It's about a 10-degree angle, making you feel as if you might spill off the edge into someone's lap in the first row. And I could handle that except that my right foot, swollen and sore, sends stabbing reminders that it doesn't like bending and pushing off to keep my balance as I walk back and forth, as if I'm on the roof of a house.
One fun thing? The set is the "hidden room" from the Frank play, and there is an oven! I open it and put "PACO" my pig inside, which is where I pull him from in performance. THANK YOU ANNE FRANK! And thank you Bethel College staff, alumni, students and visitors! What a great time!
I drive back to Chicago on Friday afternoon, get some rest that evening and fly to Salt Lake City first thing Saturday. I'm doing a private program tonight in a hotel in Salt Lake, and the audience is incredibly attentive and responsive. Then I'm back to a hotel, in bed, and up at 5:00 am for a flight to Phoenix, connecting to Seattle. On the Phoenix flight with me is an old college-tour comedy buddy Frank Caliendo, and also George Kanter, another comic I've worked with. One of the perks of showbiz: you see your peers in airports and on planes.
We exchange hello's and get caught up - Caliendo is busy as ever, doing his John Madden impressions, Jon Gruden impressions and Robin Williams (among a few hundred others!) - and then Frank and George are going home. They live here!
I'm off to Renton, Washington for a one-nighter. Not really... I'll walk off stage tonight and race back to the airport, jump on a flight back east and be back in my home Monday morning.
Tuesday I'm in Dallas. Wednesday I fly to Mexico, where I join The Disney Fantasy cruise ship for 2 days before flying to Maryland on Saturday, Charlotte that Sunday and more touring the following week - including Arizona, Monterey, California, The Washington, D.C. area and Dayton, Ohio.
LIVING THE DREAM!
I'm in a brutal stretch of travel, which is not unusual for me but it's a physical and mental meat-grinder. I have no idea how any of us gets through a day!
Thursday, October 24, I wake up with a swollen right foot. Not my ankle, which I could understand (and what I've dealt with before). A tendon or a muscle on the top of my foot has been strained, and it's sore. It's so puffed up with fluid I can barely fit into my shoe. I have to cancel an early-morning flight and delay it for a couple of hours while I try and rehab my injury in a couple of hours.
Which doesn't work.
So I'm on a plane to Milwaukee. I land, get in a rental car and hit a gym. Yes, it's insane. Yes, I should just rest. Yes I'm a zealot. But the frustration of the injury, a problem at the rental car company and the unexpected cold weather (it felt like WINTER) have stressed me out. I relieve all of it in 50 minutes at Anytime Fitness, a national chain that I use because they seem to be EVERYWHERE now, and I shower at their facilities.
Then I'm off to the Wisconsin Convention Center where I perform for teachers and administrators. There are 2500 Lutheran Education Association members in the room, and they're an incredible audience. One thing I can tell you about teachers: They love to laugh. They have to, considering their job! They need to find the humor in their daily lives as much as I do! THANKS LEA!
I'm back in the rental car at 10:30 pm driving to Indiana. Unbelievably there is a traffic jam at 1:00 am just south of Chicago on the Dan Ryan Expressway, a decades-long road construction process that has cost billions of dollars - and tonight it costs me an additional 30 minutes sitting in traffic.
I arrive in Mishawaka, Indiana at 2:30 am. I'm up at 8:00 preparing for my performance at Bethel College. I walk into the venue which is a stage set for a production of "The Diary of Anne Frank." Cool, huh? Well, it would have been but...
The stage is angled down toward the audience. It's about a 10-degree angle, making you feel as if you might spill off the edge into someone's lap in the first row. And I could handle that except that my right foot, swollen and sore, sends stabbing reminders that it doesn't like bending and pushing off to keep my balance as I walk back and forth, as if I'm on the roof of a house.
One fun thing? The set is the "hidden room" from the Frank play, and there is an oven! I open it and put "PACO" my pig inside, which is where I pull him from in performance. THANK YOU ANNE FRANK! And thank you Bethel College staff, alumni, students and visitors! What a great time!
I drive back to Chicago on Friday afternoon, get some rest that evening and fly to Salt Lake City first thing Saturday. I'm doing a private program tonight in a hotel in Salt Lake, and the audience is incredibly attentive and responsive. Then I'm back to a hotel, in bed, and up at 5:00 am for a flight to Phoenix, connecting to Seattle. On the Phoenix flight with me is an old college-tour comedy buddy Frank Caliendo, and also George Kanter, another comic I've worked with. One of the perks of showbiz: you see your peers in airports and on planes.
We exchange hello's and get caught up - Caliendo is busy as ever, doing his John Madden impressions, Jon Gruden impressions and Robin Williams (among a few hundred others!) - and then Frank and George are going home. They live here!
I'm off to Renton, Washington for a one-nighter. Not really... I'll walk off stage tonight and race back to the airport, jump on a flight back east and be back in my home Monday morning.
Tuesday I'm in Dallas. Wednesday I fly to Mexico, where I join The Disney Fantasy cruise ship for 2 days before flying to Maryland on Saturday, Charlotte that Sunday and more touring the following week - including Arizona, Monterey, California, The Washington, D.C. area and Dayton, Ohio.
LIVING THE DREAM!