In Town, Here and There...

Central Community Schools- Manly, IA

I left a little after 7 this morning and drove up US 65 to Manly IA, where I did 2 shows at Central Community Schools. This is an "all-in-one" school with about 280 students in the HS and about 130 in the K-4 grades in the elementary school. I presented both "Friends" and "The Truth of Lies" this morning. Setup went smoothly, due a great group of 5 Freshmen I had helping me. This was another "First Day of School" show...I have a feeling that I will be doing these for a couple of weeks now. :-) Next week, I will be doing local shows all week except for Friday when I'll be out near Freeport for the day.

1st Shows of the Year, A Day at Home, and on to Iowa

Arriving in Troy, and a Krumbly Burger!

Today I finished my journey back towards home (for the week) and arrived in Troy MO, where I will be doing my first assemblies at Troy Middle School tomorrow. I actually got in town early enough that I was able to unload and partially set up, so tomorrow morning will be a little bit more relaxed. This will give me time to play with the new Optoma projectors that I will be using on tour this year.

I probably would have been here sooner, except for 2 things...one, I followed my GPS and two, the "Welcome to Missouri" committee ordered a tremendously refreshing thunderstorms for me to wash the van with! (Just kidding...about the committee, not about the storm). As I was coming up Rt. 47 towards Washington, I was greeted with this picture. What you cannot see is the front stretching for a long ways left to right. It finally broke loose just as I entered Washington- it was a scary fun time going over the Missouri River bridge (which was down to one lane) in a DRIVING storm. And while I don't neccessarily mind taking a nice drive through the heartland of East Central Missouri, I'd rather not do it during a rainstorm. :-)

After getting set up at Troy Middle School, I went over and checked out the Luxury Inn and Suites (formerly Lexington Inn). I was pleasantly surprised, (as my luck with Independent hotels last tour season wasn't been the greatest). It is a VERY nice facility.

After that, I decided to get some dinner and went down to Krumbly Burger. What a unique idea! Take 2, 3 or 4 oz. of ground beef, add some special spices, cook well, then serve it on a bun with whatever addons you want and you have a great and different approach to the ordinary burger. I had a chance to talk for a bit with Matt, who with his wife owns this restaurant...and it was refreshing to talk with a brother in Christ who is trying to do The Right Thing.

Anyway, it's the first Midwest showing of 'The Truth of Lies' at 7:45am. Here's to a great tour season!

On The Road...

The 10th Annual MoPro Premiere...and leaving San Antonio

San Antonio Training- Day 4

LAST DAY!

San Antonio Training-Day 3

TIME TRIALS!

San Antonio Training- Day 2

As we are getting towards the middle of the 2nd week of training, it's really important that everyone feels comfortable with their set of equipment and that everything is in working order. So, today we continued with more setups- All of the new Tour Managers ran through another setup/take down cycle, and after lunch both Brad and myself got an opportunity to do a complete setup of our rigs and test everything out. (Lunch was interesting, as I got my first taste ever of a BIG thing here in this part of the country... Chick-Fil-A! It was delicious...)

Anyway, for the most part I has the same equipment as last year, including my same van, which will start this year with just under 81,000 miles on it. I only had one missing item (microphone) and had to replace one speaker bag and one screen fabric. One of the things I was really concentrating on this year was the fact that I got NEW projectors. And...I mean NEW! I spent the morning unpacking them from their boxes and putting them in road cases and inventoring them. They are one of Optoma's newest models, the TXR776. This is a 4100 lumen unit that can take DVI, S-Video, RGB, Computer AND composite inputs! I am hoping this will help in some of the schools that had situations where we had brightness issues in the rooms.

After an initial run, some pluses- Much brighter, and seemingly over just as sturdy as the Hitachi's I used last year. The minuses- the unit only has one adjustment and alignment option...a single adjustable foot in the front cent of the projector. This means any side-to-side adjustment will have to be done on the stand. The other is that is seems to not have as much of a zoom range as the Hitachi's. We will see how they do Friday night...as my projectors will be the ones used at the New Show Premiere at Journey Fellowship church!

After we finished up for the day, I stopped back at the office to take care of a few things, and got the honor of meeting in person the one and only Joey Knight, who was there for a short while with Chad getting his rig ready to go before taking off back to Kentucky. I then took off back to the hotel, and we proceeded to have Pan-fried Bratwurst, courtesy of yours truly (it was a bit scary, as I had to do something I do not normally do- grilling is my favorite method, but in order to use the hotel gas grill, you have to supply your own gas, I wasn't ready to cough up $20 for a cylinder). It still turned out well though, and then took in some TV and called it a night.

Tomorrow...the new Tour Managers do Time Trials! Should be good...

San Antonio Training-Day 1

Today, the "tour veterans" joined the rest of the new Tour Managers at MoPro training. We started out with the crew assembling for a nice breakfast at the Hawthorne Suites in San Antonio where we are staying, then made our way over the the Motivational Productions office in Garden Springs. After some introductions and an overview of the activities for the week, we went over to Paschal Elementary School in nearby Schertz for some practice setting up equipment by the new guys and checking/ inventoring equipment by the veterans.
Oh, did I mention? This was the 45th CONSECUTIVE day of 100 degree or higher heat they have had so far this summer. I am not complaining anymore about how hot it gets in Chicago!

Then...time for lunch! Our AWESOME office staff rounded up some great fried chicken, then back to the school we went for some more setup work. we finished up about 4pm, and called it a day! Tomorrow, I will be setting and inventorying my equipment, and we'll be looking at some more unusual setup situations.

The day today ended with some grocery shoppinh at the big supermarket here in Texas (HEB) and a great chicken dinner cooked by my suitemate Brad. Ummm good! It will be my turn for dinner tomorrow night- what do you think...pork chops or brats? Leave a response here and let me know...

The New Journey Begins!

Well, the journey for the 2009-2010- school year has begun! My wife and daughter took me to O'Hare Airport this morning for my trip to San Antonio. Unfortunately, I ran afoul of the (new?) rule that requires checked baggage to be taken care of 45 min before flight departure. (Whoops) By the grace of God (and a 4-1/2 hr wait), I was able to get on the next flight at 12:33pm (more on that later) and got to San Antonio without any further incident.

We are staying at the Hawthorne Suites-San Antonio for the week and will be getting into training tomorrow morning. In the meantime, I caught a shower, and settled in for a good nights sleep along with my 2 companions for this trip, who happen to be 2 of my daughter Sarah's Webkinz collection. Selena and Sandy will be keeping an eye on things at the suite while Brad and I are gone. :-)

This promises to be a fun and exciting week as I get back into the MoPro routine. We have a lot of new faces, 2 new shows and a lot of ground to cover. I hope you will enjoy looking "over my shoulder" while I embark on this journey.