I just paid 7.99 to NOT be bored!!!

Oh God, why did you give me this disease called Adult Attention Deficit Disorder??? Why can't I just sit quietly by myself in an airport terminal in St. Louis, Missouri, be pleasant, sip on a Diet Coke, contemplate my naval fuzz, smile at people, and just relax?

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO...I can't do that, now can I? So I have a laptop (thank the Lord!) that when I travel mano y mano, becomes my link to the outside world. Most terminals are cool. They have free wireless. But not St. Louis. Oh nooooooooo. I have either have an account with some wireless provider, OR, I have to sign up with something that sounds like the beginning of a title of a porn movie. BOINGO?? What the?? So hear I am...$7.99 spent. Sitting in St. Louis, raining like a mutha outside as the last dying part of the giant Ike comes a'rollin' through, desperately missing my Sarah Bearah, Michael Ryan, and Mr. Chubs Benjamin Wallace....oh yeah, and I'm missing my wife too. :-) Here's some observations from my 3 days away...

--I love Ontario International Airport. They have their act DOWN. Surreal moment of my trip. I had just gotten up to the check your bags security area at Ontario on 9/11 at 8:44am. Yeah. To my surprise, some TSA dude all of a sudden yells "ALLL STOP!! ALLLLL STOP!!!! DISCONTINUE CHECKS!!!!" I'm thinking, "Great...Osama is in the house. We're all going to die." And then the coolest thing that I ever think I've seen happened. All of a sudden EVERYTHING stopped. EVERYONE stopped. Of course I'm dense and at the very first I was seriously thinking something was wrong, but then, DUH, it was 8:44am. And then the president of Ontario International got on the speaker system, and then the weirdest dang thing I've EVERY seen happened...it got DEAD ASS QUIET. NO ONE was talking...except for this disembodied voice from the speaker system. And in a quick, eloquent, meaningful, and dare I say heart-tugging moment, he asked all of us to pay our respects with a moment of silence on this horrible anniversary. And we did. I'm a big softy and I cry---OK!! Just get over it. I CRY. And here I am, choking up in a freakin' airport terminal, because I'm experiencing this "thing" with everyone else. Usually airports are a seas of humanity that has absolute no connection with each other with the exception that we all have to pack ourselves on aluminum tubes with wings and fly to destinations unknown. But we were there all sharing in the memory of that horrible day. Earlier in my blog archives, you can read where and what I was doing on Sept 11, 2001. A cool, sad, surreal, and impactful moment to start my trip.

--St. Louis, Missouri...the city...is one SCARY ass city. It's embarrassingly nasty. If there is anyone from the St. Louis city council reading this blog, do me a favor. At least TEAR DOWN the burned out tenaments and buildings that line the freeway. For God's sakes. And don't even get me talking about the war zone known as EAST St. Louis. Crimeny sakes.

--Belleville is a cute little midwestern city. Everything is green. EVERYTHING. I suffered through humidity levels that would have made a yak puke. It was just the nastiest thing in the world. I don't EVER remember VK tour in the 80's ever experiencing humidity the likes of which I had this past weekend. Well...except for that time in Omaha when I thought that possible someone left a door open....TO HELL!! That was bad. But the weather reports were all ominous the time I was here. Thunderstorms...heavy rain...wind...we didn't think we were even going to be able to rehearse for the show, much less have the competition. But the weather NEVER materalized until this morning, and then the hounds were released. I'm tellin' ya...if we had rain and wind like what I saw this morning in southern California for longer than 17 seconds, I swear to you, people would simply die. They would fall over dead from fright. We don't get this kind of weather.

--Belleville East HS is a former community college campus. Big, nice, all brick, well kept, and an interesting demographic of 50/50 whites and blacks. I only notice that because I think I saw one Hispanic. Oh and an dude from India. But what I saw was VERY heartening. For all the crap we hear in the media about racial inequality, and racial tension, and racial this, and racial that, I was watching the band kids and to some extent because I was there during the school day, the general population. Groups of kids were pretty mixed. Didn't hardly see big roving groups of one race. And everyone seemed very friendly to each other. Encouraging.

--Belleville East HS Marching Lancers is, as I told them during my "motivational session" a "big boiling pot of potential". They have had significant - more to come...they just called me to the plane...gotta go...check back!!!