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June
04, 1998
stranded in the desert
We left Las Vegas at 9am. It wasn't as hot as I've experienced it on other treks to this desert town. This was a good thing, since our "school bus" didn't have any airconditioning. Crazy Trumpet Man (our lead trumpeter) flew out of Vegas at 6am so that he could be with his wife, whose water broke last night. I guess I thought that she would be REALLY in labor by now, and Crazy Trumpet Man wanted to get home in time to be there to witness his daughter's birth. Hopefully, he would be able to make it to tonight's gig for the Disney Animation party, celebrating the completion of The Legend of Mulan, Disney's newest animated full-length feature. Well, we were quite doubtful he would make it tonight. We just hoped he'd gotten someone to perform in his place. Just 10 minutes on the freeway and our bus began to overheat. We took the next offramp and found a gas station immediately to the right. After adding some water and coolant to the radiator, we headed out once more for Los Angeles. We climbed a couple of huge mountain passes on the way to Barstow, everything seemed okay. We stopped at Baker, California for lunch and to refuel the bus. So far so good. On the road again and everything seemed fine. We passed Barstow (pretty much the half way point) and suddenly hit some major traffic due to construction. Well, this was something to worry about, and sure enough, after all the traffic dissapated we got to another huge hill. At the top of the hill the bus overheated again and the engine gave out. Warren (our lead singer and bus driver) was able to park the bus off the freeway and onto this large gravel area that appeared to be a rest spot for truckdrivers. We were in the middle of the desert on the way to Victorville, out in the middle of nowhere. I stepped out of the bus first because I badly needed to stretch my legs. I casually walked to the back of the bus where the engine was, expecting to see steam from the overheated engine. But what I saw were flames coming out of the engine through the side grill. I yelled to everyone that "the engine's on fire". At that time I believe Warren had just gotten to the back of the bus and witnessed the fire for himself. Immediately I thought , "my drums, our instruments". Warren quickly went to the front side door of the bus and grabbed the fire extinguisher. He quickly put out the fire with the extinguisher, thank God! Well, now what. Here we were, stranded out in the middle of timbuk2 around 3pm in the afternoon, wondering how we were going to get to our next gig in Los Angeles.
A CHP officer finally arrived to "hold our hand" while we were stranded out here. After talking with him for awhile, he got to talking about some of the grisly accidents he's seem while working as a CHP (California Highway Patrol) officer. Another CHP officer came, and Jim, Marc and Dick went ahead to Victorville to rent some vehicles. We placed a call for a tow truck to come and pick up the bus. After awhile (another 30 minutes perhaps) the fire department came. Apparently, someone driving by saw that our bus was on fire and used a cell phone to call the fire department. The fire was pretty much out, but at least they did a thorough job to make sure another fire wouldn't start again. The CHP officer the gave our first group a lift into town came back after what seemed to be another half hour, and I went along with this second group. Warren was left behind to ride along with the tow truck driver, who had finally arrived after what seemed to be an hour. He was a big brauny dude and for some off-the-wall reason he blurted out "I'll take the trombone player". Holy Cow! This guy wanted Hollywood! Well, the two CHP officers took the remainder of the band and Warren braved it with the tow truck driver.
Hollywood, Rick and I went ahead
in a white Nissan Maxima, leaving Victorville at around 5pm.
Our mission was to get to the gig before 7pm, when we were to start.
We would begin to set up on the stage, making it appear that the
band was already there setting up. That would buy the other
band members so time. We pulled into the Jonathan Club,
a upscale members only establishment. Corrine the agent and
liason for this event greeted us and had some people help us.
Boy was she happy to see us, and I think it would have been tough
to get another band on such short notice. Well, by the
time the three of us hit the stage and had set up our instruments,
the rest of the band surprisingly show up right at 7pm. No
problem really, Corrine would stall the guests for another 10-15
minutes while the rest of us set up. The guests were in another
room having cocktails.
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