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May 30, 1998
the sheraton grand
Our flight took off from the Las Vegas airport around 11:25am, and we arrived about 12:15pm at Lindberg Field in San Diego. My wife and I got home about 1pm, which gave me a couple of hours to relax, check my email, have lunch and then get ready for the next gig. I still felt exhausted from last night's performance at the Hard Rock Cafe in Vegas. It was pretty exciting, but now I had to change gears and get ready for this wedding reception at 4:30pm. I arrived at the Sheraton Grand Hotel in Torrey Pines, which is just north of La Jolla and the University of California, San Diego. Behind the Sheraton Grand is a great view of the Torrey Pines Golf Course, which in turn overlooks the Pacific Ocean. A beautiful sight! I asked directions at the front desk and they gave me pretty elaborate directions on how to go around back to the large white tent in which the reception was to take place. "Okay", I said, not really listening to what he was saying, and thinking it'll be easy, just go around to the back. Well, I got lost! I went back out to Torrey Pines Road and made a right, then took the 3rd driveway on the right and went straight, just like the man at the front desk had said to do. I got to a closed gate and saw that a padlock was in place, assuming it was locked. Thinking that I was in the wrong area, I drove all over the place looking for the right driveway to get to the tent. I could see the tent from a distance but didn't know how to get there. I was panicking pretty badly by now. But somehow I decided to go back to the padlocked gate, and when I did I found our lead vocalist driving the white van he rented for the Vegas trip. He was driving up to the padlocked gate, stopped, walked up to the gate and lifted the padlock.... it was NEVER locked to begin with. Boy did I feel like an idiot!!! OK, I was finally in, and so I set up the drums inside this tent and it was pretty close to 4:30pm when we were to start. Then what happened? We were told that they needed bass, drums, sax over by the pool where the guests were to arrive and join in on cocktails. OK, another move. So, I took my snare and hi-hat over to the pool and played some light jazz (I used brushes) for about 40 minutes. Finally I was playing music, after all that! Around 5:15pm, we were told to go back to the tent. The crowd started to wander in this tent now and we ended up playing 2-3 songs, then we were told to take a break. The bride and groom were nice enough to give us our own hotel room near the tent. We had coffee, tea, sandwiches, pastries, pasta salad, and other food items. We stayed there for about an hour, "shootin' the breeze", "crackin' some jokes", making fun of each other, the usual bonding stuff the band members usually do when their bored. Well, to make a long story short, the wedding reception was a success! We even did an encore performance of our theme song Big Time Operator. After getting home I checked email, worked on the website a bit, then crashed hard on the bed. It had been a long day today, I was tired... |