Well, the first thing you'll undoubtedly notice about this entry is the return to simplicity. Let's just say our digital camera vanished backstage in Seattle and leave it at that. Scotland Yard told us not to say much for fear of "blowing the case".

After Seattle, we made a quick trek back home. It was an overnight flight, so we left the Key Arena and took a taxi straight to the airport. It's one thing to stay up all night. It's quite another thing entirely to sleep for an hour on a plane, wake up, sleep for an hour on the floor of the DFW airport, wake up, and then try to sleep on a one hour prop-plane flight. By the time we arrived in Tulsa the next morning, it wasn't a pretty site. John, who's nervous enough about flying, particularly enjoyed the choice of "Titanic" as the in-flight movie. Why not just show "Airport '77"?

For the first two legs of the tour, we flew from city to city. Now we're driving. We've lost some technology with the strange disappearance of the digital camera but we've made up for it with the purchase of a GPS mapping system for our laptops. Now we can link up to satellites to pinpoint our exact location on a map. Somehow we still get confused, just not for as long.

Because of the drive, we didn't get to see much of Milwaukee, but we enjoyed what we saw. There was both a German fest and a Death Metal fest. Luckily the crowds didn't mingle. Our only previous knowledge of Milwaukee involved breweries and Laverne and Shirley. We learned that Mr. Whipple was from Green Bay and that this is the 70 year anniversary of Charmin so Mr. Whipple is going to start encouraging people to squeeze the Charmin. It's about dang time.

Now, on to Detroit.

We arrived amidst a particularly congested celebration of African-American Weekend in Detroit. All roads leading to our hotel that night were barricaded. When we finally found an open route to the hotel, two motorcycle cops whipped into the intersection and redirected traffic. We told them our hotel was just ahead and although we're sure they shed tears of sympathy for our dilemma, they nonetheless redirected us away again from our destination. A sound that seemed fairly insignificant at that moment turned out to be pivotal. It was a scrunching sound. We should mention there were people hanging out of their car windows waving camcorders, 'boom boxes', and...wine bottles. Apparently one of the latter found it's way under one of the former of our tires. And lo and behold, when we awoke the next afternoon we found our tire was so flat that the van was resting on the rims. Thus began a series of events that might someday seem comical but just didn't seem all that funny at the time. Let's see, we had to put the spare on, argue with the rental company, find the tire company, etc. Several hours later we thought we were done when we pulled into our hotel in Detroit.

The next morning, guess what? Yep, another flat. We spent that day in Detroit arguing with the tire company, the rental company, and each other. The rental car company told us we could drive the van (with the spare tire on) to Chicago and they'd trade us out for another van. Wow, how incredibly convenient. The concert at The Palace was only a couple hours away and we couldn't resolve things. The rental car company wouldn't replace the tire because the tire company didn't have a specific brand of tire in stock. We finally drove to the show with the spare tire still on and put a contract out on someone's head. This morning we left the hotel to drive to the Detroit airport to exchange the van for another. On the way, we ran out of gas on the highway. Crawling up the embankment, we realized we were in some sort of urban war zone. There were police cars, paddy wagons, and mothers screaming for their kids to get inside.

The saving grace, as always, was playing for a very attentive and responsive crowd. There were lots of people there who have previously posted on our newsgroup and corresponded with us via email. They seemed excited to see us and we always like putting faces to names. We shook a lot of hands and signed stuff until carpal tunnel set in. After the show, we had one of those moments that you never forget. Behind the venue there were hundreds of people lined up hoping for a glimpse of Hanson as they left. Isaac came out to the tour bus and we looked on in amazement as an avalanche of people crashed the barricades and swept past the the security guards. Ike ran. Then people started looking around and recognized us so we prudently decided to step back inside.

It's always an adventure.

We had no complaints about our stay in Chicago. Nothing really went wrong. Nothing broke, died, or exploded. On the way there, nothing happened. The only thing eventful enroute was a brief stop in Battle Creek, Michigan where we visited "Cereal, USA". Cereal is the food of the '90's, you know.

In Chicago, we were staying downtown which put us in walking mode for this city. We walked to the Navy Pier, the Miracle Mile, and...well, not much else. What were we thinking? We were plum tuckered out. We'll definitely have to come back to Chicago again to see the sights.

Getting to the concert was a chore in Friday rush-hour traffic. We arrived at the venue an hour later. As we drove past the ticket booth area, these girls stared at our van, then started to scream. At first we thought they had mistaken us for Hanson but then we noticed that two of them were waving Admiral Twin signs. Suddenly, about thirty of them started running towards our van, still screaming. We floored it and drove through the gates into the backstage area. Why did we run? We're not quite sure. We later regretted that we didn't just stop and sign stuff for the people. In our defense, it's probably instinctual to flee when people are running at you and screaming.

The show went very well. The crowd was great. We left right after to get on to Cincinnati...

We arrived in Cincinnati at 5:30am. Ouch. A few hours later we were out visiting relatives, shopping, and doing a bit of sightseeing. The area along the Ohio River looks a bit like Heidelburg, Germany. Interestingly, there's a region there called "Over the Rhine". We visited downtown, Fountain Square, Mariemont, and a few other places we accidentally wandered into when lost.

The show there went very well and the crowd was receptive. An interesting note: the venue had been completely under water a few weeks before. There's a flood line ten foot high on the stage wall...

When we got back to our hotel after the show, we were ambushed by a bajillion fansons that happened to be staying in the same hotel as us. There were fans in the parking lot, fans in the lobby, fans in the elevator, fans on our floor, and fans pacing back and forth outside our rooms. We gladly signed stuff for about half an hour then retreated to our rooms. Jarrod and John came back out and chatted with folks until 4 am. The next morning we found someone had left newspapers for us outside our doors. We signed a few more things and then headed for Nashville.

We met up with more family in Nashville. That's always a Good Thing. Each of us took our own hotel room in Nashville which was a Necessity after a month and a half of sharing one room. Four people in a room is a bit too much. Usually, the Last One to Shower has to use handtowels since hotels insist on only providing three bath towels. It's the little things that get to you after a while. Like when two people want to sleep and the other two want to watch TV until 4 in the morning. Or when you have to use the bathroom and someone else has been in there for 45 minutes. And you can hear them reading a book or playing Tetris on their Gameboy. And then there's the thermostat...

While in Nashville, we visited the Havana Lounge, Gruhn Guitars, the Bluegrass Inn (which is run by a former Tulsa musician), and our favorite, the Opryland Hotel. If you haven't been there, you should. The hotel is so huge that it contains an entire conservatory complete with tropical gardens, waterfalls, goldfish ponds, fountains, and even entire buildings within the exterior building. That's where we'll stay next time.

Some various and assorted odd things happened in Charlotte as follows:

• The drive to Charlotte from Nashville was beautiful but as in our trip to San Francisco it was too dark out to properly view the mountains. Most unfortunate.
• The concert venue was charging $15 per car for parking. Ouch, ouch, ouch. Can you say "gouging"?
• Speaking of gouging, Brad cut his finger on a razor...three minutes before going on stage. He claims you're not a real musician unless you've had to bleed on your instrument. Mark had a similar incident at the Blue Rose back in our Tulsa club days. Jarrod claims blisters from drumming should count.
• The crowd in Charlotte was absolutely great--yelling, waving signs, blowing kisses, etc. They weren't the loudest crowd we've played for but they were one of the most appreciative. And yet...we didn't meet anyone from the crowd or sign anything for anyone. That's the first time on this tour that that has happened. Bizarre.

We pulled into Virginia Beach around midnight. The hotel that we had been booked into was, shall we say, less than desirable. And they weren't expecting us until the following night so all they had was a very small room with two very small beds. You can do the math. The next morning we switched over to the hotel the Hanson's were staying at. It also happened to be where the bands on the HORDE tour were staying. We didn't meet any of them although we did get to go to their concert for free. The Hanson boys came out on stage and did "Mmmbop" with Blues Traveler. The boys said that people were booing them at first but that by the end of the song, the crowd was cheering. A happy ending.

Also while in Virginia Beach, we had a luncheon at our attorney's law office where we met some very nice local musicians and media people. We also visited the beach and later checked out a local band we met at the luncheon.

Oh yeah, enough wisecracks about the web site disappearing. It wasn't our fault. We've been paying our bills. On a related note, thanks bunches for all the gosh darn swell emails you've been sending us. We do read them all and we'll continue to try to respond to all of them eventually. Just be patient with us.

See you in Hershey.

This was our first time spending a whole week in a city. For most people, that would mean lots of extra time sightseeing. For us that meant lots of extra time to stay up until ungodly hours of the morning answering emails and watching VH1 rockumentaries and then sleeping in until noon the next day. It's like a junior high slumber party every night here. Except that we all sleep in those bunny suit pajamas. You know.

That week, we went to the South Street area a few times to shop, saw the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, the New Jersey Aquarium, and this entertainment complex/restaurant named Dave&Buster's, oh and a Wal-Mart. We got to try Philly cheese steak sandwiches, too.

The shows went very well. The crowds were very responsive. There were all the usual desirable elements: signs, applause, jumping, dancing, singing-along, etc. The security people at the CoreStates Center were really funny. Apparently they try to collect stuff from all of the bands that play there. so we had all these grown Philly men in their 40's to 50's asking us for our picks and drumsticks.