it's ok, i'm with the band

I've had the priviledge of traveling with the band a few times now. A few weekends ago we went to a suburb of Chicago, Naperville. My Grandpa went to seminary there back in the day). Bus call was at 11pm and we slept the whole way there and got to the church around 9:30 am. All the guys were thinking I wouldn't be able to sleep on the bus. Little did they know, I can sleep through anything and a moving vehicle is a tranquilizer for me, so needless to say I slept well in my little coffin. Here's my bunk, smaller than a twin bed and about 2 feet tall. There are 12 in all on the bus and they're stacked 3 high.

The guys loaded in in the morning and had the sound check from hell, it took them 4 hours! Ridiculous! They had some sound board issues and were testing out some new sound guys, so the combination was no good. After that we rushed to the hotel to shower and come immeadiately back for dinner and the show. (My second cousin Jenny lives in Wheaton which is really close and she and her boyfriend, Luke, got to come to the show. It was so fun to see her and meet Luke. I'm so glad they were able to come!) The guys had a good show and we all got free t-shirts and hoodies-yay!! Here's a shot of the band on stage.

As soon as the guys were done signing autographs we loaded up and headed back home. Again and drive through the night, so we all slept til we got back to Nashville.

Then this last weekend we went to Ohio to World Harvest Church where Rod Parsley is the pastor. I had never heard of him, but he's pretty famous and has been all over TV and stuff. He's a pretty dynamic speaker to say the least. This time the bus ride was during the day, so it was pretty boring! This is what the bus looks like, although this is not their normal bus and we all found ourselves singing the smurf theme song. The bus was really really blue.


This is the front lounge, the bunks are in the middle and there's a smaller back lounge.

The church had a concert the night before the guys played so they had to wait for that band to load out before they could bring their stuff in. They didn't get done with sound check this time until 2:30 am! Then the hotel was 30 minutes away and we had to be up again at 6:45 to be ready to go in the morning. I didn't realize the life of a traveling musician included such little sleep!

The sanctuary at World Harvest is the biggest I've ever seen. It holds 5300 people and if you walk the length of all the pews it's 2.5 miles! Craziness.

So as we're waiting in the green room for the guys to go on stage, guess who walks in?

That's right, Stephen Baldwin! He was giving a little talk that morning. He was very nice and introduced himself to everyone. He also tried to fix my camera to no avail. I broke the flash when I dropped it earlier that day. Oops!
Anyway, that's a look into the traveling band life!