Well, I find myself once again sitting in an airport waiting for my flight to the next city… Last nights load out was a rough one. Not for the usual reasons that a load out at the Fox in Detroit is rough. You know, the lack of a loading dock, no space to disassemble, the frigid cold… Nope it was rough because I somehow managed to become patient zero for a bug on this tour.
What a lot of people don’t understand is that when a roadie gets sick or hurt, they usually don’t have the option of calling in sick. Every show is unique, and that means the job that an individual is doing is unique and no one, including coworkers, knows exactly how to do the sick individuals job. I mean I once spent a week doing one nighters from a wheel chair when I seriously injured my knee. We literally added an extra hand to the call who pushed me around while I tried to instruct people how to put together my scenery through a narcotic induced haze. Allegedly I was very descriptive with my instructions. Hahaha
So, this round of illness started 2 days ago, I thought it was just a sinus thing. Then yesterday I felt a little feverish during the show run… Then load out hit. I’ll spare you the details, but looking at a local crew and basically saying, “these are your next 10 steps, I’ll be right back” and running off to hurl is not fun.
However, with a little bit of help from my road family, I made it through. My head LX donated some ginger tea bags to help offset the nausea, my props assistant made me said tea while I instructed locals on disassembling the last piece of deck scenery, and it was all hands on deck to get the soft goods down so I could lean against the rail and just call in the goods. That’s what I love about touring people, we are family. One big, dysfunctional, slightly incestuous family. When one struggles, we pitch in and get it done. We look out for each other, we take care of the sick/injured, usually… If you’re a dick we might put you on the equivalent of an iceberg and wish you luck. Good thing I’m nice to my coworkers. 😉
Well that’s enough rambling for now. I’m going to drink some more ginger ale and hope that I make it through work when I arrive in Madison this afternoon.
