In The Airport lounge….

Denver airport panorama from the United Airlines lounge.

Denver…..

Best Comfy Numb solo EVER!!!

Denver day 2…

So i woke around 6am and had the worst headache ever. I thought it was the wine however i took a couple of Advil's and went back to sleep for an hour. When i woke again i felt even worse. I didn't get out of bed till 11 and took and show and got dressed, i felt like crap.

I met Lori and Ralph down in the lobby and we took the hotel shuttle to the Denver Diner, a famous diner a couple of miles away. I knew when i got in the car i wasn't gonna make it, half way there i asked the driver to pull over and hung my head out of the door. I just felt ill, i had pins and needles in both arms and in my hands, my stomach felt awful and my back was wet through from sweating but i was cold to the touch! I got back in the car and we carried on down to the diner. The shuttle dropped Lori and Ralph off but i didn't feel right at all so he took me straight back to the hotel and i got back into bed. A couple of hours later i ordered some food and drank lots of water. I ate a burger and sweet potato fries and felt a little better.

Its now 5:30pm, I'm feeling ok but haven't got out of bed again yet!  I'm meeting Ralph and Lori at 6:30 then heading out to the show, hopefully I'll make it! I'm thinking it was just a combination of the wine from last night, the high altitude here, not enough water and not enough food. Flying out to Vegas tomorrow morning with Ralph and Lori and have two nights off from the shows so should be a good chance to rest and recuperate:)

Houston to Dallas……

Sorry this is a bit late, this was a couple of days ago..

I was driving up to Dallas today and had a couple of things i wanted to do on the way up there. There was the Buc-ees place that Gabriele had told me about last night, a Waffle House that Gina, Kim, Chris and i had stopped at in 2008 that i wanted to re visit for a flashback memory plus there was a place about an hour east of Dallas i wanted to drive out and see!

I left the hotel around 10am, as it was a Sunday morning the traffic wasn't bad at all, the GPS said id be in Dallas in 4 hours time. Considering I'd be making a couple of stops and then driving an hour East and then have to drive back into Dallas i was guessing id be at my hotel in Dallas around 4pm.

Few  odd things i passed on the way

  

I saw a huge billboard on the way up advertising the restrooms at Buc-ees “ Buc-ees we put the fun in restrooms” it said, this made me even more curious! I then saw the Buc-ees beaver sign in the distance.

    

I parked up and went in, the place was packed! it was just a gas station but the store inside was huge and sold everything imaginable, soda, food, candy, ice cream, home made fudge, and lots of cowboy and Indian gifts!!

The beef jerky counter and Buc-ees             The restrooms

   

I obviously couldn't take any picture inside the restrooms but they had life size cowboy and Indian figures and all the stalls were done out with cowboy and Indian memorabilia. It was certainly different and unlike any restrooms id seen before!

I got back on the road and my next task failed as i wanted to find the Waffle House that Gina, Ralph, Chris, Kim and i had stopped at in 2008 on the way to Rogers Dark Side show in 2008, unfortunately i had no idea what town it was in or where it was! i stopped by three places but they weren't the one we stopped at so i had to give up.

Took a few pictures while  was on the road driving up, passed an Arena on the way up and it had the sign Yellow Rose Arena across the front of it, would have been a great place for Roger to have played Watching TV :)

The Yellow Rose Arena                      Nice Impala i passed on the way        Road to where i was going!!

 

The next place i was going was a town called Floyd!! after Kami and i running around like kids in the other town we came across called Floyd i Google maps other towns called Floyd and found one just outside Dallas. The first sign i was near was the sign below saying Floyd 3 miles. I was actually in the middle of nowhere, miles from most houses, and there was nothing but flat fields, telegraph poles and quiet roads going on into the distance. I had no idea what was there but i had to drive out and just the place and I'm glad i did.

Sign says it all                                   Empty road to Floyd                         This is Floyd!

I drove the three miles to the centre of Floyd, and there was very little there. I was expecting a sign or something saying i was in Floyd but there was nothing at all, the railroad crossing above was pretty much the centre of the “town” I drove across the rail tracks and immediately saw the following.

This is my sorta church:)

  

I then turned to my right and saw a sign about 1/4 mile down the rail tracks that had the word Floyd on it.I had to park the car up and walk down rail tracks about 1/4 to take a couple of pictures, unfortunately there was nothing around to rest the camera on so i could get a picture with the sign and me in it. I tried every which way but failed, the sign was pretty high as well and I'm presuming this was so it was level with the train drivers as they pulled along side it.

       

I drove around a little looking for other things but the only other thing i found was the Baptist church. there were very few houses around and no business's at all.

                                                               My GPS telling me exactly where i was!

 

The town of Floyd

I hit my Dallas hotel on the GPS and i was 50 minutes away, i had to drive the quiet roads back that i had driven to get here and passed a couple of things along the way The first was a house in the middle of a field that had lots of old searchlights outside! there was stacks of them around the rear of the property of all shapes and sizes.

After 45 minutes i was 4 miles from my hotel and passed the venue for tonight's show as i drove past it on the highway.

Dallas in the distance                        Dallas skyline                                  Cool town name     

      

I arrived at my hotel around 4:30, chilled out in the room for a couple of hours before making my way down to the venue for tonight's show. Something odd happened to my GPS while i was driving to my hotel, watch the clip below and wait to hear what she says about 3/4 the way through the clip! I know Mike had fallen out of love with Katie my GPS but it sounds like she is missing you Mike!!

 

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Dallas to Denver….

I was up and showered by 9am, checked out of the hotel and drove the 3 miles to Love Field Airport. Id only flown in and out of Fort Worth before and Love Field was a lot different, it was old, very old and this reminded me of something! Today was the 22nd November 2010 and i was at Love Field Airport in Dallas, Texas. This very same day 47 years ago at this very same place John F Kennedy flew into Love Field for the very last time!! in fact it was his last time on an aeroplane!  As i was going through the airport i kept looking around me and wondered if there was anyone else here who knew the above fact!

I grabbed a bite to eat and waited an hour at the gate for my flight, i was flying Southwest and they have an open seating arrangement so i was lucky when i got on the plane that no one had taken the front row seat as of yet (i should have taken my normal 13th row on the aisle seat:) so i took my seat by the window right at the front. We touched down in Tulsa for 20 minutes before carrying on to Denver total flight time was about two and a half hours. I fell asleep for the first hour of the flight before arriving in Tulsa and did my blog  on the second leg of the journey.

My friend Mark was also flying up to Denver but he was going direct from Ft Worth, he was due in an hour before me and had a rental car to pick up so was going to wait for me to get in so we could both ride in to Denver together. We landed at 1:45pm, i went to the baggage claim to get my checked luggage and Mark sent me a text to say he was there waiting. unfortunately the baggage  took the best part of 45 minutes to arrive but Mark waited for me and we then headed into Denver.

GPS taking us to the hotel                  Denver skyline                                    Coors Canaveral !!!

 

Took us a good half hour to get to the hotel, Ralph and Lori had arrived in Denver yesterday and were already at the hotel and had text me to say they were waiting on us arriving.  We pulled into the parking lot, i checked in and stated to head up to my room, Mark was staying at the same hotel too but the hotel had it on their computer that Marks room had been cancelled! He checked in anyway and said he would call hotels.com to find out what was going on.

I dropped my bags at the room and headed straight up to Ralph and Loris room to see the,. It was great to see them both again we always have the best time when we meet up and i was forgetting when i left Tampa that i would see them again here! They are also travelling down to Vegas tomorrow with me and seeing the show there.

Lori and i

It was now 3:30 and we arranged to meet in the lobby at 5 to go out for dinner across the street. There was a highly acclaimed restaurant right across the street that Lori had researched and said had great reviews. I went back to my room and chilled out for 90 minutes during which time Mark called me to say Hotels.com had messed up his reservation and he was out in the car driving round trying to find a new hotel as the one we were at wanted three times the rate now!!

Lori, Ralph and i met up in the lobby and headed over to the restaurant across the street, it was nice and the menu was extensive, took me a while to decide what to have but i decided on the rib eye steak and a side of sweet potato fries! they also had a happy hour on till 6:30 and it was buy one get one free! so we did, in fact we bought several:) I had a couple (ok well 4 including the two free!) of glasses of Chardonnay and Lori did the same, Lori and i were saying how we both had a nice little buzz going on and were already feeling how we do at 10pm on a night out and it was only 6pm!!

We made our way back over to the hotel and asked the hotel shuttle guy to take us downtown, he asked where and we said anywhere! he took us on a brief tour of Denver and took us past the big blue bear which apparently is the most famous thing in Denver! well according to Lori it is! I've still no idea what it is but I'm guessing its football related!

We started bar hopping and had a glass of wine in each place, we ended up in a bar called the Tilted Kilt, you can imagine what all the waitresses were wearing and I'm pretty sure that you wouldn't be asking what was under a Scottish mans kilt if they wore kilts that short! Anyway i digress….

We then took the bus to the Hard Rock Cafe……. mmmmmm or did we do this the other way round ? mmmmm i cant remember, anyway, we missed the bus stop for the Hard Rock and had to wait till the bus got to the end of the street turned around and then we got off on the way back!

 

We had a good chat with the guy who managed the Hard Rock, he was a Floyd fan but there wasn't any Floyd memorabilia in there at all! He was aware of Rogers show tomorrow but had to work so was unable to go to the show.

After the hard rock we walked the streets of Denver and came across some bulls! I mounted one from behind in a leap frog fashion and the end result is pictured below

   

Its at this point that i don't remember much apart from calling the shuttle guy at the hotel and him coming and picking us up!! there's a few more pictures in the album below that i don't even remember taking! This entry may be worth coming back to every so often as you know how it is after a good night out you forget things and they come back to you as the day goes on!

Its now 10am the next morning, I'm laying in bed and uttering those words “I'm never gonna drink again” and this time i mean it!

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Houston day two and show….

It was nice to wake up in the same bed for a second day! i had no plans at all today, no one to meet no one to see no where to be apart from be at the venue at 8:15pm to see the show. I was up and in the Gym by 10:30am, the hotel gym was fantastic and was probably the cleanest and most well equipped Gym I've been in while I've been out here in the US.

I Looked out of the window and the weather while wasn't clear and sunny there were breaks in the clouds and the temperature was in the low 70’s according to Google! There were a couple of people by the pool already as the treadmills in the Gym looked right over the pool area. After working out for 40 minutes i jumped straight in the pool, it was absolutely freezing! felt great though and i then headed over to one of the sun loungers, turned it round so it faced the sun which was now breaking through the clouds a lot and didn't move for about three hours! I did however keep waking myself up with the odd snore here and there, i looked round to see if anyone could here me and fortunately i was far enough away from the other people that were there.

I surfed online for a few hours in the afternoon and had a chat to a friend of mine John in Houston who was due to have gone to the show but had had to have surgery on his hand two days earlier and was stiff doped up on painkillers so he was unable to make the show. My friend Mark Strand had flown in for the show tonight and was also driving up to Dallas and then flying on to Denver for his last show there before going home to Wisconsin. He text me to see where i was and i asked him the best place to get a decent steak as i knew he’d been out there night before for one.

I ended up at a Sawgrass steakhouse after Marks recommendation, its was 5 miles down the road from me and 5 miles nearer to the venue that i was. I ordered the baked potato soup which i have to say wasn't good at all and i left most of it, it was covered in cheese and tasted awful to be honest! I then ordered a New York strip steak with deep fried crispy thin onions and a crab dressing on the steak. This was fantastic and the steak was cooked just how i like it, just pink in the middle without anything ripping out of it!

After dinner i drove the 4 miles down to the venue and parked up in a parking lot across the street from the venue for $10. 

Guys playing basket ball                     Cool sculptures outside venue            The reason i was in Houston!

   

Just before i sat down to diner i had a call from Gabriele, a guy who posts on one of the Roger Waters message boards, he was on his way to the venue and we arranged to get in touch with each other when i got there. I parked the car and gave him a quick call, he was inline outside the venue waiting to see the merchandise. I met up with both him and his son and we had a chat about the show and where he lived etc etc he also told me that when i drove up to Dallas the next day that i must stop in a convenience store on the way up called Buc-ees and make i used the restroom and took my camera!! this caused a little concern and i did wonder what sort of a guy he thought i was! i had visions of a George Michael LA experience!!

Gabriele left to go put his merchandise purchases in his hotel room across the street and we agreed to meet up after the show. Mark arrived 5 minutes later, he had just parked up across the street. We stood outside the venue for 20 minutes and chatted about the shows and the projections before  making our way into the venue around 7pm.

I had a text message when i got in the venue it just said “ hi, were in the lobby where do you want to meet” a few times i forget about people who are coming to the shows who i know and i forget to add their phone numbers into my cell phone so i know a few of you have had texts from me after sending me a text saying “ who are you?” sorry about this,lol Anyway it turns out it was a friend of my friend Tony and Keith, they had suggested he get in touch to say hi so he did. I made the ten minute trek up to his seat in the high 400 section and chatted to Tom and his son for 10 minutes before making my way back down to the floor

Me outside the Houston venue                    Tom and myself.

 

In 2000 i made the trip over from the UK to see Rogers shows in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and Vegas. It was a 10 day road trip that i will never forget. At that time i knew only a few people at the shows and didn't know anyone from the band at all. It was the first time i actually got to meet Roger as well in Dallas. We waited outside the venue most of the afternoon and as the vans pulled up he opened the door and posed for pictures and signed a few things including the back of my T shirt. There were a couple of people there that i became friendly with while waiting outside the venue, Patrick from Dallas and Jeff from Dallas.

I didn't get Patricks e mail address so never really kept in touch with him however we actually bumped into each other at the Dark Side show in Dallas! i was walking around the venue to the entrance and there he was! We had a chat and it turned out he had moved away from Dallas and moved to Hawaii a few years earlier. Well as i was walking on the floor tonight guess who i bumped into!! Yup, Patrick! Was great to see him again and we chatted most of the night before the start of the show. He hadn't seen any of the wall shows and had stayed away from every website and picture and video of the show!! i told him he was in for a surprise and would be blown away by the show!

Kipp Lennon came past and i asked him if he wouldn't mind posing for a picture with myself and then with Patrick. I hadn't met Kipp as yet but id met all the other backing singers while been backstage at one point or another along the tour. he was more than willing to pose and we had a good chat for 5 or 10 minutes.

Myself and Kipp                                        Kipp and Patrick

 

I was saying how cool it is that there are new things been added each night and he proceeded to tell us how Roger takes a DVD of the show back to the hotel with him each night, sits and watches it, takes notes then destroys the DVD and then implements changes at the following show!! he des this every night without fail! If you read the link below it tells you how they implement the changes in the projections and how these are rendered at the production studios and then sent out for the show the next day!

Projection details 

It was great to meet up with Patrick again, we exchanged cell numbers and said we would meet up in Dallas as well as maybe LA for the two shows that he is seeing.

Patrick was front row of the second section back, an ideal place to see his first show and i was 13th row right on the aisle between the centre and left section (i swear one night I'm gonna turn up to this seat and it’ll have my name on the back like a directors chair,lol). Kip had mentioned that Roger had again made some changes to tonight's show and i was eager to see what had changed. I totally missed the plane crashing and all the pyros at the end due to focusing on the projections and lighting.

I didn't notice much for the first few tracks  however i did notice some projections changes at the beginning of Young Lust and also some lighting changes during young Lust and Empty Spaces, kinda hard to explain them but they were there and they were apparent and did look better than at previous shows.

  

There was yet another glitch in Dave's guitar at the beginning of Young Lust, not as bad as last night where it cut out completely for 5 seconds but it was a glitch and it was clearly audible.

  

The band seemed real tight tonight, all the endings of the songs were flawless each member of the band played the last note dead on time, i know when i spoke to Dave a few shows back we were talking about the click track and how sometimes its actually difficult to go by as some of the band play slightly slower (Snowy) and some of the band tend to be slightly ahead (Dave and Jon) i guess tonight they were all dead on and this certainly showed.

Got a few nice shot of the flashing projections tonight, a couple of different ones. Still cant seem to get the Toyota logo or the Mercedes Symbols that flash up though.

  

At intermission i went back and saw Patrick for 5 minutes and then took my seat again and read some of the Fallen Loved ones on the wall. The intermission seems to go a lot quicker after they cut it down to 20 minutes and it always amazes me that even though they have an announcement over the PA telling everyone there's five minutes to go there hundreds of people still walking around at the beginning of Hey You!

Patrick and i looking a little stunned at intermission

One thing i haven't mentioned yet is the crowd, they were bad, i mean REAL bad, they sat down the whole time, there was no real interaction or any real cheering just a few appreciative claps and that was it! Obviously they stayed seated for Hey You, if an audience that stands the whole show stay seated for this then Houston was certainly gonna do that!

Hey You, ITAOT, Nobody Home, Vera all went by rather quick, didn't spot any changes at all in these tracks, i love the bit at the end of Nobody Home from  the wall soundtrack where the fighter pilot guy shouts “ where the hell are you Simon” always makes me smile.

Roger now has a metal tube that holds his machine gun by his side during the second half! he still looks down at Robbie to pas it up to him but as also now added flashes of light on the wall behind as he fires the gun off, this looks great and again shows how things are changing each night.

Run Like Hell was fantastic and once again the new graphic was used and i managed to capture it on video tonight.Roger again took his Machine gun and shot down the graphic.

They've also started using the flags at the top of the wall  for the last 5 or 6 shows and this works really well, they have a fan at the end of the wall behind it which blows the flags and keeps the motion going on them.

The wall came down ok tonight, nothing really special but the one thing it did do was get the crowd on their feet!! there were a few people on their feet for Run Like Hell and Waiting For The Worms but nowhere near as many as there is at most of the shows.

Wall falling in Houston

All in all a great gig with the exception of the crowd been pretty laid back. I was due to meet up with Gabriele after the show however my cell phone had run out of battery and i was driving up to Dallas early the next day so headed straight back to my hotel after the show.

Album with all the pics below :

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