One night in Baltimore

Friends,

So when we finally arrived at the swank hotel where they had shacked us up in Baltimore, we discovered we were sharing the majority of it with some folks in town for a hockey tournament. Most of them pre-teens from Jersey with their families. I tell you that to tell you this: One particular hockey dude (a future rocker in a CBGBs shirt) starts asking us who we are and what we're up to. Word quickly spreads that there's a band in the house and the kids get it together to arrange an impromptu concert in the hotel's convention room.


(Sorry about the blurry...but I like this--looks like my guitar's on fire)

Award for most rockin' little dude: While we're tuning up, one of the guys watching tells us he's learning to play guitar so Brion hands over his Takamine and let's the guy play us some tunes. He's runs through a couple and then says, "This song's called 'Nostradamus;' it's off of Judas Priest's last record." We're working for ways to promptly get him in the band.

The kids seemed to have a great time and so did we, those dudes rock harder than we do. We kept playing and eventually had a sing along going with them and their parents to "Surrender" by Cheap Trick. All was good. Here's to Team Blizzard.

After everyone dispersed, we met the world's coolest hotel night desk manager ever. Adonna ("Like Madonna without the 'M'!") fired up the desk computer and blasted some music for us until the wee wee hours. If you ever find yourself in the Baltimore Airport Sheraton, you be sure to go see Adonna, you'll be glad you did. And tell her we said hello.

We finally decided it was time to hit it when guests started coming downstairs to check out. We got some looks.

So it begins...

Current location: Baltimore, MD
Current temperature: 47 degrees

Friends,

I'm going to the North Pole!!! Well, almost. This is the documentation.

I play guitar in a little rock and roll band called On Tracy Lane, and earlier this year we were selected to go to the Thule Air Force base in Greenland to play for the troops. By this time tomorrow I'll (hopefully) be 500 miles south of the North Pole trying not to freeze every extremity off my body. Because most airports apparently aren't friendly to my crappy laptop, I'm starting the blog on the second day of our trip here in Baltimore waiting to be bused to our plane. Here's how we got here:


After an extremely early 5:45 wake up call, we trekked off to the St. Louis airport where we had our first of many hours spent waiting and lounging. In the picture above is [L-R] Brion Gamboa, Jeremy Ruff, Adam Bilsing, Ron "Coach" Yates, Jerry McFarland and Darryn Yates. Coach is awesome. More on him later. Just because he's the only one not in the picture, here's a picture of the one and only Anderson Layne doing what he does, with an adoring (and adorable) fan looking on:



St. Louis would've been extremely uneventful had we not run into the world's best NBC Olympic correspondent, Bob Costas.


The exchange:

Darryn: "Hi Bob."
Bob: "Hey Guys."

Awesome.

After missing breakfast by two minutes and being forced to eat possibly the world's worst TenderCrisp sandwich, we eventually left and arrived in Chicago and got to go through possibly the world's best airport tunnel. The orange bandana pops in even the worst pictures.



We also ran into our second celebrity of the day, Darryl from the office.

No exchange, unfortunately. We also had our first recognition as we walked to our gate and heard from somewhere in the gallery "Hey, it's that on Tracy band." Rock.

After some more waiting and an extremely crowded ride on what was basically an air version of a Greyhound, we arrived in Baltimore to begin our wait for the plane that would take us to the top of the world. Or so we thought.

Sidenote: When we left St. Louis it was around 35 degrees. It was 20 in Chicago. When we arrived in Baltimore it was about 65. Subtract almost 100 degrees (!) and that's what we'll be in tomorrow.

Anyhow, at the military terminal we were informed that our plane was going to be delayed for about 24 hours, and that we were going to be put up in a hotel. Just when I was expecting nine of us to be stuffed into two rooms at a Motel 6, we arrive at the airport Sheraton where we have nine king size rooms in one of the nicest hotels I've ever stayed in.

Yes, that's my (own) room. And yes, that's a flat screen TV. Once again: Rock.

We proceeded to have a helluva night that I'll have to save for other posts because I've got to grab some lunch before our bus leaves in about 45 minutes to take us to our plane. I'll explain how the plans changed later, but for now suffice it to say that we are now riding on one of these bad boys to Greenland.

I call shotgun next to the tank.

I'll fill in the rest of the events later, and will hopefully have more time to tell these stories better (read: I understand this first post is boring, I'll make it better). The polar adventure is just beginning, after all.