Stopover Surprises

Chances are nobody reading this has studied our tour itinerary as closely as I have. If you had, you would have noticed that there are some great distances to be covered in terms of traveling between tour stops. Take for example traveling from Huntington, West Virginia to Wausau, Wisconsin. When I originally signed on to do Wizard I was told that it would be a flying tour. Well with the high cost of flying especially due to the ludicrious baggage fees, our tour quickly became a bus and truck. This is unfortunate because as I said we have some epic journies to make between cities.

When we finished up in Huntington our next performance was in Wausau. So to make it there in time we split the travel into two days. Generally they try to limit the travel to 10 hours a day, but that usually means more like 11 or 12 given the potty stops and lunch stop. Our stopover city between Huntington and Wausau was Oak Brook, IL. After leaving Huntington at whatever ungodly hour we did, it was announced that we would be stopping for lunch at a mall north of Indianapolis. Now I know that area there fairly well, especially the malls, and I couldn't think of any malls north of the city. There are a couple of great malls on the northside of Indy, but nothing north of the city. So imagine my surprise and pleasure when the bus exits I-465 on Keystone Ave and turns into The Fashion Mall, my favorite Indianapolis mall! It brought back memories of driving to Indy to meet Brian and more often than not, going shopping. Sadly I did not find anything that I needed to buy, but well you cannot win them all.

So then we continued up I-65 to Oak Brook. I made a couple of phone calls when we passed the Lowell exit to let Mom and Dad know that I was driving through the area. I did tell a few people on the bus that we were extremely close to where I live, but nobody was really that interested.

Eventually we made it to Oak Brook. Now all along the way, Chris (trumpet 1) was asking around if anyone wanted to go to a seafood restaurant that had been recommended to him for dinner. The restaurant is located in the Oak Brook Mall which is right across from the hotel where we stayed. I'm always up for good seafood therefore I gave a definite yes. After we arrived at the hotel, and was killing time before dinner playing on the internet. I found some information of interest about the upcoming trip to New York that Heather and I are concocting so I gave her a call. At some point during our conversation she asked where I was. I said Oak Brook, and she said, "Hey I'm just 20 minutes done the road from you." Who knew? So she hopped in the car and we met up after dinner to do a little shopping. When the mall closed, she took me back to the hotel and we had a quick drink. Needless to say it was a pleasant surprise.

Sadly most stopover cities are not nearly that exciting. They are usually more about getting some sleep as we usually have a 5am or 6am bus call the next morning!