February 1, 2004 - Park City, Utah

We arrived in Park City, Utah and 10:00AM. I guess Jeff was driving pretty fast. We didn't leave Denver till 2:00AM and 8 hours later we arrived in Park City which is 555 miles away from Denver. That boy had to be flyin'! The rooms weren't going to be ready for a while so Victor and I decided to go for a walk. We actually weren't quite in Park City, we were in a shopping area a couple of miles outside of town. Since there were a lot of stores within walking distance of the hotel we decided to check some of them out. As we were walking I was looking around. There were huge, snow covered mountains everywhere. The scene was very beautiful. One of the mountains had 2 very high 'long jumps'. They had built and used these in the winter Olympics that were held in Salt Lake City. They look very scary in person! I can't image somebody wanting to come down on skis wanting to fly through the air. I jokingly said to Victor that we should come down the 'long jump' sliding on Hefty bags!

The temperature was cold but it didn't feel too bad. The altitude was over 7000 feet and I could feel the effects of it while we were walking. We looked around in a Staples for a while. We were trying to find more 'geek' stuff for our Palm Pilots. While I was in Staples I got a call from my student Jason Brynarsky. He told me that he had found two 21" monitors for my Pro-Tools recording studio. Very cool!! After we left Staples we walked next door to Walmart so that I could find some thermal underwear and sunglasses. Victor bought a couple of DVD's. We decided to walk to another shopping center and ran into Divinity along the way. When we got close to that shopping center we saw that it wasn't completed yet. Divinity and I walked to a Subway that we saw and Victor went back to the bus. Victor called me to tell me that my hotel room was ready. We decided to give it to Derico since he was in the lobby waiting. When I got back to the hotel, Victor and Danette were in the lobby. Everybody's rooms were ready except for mine and Victor's. Since we waited so patiently they decided to upgrade our rooms. We both ended up with king size beds and hot tubs in our rooms. Very cool!! I relaxed in my room for a while. Danette called me to tell me that we were all meeting at Divinity's room for the Superbowl party. The Superbowl started at 4:30 Mountain Time which was 2 hours earlier than what we thought. So I walked down to her room and slowly other band members trickled in. We ordered a bunch of food and enjoyed a very good football game. Our lighting director Ted Atwell is from North Carolina so he was rooting for the Panthers. I was just rooting for a good game because I hadn't seen a good Superbowl in a couple of years. Since the Redskins weren't in it, it didn't make a difference to me who won or lost. I cheered whenever anybody scored. The game ended up being one of the best Superbowls I had ever seen. I thought the half time show was terrible. Not a lot of substance. There were no new songs played by any of the artists. If I'm going to hear old music, I want to hear 'older' music. I'd rather hear Stevie Wonder. I didn't see Justin create Janet Jackson's wardrobe 'malfunction.' I had turned my head a split second before. I think it says a lot about the state of the music industry when an artist gets more press about what they did during the music they played.

After the Superbowl party I walked down the hall to my room, talked to my wife on the phone for a bit. We decided to use this time to get caught up on email and tour journal stuff. After I got off the phone with her I jumped in the hot tub. Well, I tried to jump in. I decided I was going to use the timer on my digital camera to take a picture of myself while I was in the hot tub, so I ran the water in the tub, set up the camera in the adjoining room that had a good view of the tub and got the camera ready...I set the timer and that gave me 10 seconds to run across the room and jump in the tub. I started to slide into the tub and just as I started to get my body into the water, I realized how HOT the water was and half jumped out....and of course, that's exactly when the timer went off and the camera took my picture! I was laughin' so hard I was crying. So there was this picture of me butter-ball naked hunched over the tub with a scowl on my face! (I don't think we'll be using that picture here)

.....(can you believe he didn't even save that picture for me??...That's priceless material for a wife to have! I would've framed it and everything....)

Here's a pic of the whole gang including the bus driver at the Superbowl party - I'm the one behind the camera...

peace & blessings

anthony