8-29-2001

7:15 PM

So here’s the thing. When we woke up this morning, I had a sore throat, headache and general yuckiness and so did Matt and Billy. Matt and I stayed in the room and slept and Billy trouped it to the mall where we were to play today, organizing and dealing with logistics. About 3ish, Billy came back for me and Matt and we loaded up the instruments and headed down to the mall. The stage was set, canopy was set and we set our instruments and cabled. After cabling, while I was waiting for our section of the power to work, I was playing my guitar while sitting in one of the cool chairs that Debbie bought yesterday. Very comfortable for a wooden chair, really. Anyway, power had been supplied to the sound system, but not yet to our equipment. Just as the power was supplied to our equipment, two plug strips, one at the sound board and one just behind me where the amplifiers for the system were, made a “FFFFFFFFFFSSSSSHHHHTTTT” sound and smoked profusely. Internal meltdowns at both locations due to a 300+ voltage surge which, when it hit, took out the plug strips and anything that was powered up via them. QSC System amps gone. Compressors gone and possibly some of the mixing equipment too.

Concert cancelled, except that the youth choir that worked with us at Pastor Flemings’ church compound was there to sing so they went ahead and got on stage and sang while we struck behind them.
So we came back to the lodge and went to bed at 6:30ish.

We (Travis and I) just returned from dinner and he’s in bed and I’m writing you. It’s 8:23 PM.

We’ll know tomorrow morning if we will have a system or not for Thursday, Friday and the main concert on Saturday…this system was for all events. So we shall see what comes of this. Rich is planning to take acoustics to the compound gig tomorrow and play acoustically if need be, him and Junar. He asked Billy and me to take tomorrow off to rest…Billy wants to work…I think I’m all right with taking a day, especially since I haven’t had one yet. We’ve been busy and working our butts of each day, one way or another, or so it seems to me right now, anyway.

We are in the count down for us coming home now…it’s Wednesday night and we are to leave Sunday afternoon…let me do the math…89 hours from 6 minutes ago.

I guess I’ll call it. It’s 8:42 PM

I love you
W