The Edmonton fringe was mainly just work. I wanted to average 3 shows a day. Weekdays I only got two but the weekends made up for it with 4 and 5. The second last day, the Saturday, was the only day I did 5 and I worked so hard I made myself sick and I couldn't work on the last day. I still went out and saw that the weather was crap and not really worth it anyways. So in total I did 28.5 shows and 30 was my goal. The half show was because I got rained on, some paid before they ran off and then I continued after the rain stopped. And most of my audience returned.
I think another reason I got sick was the room I rented and shared with three other people. It wasn't the healthiest place and living there for almost two weeks was a little torturous. But I was really proud of the other shows I hosted in the room. It was Ben's first time doing street and Nora's first time without any fire. Last year she was only doing a fire show and the start of this Summer she tried her first daytime shows with lots of talking. She was still going a fire number and ending in fire. The first show with no fire went not great because she had no finale. So the the next day I gave her my slackline and told her to get eight guys from the audience to hold it while she stands on it. When that works, juggle! The first show she got a couple of seconds, stand on the rope. The next was a bit more and the third was ten seconds or so! The following day she was juggling knives! Just imagine the expression on the guys face that was holding a rope on his shoulder with a girl about to juggle knives above his head, for the first time!
My show worked almost as good without fire. It took me a while to find out what worked for an Edmonton audience, but once I figured that out. I rocked it up. I even started my own little following. I will try to get on the stages next year and you can help. If you haven't yet, you can see most of my show on line now at my YouTube site.
http://www.youtube.com/user/iveson Rate and write some nice comments if you like. This will (hopefully) get me jobs. Nick filmed (and edited) it for me in Saskatoon. Thanks Nick!
The next destination for us was Burning Man. Like everywhere, the decisions (decision is a dumb word, more below) on how to get somewhere is quite the adventure. Then trying to arrive in the middle of the desert is another story. Busing it would have taken days and would have been more expensive than flying. Flying was stupid because Edmonton - Reno was really expensive, more expensive than the bus. To Las Vegas was doable but it was 1000km from where we wanted to be. Calgary to Las Vegas was the cheapest and it turns out we might just be able to get a ride share from there. The other option was to get Ben to drive us all the way down there and I would pay for his gas back home which was still the cheapest option. But him and his girl had left their passports in Saskatoon and they would have had to return to get them.
So we booked the flight from Calgary to Las Vegas in hopes that there would be a ride share for us. Then we rented a car and headed in the direction of Elkford, BC. (don't tell the rental company because we were not suppose to leave AB, I think?) Elkford is the new home of my old juggling partner. Jeff was sometimes the only person I had to juggle with in Saskatoon when I was studying there. We formed the U of S juggling club, I was the Pres and he was the Vice Pres. Together with a hand full others (and about 30 fakeys to fill the rest of the list so we could be an official club) we met in the gym every Sunday before the Jazz dance class would kick us out. In winter we would have to wait as long as 30mins for the clubs to thaw before they would be warm enough to juggle. Stupid negative forty!
We put a show together and toured as the "Too Cool Fools" one Summer. The following fall Tine came to Saskatoon and wanted to join our show, so our duo became a trio. Then Jeff's Mom forbade (I can't believe forbade is a real word!) him to work the street because he was to be an engineer. (Or something like that. I don't tell other people's stories well) so our trio became a duo again. It was probably a good thing because some of the ideas Jeff and I had for the new show sounded like someone would get killed.
So we went to visit him.
The idea was to drive a long the mountains for the scenic view (Hwy 22), but we missed the turn off and drove through the mountains (Hwy 93). Which took a bunch longer. Nora got sick, probably from the same thing that made me sick the night before, so we only made it to Edson the first night. We stayed in a motel (Park A Motel) instead of sleeping in the car. That was a good idea because Nora tossed her cookies and at least she had a real toilet to do that and not out of a car door. It was quite a decent stay for it's price. But when ever we stay at a hotel it is hard to get out before check out. Want to get our money's worth. Get every last minute!
The drive through Jasper national park was purrdy. Lots of stops and lots of photo's, even one stop at a glacier. So we didn't make it that day, but got as far as Golden. I treated Nora to another night in a motel because she wasn't 100% yet. Jeff's wife, Tathlina was pregnant and due in a couple days. Best make sure sick people aren't sick no more before visiting woman with child. So that was our excuse for doddling in the mountains.
It was really good visiting Jeff. It had been a long time. Too long. He had a good job as engineer for a mine and was just finishing building his own house. I was a bit jealous of that and he was a bit jealous that I had traveled more and had more useless skills.
Later,
Bob
decision - I tried to spell it but failed, my spell check couldn't help me either. I googled it, no help. Tried dictionary.com, nope. I googled it with using it in a sentence, still no. Finally I wrote it in German and got the online translator to deal with it. Having the adventures is only half the adventure, writing about them is the other half.
