Dan was booked into Caesar's Palace for two nights and we had a couple of really great performances. The second day was a real pleasure. I could sleep in late, spend a leisurely afternoon outdoors and when it was time to go to sound check, I could just take an elevator instead of a tour bus to get there. With no traveling to do, it was a perfect combination of a day off and a concert night. It was also a chance to get some rest in preparation for what was coming next.

Our next gig was at a resort named Konocti Harbor. Konocti! It sounds like a Jewish American Indian with a name like Myron Two-Feathers may have named it. Maybe it means 'place of many tourists' or 'lake of many jet skis'. Who knows? Anyway, the resort is located at the edge of Clear Lake, in northern California, which was only 223 miles away from Caesar's. It seemed simple enough, right? But what we didn't know was that it was going to take us all day to get there.

Of course, we knew we had to come out of Lake Tahoe on the same agonizingly slow serpentine route that brought us in. But we didn't realize until we had completed our trek over the Sierras and down into the Sacramento Valley, that we would soon be doing the whole thing all over again in reverse, except now we would be driving on a winding two-lane black asphalt snake through the Coastal mountain range to reach Clear Lake. So once again, Jeff had to drive the land yacht at a snail's pace as we climbed the Coastal range in search of the world famous Konocti Harbor resort. I guess I should have taken seasick pills but the only thing handy at the time was Gin & Tonic. You know what they say, any port in a storm.

We arrived in the late afternoon... the very late afternoon. We were already pretty beat up from the long day's ride and we still had a show to do that night. Like a few other times on the tour, we walked straight out of the bus and on to the stage for a sound check while Bernie checked us in. Fortunately, there was enough time between the end of our sound check and the beginning of dinner for a short nap. We were only going to be in these rooms for a few hours because we would be leaving right after the show and driving all the way to San Diego for our next gig at Humphrey's. It was a drive of 589 miles and it would put us in San Diego at about the same time we had arrived in Konocti Harbor. This was going to be a tough twenty-four hours. Of course the light at the end of this tunnel was that once we got to Humphrey's we would have a whole day off.

The last time I'd played Konocti Harbor was when I was on tour with my old group, 'Bread.' We were doing a twenty-fifth anniversary world tour and Konocti was one of six dates we did in the states. That was a few years back and I'd forgotten all about the humongous drive required to get there but I did remember the show room. It was more like a giant cabaret or dinner theatre than a concert hall and it had two huge video screens on either side of the stage. So in addition to a live concert with great sound, the audience was treated to a live camera feed on both screens during the performance. The audience was loving it, especially the Dan fans, because the cameras were providing amazing close ups of the show in real time. Although it was a rather crowded stage and we were a little fatigued, the band was tight and we had a great audience and it turned out to be one of our best shows. I don't know where the extra energy came from but we were burnin' that night. And all too soon, we were back on the bus careening through the mountains in the middle of the night like true road dogs. As Zoot would say," it's martini time."

More To Come...Botts

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