I’m back in Los Angeles after my week in Ruston, Louisiana. It was warmer in Ruston than it is now in sunny Southern California. The ice storms in the Midwest made air travel even more miserable than normal. After having my entire trip cancelled and rebooked, there was still an hour and a half delay at the Monroe Regional Airport and three hours delay at DWF Airport. I finally got home at 1:30am PST, that is 3:30am Ruston Standard time. That works out to 12 hours in transit. I could have gone to Paris in the same time.

DFW Airport looked like a reenactment of the fall of Saigon when I arrived. Hundreds of pissed off people clamoring to get out on any available flight. Lost luggage was stacked ten deep and three high. I think they should have issued taser guns to the gate agents yesterday. I have rarely seen such bad behavior from such a large group of selfish travelers.

I hate to travel, especially by commercial airplane. However, there doesn’t seem to be any way out of “air commuting” to do my job. Tomorrow I fly to Houston, and catch another plane to Cozumel, MX and board the Enchantment of the Seas, to fulfill my RCCL contract.

It is hard to engender pity when I say I have to go work on a ship cruising around the Caribbean for a week. However, getting to the ship means three airplanes, three times through TSA security, twice through customs American and Mexican, twice through immigration and a Mexican taxi ride which is death defying alone.

On the ship I have passenger status, which is really great. This means I don’t have to pull lifeboat detail, run the bingo game or swab the deck. I also get to go anywhere on the ship and am not restricted to crew quarters. I do about four shows over the week, which is a very easy schedule. The theater is very nice and the equipment great.

The bad part is, although there are ample computers to use at their cyber café on board ship, I am charged passenger rates, usually about 75 cents a minute. At that rate I would have already blown 20 bucks writing this. I know you are thinking, “It takes him more than 5 minutes to write this crap?” Well, it does. A dyslexic can never spend too much time rereading what he has rwittne. Wdors can just get jumbled. It takes tmie.

So if the blogs are short and sweet the next week you will understand. I will try to at least fill you in on where I am.

Thanks again David Wylie, Scott and Paulette, Mark, Darby and the entire cast of the Op Shop for making my time in Ruston so great. Great people, great performers and new friends. (Special mention to Scott and Paulette without whom I would have starved to death alone and forgotten at the Holiday Inn Express. Also to Mark Guinn and family for my only home cooked meal while I was in Louisiana. And of course, my old, old friend David Wylie, who by now has forgotten my name)
As you were,
Jay