If you’re just joining us, feel free to get caught up on Part I, Part II and Part III by clicking the links provided.

Last week, on “The Time The Germans Thought I Was A “T” Word”….

I, Tourmama, was left sitting seemingly comfortably in the KLM business lounge at Heathrow Airport after an excruciatingly painful 3 days that included having my passport destroyed after an unsuccessful drug raid,  avoiding German jail, no thanks to the Frankfurt consulate, and making it by the skin of my teeth on my flight to London after an argument on who was to take the box cutter I forgot to remove from my laptop bag. After pouring my heart out to two Irish gentlemen en route to Helsinki, they felt pity for me and signed me into the business lounge for rest and alcohol.

But then… my phone rings…

May 18, 2006

Current mood:tired

The layover and conclusion… PART IV..

We walk over, he signs me in, tells the gentleman at the bar to take good care of me, and they’re off. I’m the only one in there. I set up my laptop, order another drink, and lounge out comfortably in the chair. This is exactly what I needed. All of a sudden, my phone starts ringing. I look… it’s the singer of the band that I will be tour managing for the next 5 weeks in the US. The guy that I just left 2 days ago, as he and his band were headed to greece for 2 shows, while I went ahead to the US to get things in order for their arrival. Probably just wants to double check their pick up arrangements…

“Mama!! We have a problem… there’s an epidemic in Greece and we don’t want to go there. Can you cancel our flights and get us on the next flight from Stuttgart to Philadelphia?”

You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.

So much for some R&R before I hit the plane! Literally every single second of the next  3 hours are spent on the phone with my travel agent, the band, the label, the limo company, the booking agent, management, and repeat. It gets to the point where I’m on my connecting flight and the flight attendent is telling me that my phone must be switched off… I tell her I need 3 more minutes. She tells me that if I don’t switch off my phone now, I’ll have to leave the plane. Well, I’ve had enough problems with authority figures recently, so I tell my travel agent she has 7 hours to figure it out given the budget provided and to have good news for me when I land. I put all of my faith in her. All I can do now, is try and numb myself with overpriced tiny liquor bottles and wait until we land.

In the end, it all got sorted out… I got a new passport after the tour, the band made it over with no problems, although the headlining band refused to let my band play the first 2 shows (remember, they flew in early due to the epidemic) even though they offered to do it for free because they were bored. Other than some typical harrowing tales that included a drunken female fan sneaking into a junk bunk on our tour bus to try and smuggle herself on the road with us, all went smoothly…Even the Canadian border crossings were relatively painless.

And this concludes our story.

Stay tuned for another exciting chapter in: RANDOM TALES FROM LIFE ON THE ROAD!!!

If you enjoyed my harrowing tale, please let me know with a comment or a like 😀