I haven’t written here much this summer. I did manage to contribute a bit to the Twittersphere, but anything more that 140 characters seemed to be beyond me. I was pretty busy.

Luckily, for the first time ever, Gogo took photographs at every show this summer from his place at the keyboards – so you can get an idea of what my life’s been like for the past few months. Many of these shots necessarily involve the back of my head, but all of them show the party in front of us. Short of standing up there yourself and feeling the palpable love that overwhelms us every night – it’s a stage-side look at what we did this summer. Three of the shows (Parksville, Olds and Cochrane) have two pictures each (Cochrane, so that the collection wouldn’t end on an odd number) but the rest are individual shows and roughly in the order we played them. Every show we’ve done since Canada Day is represented here except for the private one we played for our multimillionaire buddy in Muskoka.

Gogo’s full set of pictures from the tour, including autographed body parts and tour bus exposés are here and I encourage you to check them all out. I thank my rock and roll brother for documenting our experience every night. It’s the first time anyone’s ever done it, and seeing all of them together like this is quite moving for me. Hopefully you enjoy it too.

A seven o’clock flight means a six o’clock airport arrival – means a five o’clock leave – means a four o’clock wake-up in White Rock. I always check and double check the numbers for fear of messing up – despite the fact I never have – and I always write the times down on a postit note, from the bottom up, and leave it stuck to my monitor before I go to bed. Then I double check it in the morning after I’ve dutifully arisen, robot-like, to my alarm.

Debbie can lay-in a bit while I do my last minute packing. This morning I retrieved my Canada Day clothes from the dryer, folded them and added them to a suitcase that already contains enough clothes for a week. Re-packing for just one show would take a lot longer than just leaving them all in there, so I just zip up the bulging bag and bang it down the stairs behind me.

We allow an hour for the airport run, but it never takes more than 40 minutes. Except for those very few times when my blood began to run cold and I frantically texted ahead about the highway standstills we found ourselves in the midst of. Even those runs probably took no more than an hour, but I just don’t like rushing to catch a flight.

I slept on the plane from Vancouver to Calgary. I read comics on my iPad during the two hour Calgary lay-over. I slept again on the flight from Calgary to Regina. It’s 3:09 PST now and we’re in our rented Buick SUV passing through Yorkton, Saskatchewan. There are conflicting opinions about how long this drive to Dauphin, Manitoba will take. Opinions range from three hours to five. Most likely it will be some increment in between. Like I said to Debbie in the text I sent from the Yorkton Tim Horton’s … there’s only one way to find out.

We play the Dauphin CountryFest tonight at midnight. Tomorrow we repeat this travel itinerary in reverse. In the meantime, the weather report calls for “Thunderstorms” for this evening. So the summer tour has begun in earnest!

Dauphin in the Distance:

We are all in great spirits after our massively successful and love-filled Canada Day show in Parksville BC two days ago and primed and ready for the adventures that no doubt await us.

Trooper’s first album was released 35 years ago, on July 1st, Canada Day, 1975.

1975 is the year the Vietnam war finally ended, and Sony first introduced Betamax video tapes – the first home videocassette tape recording format.

Bill Gates & Paul Allen wrote the first computer language program for personal computers in ’75 (and then went on to form Microsoft) and the two Steves were hunkered down in a garage in Los Altos, California, working on their first computer – incorporating Apple Computers the following year.

Jaws, The Towering Inferno and Young Frankenstein were box-office hits in 1975. Bruce Springsteen released his amazing third album, Born To Run, the film version of The Who’s “Tommy” premiered in London and Saturday Night Live debuted on NBC.

As large stretches of time always do – it seems like an eternity ago – and it seems like just the other day.

For a long time now, I’ve kept my camera, my flash drives and my noise-cancelling headphones in my backpack, which resides under my desk here at home, so it’s at hand for road trips. I use it as an auxilliary desk drawer.

I also keep doubles of my computer power cables, adapters, USB, ethernet and audio cables in the backpack so I can ready my laptop for the drive to the airport in the time it takes to unplug it and pack it away. Since the camera, drives and headphones are stored in there already, I’m less likely to leave them behind.

Jumping up and leaving town is such an expected part of my everyday reality, this routine seems eminently logical …

Until this morning, in the early days of Trooper’s traditional winter break, when I paused for a confused moment wondering where to put my camera.

In the last few weeks, friends, fans and a couple of people on the street have brought up the ‘Raise a Little Hell’ Cracker commercial. Some have congratulated me. Others have joked about lifetime supplies of saltines. Others, knowing that I don’t watch TV, simply wanted to be sure that I’d heard about it.

As it turns out, I found out about it the way they did. I heard the familiar ‘A’ chord ring out from the living room as I worked at my computer here in the den. I jumped up, and Debbie and I watched, fascinated, as the slow motion crackers dropped into the waiting bowls of exploding tomato soup.
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This is a test. A very sweet, endearing and charming test, as it turns out, but a test nonetheless.

Another shot of my book on holiday without me. This time in a less balmy locale! Many thanks to Al Forbes for the great shot from Cannon Beach Oregon.

I miss meeting at the van every morning in some gravel parking lot and waiting my turn to hoist my big Tumi suitcase into the back. I miss making the passenger seat my home for hour after mindless hour. I miss the quiet van talk and the willfully obscure in-jokes that get funnier and funnier from repetition, week after week. I miss the casual camaraderie that comes from spending so much time together.

I’m not crazy about taking planes to every gig. Airports are boring. The drivers who meet us in each new city are nice, but it’s not ‘our’ van, it’s not one of us driving. And we only go a few miles to the hotel.

I miss rowdy bars and small town shows where the haying schedule could easily blow out the Trooper gig. I like walking around in new places. I don’t seem to have time for that anymore. I miss it.