First Show - how did it go???

It's Saturday morning - in Berkley - Clif and Brian having stayed with Jill are just waking up they are headed over to their friend Molly's - where Todd crashed, to pick him up and go to the gig at The Bay Area Discovery Museum for the first show of the tour. The anticipation was almost unbearable.

While driving out of Berkeley, Jill called Todd and said "Just a heads up - there's a bass sitting by my front door". So they drove back and got Clif's bass. It sure would have been hard to do the first show without a bass!!

Todd's notes...
We drove across the beautiful Richmond bridge, soaked in the view of the San Francisco Bay in all it's glory, and arrived at the Bay Area Discovery Museum two hours before show time.

If you are not familiar with the Bay Area Discovery Museaum, you can check out thier website: http://www.baykidsmuseum.org/ for more information.

The weather was warm and sunny when we got to the Museum. The load in and set up went smoothly, and it only took about an hour and a half (pretty good - considering this was the first time setting up the time machine and all). Rose, who runs the theater, met us - it was great to see her again.


This was the very first time we'd ever done the new "Time Machine Show" and there were some big unanswered questions.

• Were we going to be able to really travel in time?
• Would the time machine hold together on its maiden voyage?
• Were we going to be able to change our costumes in less than 60 seconds.

These were the big unanswered questions as we kicked off our first show.

Well...the gig was great, and the crowd was double the size it was last year. They sold about 100 tickets. Todd was still sick as a dog. But we did travel in time. The machine worked like a charm. All the costume changes were fast and smooth and the music was rockin. (Later we found out that the audience could hear the sounds of tearing velcro as we ripped off our old costumes in the time machine).

The tear down and pack up into the trailer only took about 45 minutes, then we went for a drink to toast the fact that this was our 200th show!

The Presidio Yacht Club is next door to the Bay area Discovery Museum, and therefore very much a part of the tour tradition. This place has the best view of the Golden Gate Bridge in all of San Francisco. Clif's friends, John and Laura, were with us with their kids, Keegan and Naomi, and their friends, Joe and Ariana.

Next we went into Sausalito and ate at a restaurant called Nellie's. By the way, the tortoise shell lampshades are not real. Also, if you do not want to play credit card roulette with a waiter, you might want to avoid this establishment.

A guy named Bill Dan was down the street makin' cairns out of rocks balanced on their points. It was incredible. Check out his website: http://www.rock-on-rock-on.com/.

We went to Los Gatos next, where we stayed with John and Laura. We ate Laura's delicious prawn fajitas and watched the video of our show. We liked it. Todd went to bed in the fish room, Brian and Cheryl went to the guest house, while Clif and John went for a long hike through the woods and watched Transformers, before they finally went to bed too. The next day we all got up and set out for Santa Monica. We took highway 101 down the coast and it was awesomely beautiful. I plan to post some photos of that soon, but you will have to use your imagination for now...