Tales From the Tour -- April 2003

REDDING, CA / SACRAMENTO, CA / MEDFORD, OR / CUPERTINO, CA / SAN ANTONIO, TX
Somehow I missed Redding, or maybe it was never there. I picked a likely main drag - Pine Street - and walked most of its length through downtown, hoping to take in the city's main sights. A brand-spanking-new city hall has been built south of the city center, and the old one now shows art exhibitions, but most of the attractions are a freeway drive away. I chanced upon Buz's Crab Stand, nestled in the shadows of a Safeway supermarket near the new city hall, and picked up a Cajun halibut sandwich for lunch. I intended to eat it as I walked through the city. But by the time I'd taken ten bites I was at the north end and the walk was over.

I met Erica and we soaked up sunshine, and watched kite-flyers and kids and dogs frolic, in the bright grass of Turtle Bay Regional Park. There's another Museum of Interesting Mechanical Devices there, or however you would categorize Bellingham's Mindport, but it was closed on Mondays. We followed a path along the Sacramento River and stumbled upon a rodeo arena, complete with Wild West-style lettering, rough-looking food and drink stalls (closed at the time), an enormous bale of hay, and several stables' worth of beautiful, sleek horses. We couldn't figure out what kind of rodeo it was; most of the horses looked too gentle and graceful to engage in any kind of frenetic activity. Indeed, they allowed us to come right up to them and pet them. We couldn't figure out whether we were on private property, but the few people around didn't seem to care. The stables were, quite literally, a one-minute walk across a small field to the theatre, part of the Redding Convention Center. The theatre had no orchestra pit, so we were backstage for most of the show and visible to the audience only for the final number.

Our hotel, La Quinta Inn, was a couple of miles away, in the transition zone between city (so to speak) and strip malls. A bunch of us needed a meal after the show, and we set off toward the International House of Pancakes and a branch of the small Black Bear chain, that wonderful diner we lunched at on the way to Eugene last week. The IHOP was firmly closed, and the Black Bear had stopped serving just a few minutes before we got there. Denny's seemed to be the only sit-down option.

I joined the others almost to the Denny's entrance, but I couldn't bring myself to go in. I'm just put off by the fact that Denny's seems to be sprouting up on every street corner, that it has infiltrated every little town and taken the place of every neighborhood late-night eatery. A part of me can't help thinking that the Black Bear, a cozy diner with some interesting local menu items and delectable homemade cobbler, would be open a lot later - if not all night - if there weren't a Denny's across the street. I have nothing against the concept of Denny's, a dependable round-the-clock establishment with predictable food options; I just think that no place deserves to be that ubiquitous. I feel the same way about Starbucks, and I'd probably even feel the same way if every intersection were home to a takeout sushi joint. (With respect to Denny's, there is, of course, the 4:30-in-the-morning-when-you're-drunk-and-waiting-for-a-bus-in-Key West exception, which I have already discussed.)

I also realized that I'd be a lot more satisfied, gastronomically and financially speaking, if I headed to Safeway and picked up some hummus and pita bread, brought it back to my hotel room, and curled up with that and a glass (or styrofoam cup, it would turn out) of merlot. And that's where I headed. I can spend hours wandering around a large supermarket. They're all largely the same, but they're also a little bit different, offering slightly different bargains or specialties. At this Safeway, for instance, I could have procured a huge 18-ounce slab of fully cooked baby back ribs for $9.99, an enticing seafood salad for $4.99, or ready-to-eat shrimp for $8.49 per pound. But I had a hankering for hummus, and I settled on a $2.69 plastic container of the Athenos black-olive variety and a $1.34 package of pita bread. (What I wouldn't give for one day at my local Manhattan produce market, Stiles, where a pita package goes for fifty cents!)

We had a two-and-a-half-hour drive to Sacramento on Tuesday, but we wouldn't leave until noon - no doubt perfect timing to ensure arrival in Sacramento just as all the lunch places were closing. I tried to find more of Redding on Tuesday morning; I headed north from the hotel, and though it was basically strip-mall land it was a pleasant stroll. There was a sidewalk, for starters, and the weather was sunny and warm. I passed a Toys Yah Us (the Russian letter that looks like a backwards "R" is pronounced "yah," no? - surely that is what they're going for) and a branch of the Mexican restaurant Chevys. When I'd mentioned Chevys the previous night I'd been met with scorn and grimaces; it had stupefied me that people shunned Chevys but were so gung-ho over Denny's. I've had only one Chevys experience but it was pleasant enough, and at least you can get a margarita the size of a bathtub. Maybe people are alienated by the missing apostrophe.

Anyway, I continued up Hilltop Drive and eventually came to a Cost Plus World Market. I'd been impressed with the one in Aurora, Illinois, so I ventured into this one as well. They really do have a good selection of international foods and beverages, including - I stopped dead in my tracks and my eyes lit up in amazement - the Villa Maria sauvignon blanc from Marlborough, New Zealand, which I'd been searching for ever since I'd sampled it at Nokhu in Fort Collins. It was only $10.99; I thought for sure it would be at least a twenty-dollar investment. I bought as many bottles as I could practically lug around - one - and returned to La Quinta a happy man.

We pulled into the Best Western in Sacramento five minutes after the two nearby Indian lunch buffets closed, and I hustled down K Street muttering expletives and regretting the fact that I'd worn shorts - it was about thirty degrees colder in Sacramento than it had been in Redding, and the wind was strong enough to kick up debris and make me close my eyes. I lunched at a hole-in-the-wall Chinese-Japanese place called the Bento Box, in which the other patrons were all over seventy and quite possibly homeless, or at least on the verge of destitution; it offered a $3.99 lunch combination made up of various things that had been sitting out on the counter all day. I had the salted riblets and wilted chiles, or what was left of them, over a mound of rice the size of a basketball; since there weren't enough riblets the lady threw in some chicken teriyaki as well. I also had three pieces of sushi, which had also been sitting out all day; they were enormous and square and only eighty-nine cents each. I left the place with the uneasy feeling that my stomach might reject its contents at any moment.

One reason I'd chosen a quasi-fast-food place is that it gave me time to go to the California State Railway Museum before it closed. And what a splendid place it was. It began with a small room devoted to old toy trains, including some elaborately decorated cars and wind-up specimens from before it was common for homes to have electricity - part of an enormous collection that was recently bequeathed to the museum and will soon be on view.

The main exhibit focused on the Central Pacific, Sacramento's first railroad, initiated by Theodore Judah in the 1840s and headed up by entrepreneurs Charles Crocker, Mark Hopkins, Collis P. Huntington, and Leland Stanford - known as the Big Four - whose commanding, controversial leadership resulted in the construction of a rail route over the Sierra Nevada and the first transcontinental link. Getting over the Sierra Nevada was no easy task; it required thousands of workers, mostly Chinese immigrants who found themselves out of work when the Gold Rush ended, to brave the blizzards and frost and blast away through the hardest of rock in order to build tunnels. The Chinese amounted to 90% of the workforce and bore the brunt of inferior treatment - they were given the most hazardous jobs and forced to pay for amenities that other workers received free - but their propensity for self-care and a better diet meant that they staved off diseases that plagued the others.

In order to allow trains to run over the Sierra Nevada year-round, snow sheds were built: wooden tunnels that kept the snow from accumulating on the tracks. Remnants of these structures still exist, as I recall from our numerous drives over the Donner Pass. Even with the snow sheds, trains were at risk; as late as the mid-1900s a train was stranded for four days until it could be dug out and the passengers were able to walk to safety. The transcontinental link was established when two trains met at Promontory, Utah, on 10 May 1869. Eleven days earlier, Central Pacific workers laid ten miles of track in a twelve-hour period, a record that still stands.

The museum also had an exhibit on the work shops - picture the tens of thousands of parts that make up a train, and then picture welders and smiths and other workers creating and assembling all the little nails and wheels and levers and what have you, in a dozen buildings the size of airplane hangars. And then there were the old locomotives and cars themselves, in excellent condition. I went into an old Pullman sleeper car - I'd seen Pullman listed on old schedules but never knew quite what the conditions were like. I walked through a mail car; back when mail was carried by train, postal workers slaved twelve hours a day and received only twelve minutes for lunch. They'd do a shift of several days, then work the route in reverse, then get a few days off with their families. And one old dining car - the Conchiti - featured china and cutlery from varies ages of train travel. I had 90 minutes in the museum and could have stayed two hours more, but it was going to close and I had a show to play.

We had two nights of shows at the University of California at Davis, a fifteen-mile drive from Sacramento along Interstate 80; on the eastbound side of the highway, a sign helpfully announced that Ocean City, Maryland, was 3073 miles away, and I started thinking of the Chesapeake Bay and crab dinners at Obrycki's. (It'll come later, when we get to Baltimore in mid-May.) The theatre was built just six months ago and still smelled of freshly installed metal; they'd taken all technological precautions and put in irksome lighting on such a sensitive sensor that it would go off after about twenty seconds of inactivity. I found myself hurling water bottles across the green room just to keep the place lit.

Erica and I needed food after Tuesday's performance. Everything along K Street seemed to have closed hours before, so we didn't have much hope, but with a quick look in the what-to-do-in-Sacramento magazine we found Tapa the World, a tapas place open daily until midnight. There were still several parties seated when we arrived at a quarter to twelve. We had a tasty, reasonably priced meal: marinated octopus, seafood cakes, breaded eggplant, an assortment of olives. The desserts were remarkable: we tried the cactus sorbet - pink and subtly flavored - and the flan, though they all sounded wonderful.

With most of Wednesday free, we strolled around Old Sacramento, reached via a crosstown walk along K Street and through a looming shopping mall - one minute you're looking at cheap eateries and enjoying the sights and sounds of Sacramento's tram system and the next you're looking up at Macy's. But then you go through a tunnel on which the city's history is neatly explained, albeit in reverse, and then you emerge and you're looking at century-old buildings.

One such building, the Ebner Hotel, dates from 1847 and is about to be razed, as it's falling apart and the cost of restoring it would be prohibitive. It's sad - we peered through the construction fence at the faded painted lettering announcing rooms to let, and sighed - but the city has really done a great job at keeping its old town attractive and authentic-looking. All the buildings looked old; some have been restored; most are now shops selling Native American art and novelty items and the like, but it's not touristy or crowded - it's actually quite welcoming. The newspaper article announcing the demolition of the Ebner even said that it'll probably be replaced with a replica, or at least something in keeping with the surroundings.

We headed up to the edge of the old town and stumbled into a shop that's part museum (actually part of the railroad museum) and part hardware store. The building is a reconstruction of Crocker and Huntington's hardware store, which they ran before they got involved with the Central Pacific. The back of the store explained the history of certain hardware items and kitchen devices, including some wonderful combination gadgets that brought to mind the famous "Can It Core A Apple?" episode of "The Honeymooners." There was also a copy of an old Sears, Roebuck & Co. catalogue and a catalogue of old non-electric items for use by Amish people. But the interesting thing is that the store also carried normal hardware items - maybe not quite as modern as most, but serviceable nonetheless - that you could buy and put to use. What an intriguing blend of nostalgia and utility.

We circled the old buildings a couple of times and had a meal of turtle soup, jambalaya, and spicy shrimp at Cafe New Orleans, and then we retreated downstairs to the Hogshead Brewery. When we first went in a man named George gave us what we thought was a menu, but was in fact a list of the bands that would be performing on Sunday. George was lively and took great pride in the brewery's output, and when we made it clear we would only be around for a few more hours he abandoned talk of the bands and focused on talk of beer production. They make all their beer from fresh, organic ingredients, with no hangover-inducing preservatives - that's why, as George explained, he was able to get sloppily drunk three times and each time wake up with no recollection of the previous evening's events, but also with a healthy head, even though their beer's alcohol content is unusually high, up to 9%. And they produce some interesting flavors, such as vanilla ale and blackberry ale, though we stayed with the traditional: I had a brown and Erica a red. Oh, the place has one other gimmick: You give them a dollar bill, and they jerry-build a slingshot out of a towel and a leather bill envelope, stick a tack through George Washington's head, place the dollar on the envelope, and thrust it up so that it attaches to the ceiling. So if you go into the Hogshead Brewery, at least for the time being, you can search the ceiling for a bill with Erica's and my name on it.

That night it was back to Tapa the World, this time with Greg and James (Erica can never come out the last night we're in a city, as she has to load out the show). Greg dislikes seafood and was hesitant - "Do they have normal food there, like chicken, or is it all octopus?" was his memorable question, conjuring up a long-lasting image of a menu on which absolutely everything was octopus-based - but I assured him there were plenty of options. We tried other tapas - pork skewers, filet mignon in a plum sauce, an assortment of cheeses, a giant platter of grilled vegetables - and I overate to the point that my stomach started screaming. And then I had cactus sorbet.

On Thursday we bussed from Sacramento, back up through those annoying mountain passes, to Medford, Oregon. We left at 8:30 - 8:36, to be precise - and had completed most of the 308-mile journey by 12:30. There was only an hour to go; surely we could make it without a lunch stop.

Then we arrived at Yreka, as in, "Yreka, what a silly place to break the journey!" Anika announced a 45-minute pause, and we left the highway at 12:36. Central Yreka seemed OK - a homey-looking restaurant called Grandma's Kitchen, or some such thing; a store selling train sets - but we drove on, to a strip-mall area with a Wal-Mart, a Raley's supermarket, and a Black Bear diner, among other things. The Wal-Mart and Raley's were an unsurmountable trek away from the Black Bear - about a three-minute walk - and so the lunch break's duration was extended to an hour so that Jim could drop people off at Wal-Mart, wend the bus out of the parking lot, wait endlessly for one of California's ubiquitous left-turn signals to change in his favor, and thus complete the five-minute drive to the Black Bear, drop people off there, and then do both stops again when the break ended.

I wasn't hungry - my tapas overindulgence hadn't yet worn off - and I figured the lunch options would be better in Medford. Besides, Erica had just finished work, had just started a nap, and would probably be up for a meal at around 14:30. I spent most of the hour wandering through Raley's, without any intent to buy anything. It's a good thing, too, as most of the items were overpriced. The only thing that seemed a good deal, coincidentally enough, was hummus, and I almost picked some up for later. But I couldn't find the pita bread; it wasn't near the hummus. How can the pita bread not be near the hummus? It reminded me of those drugstores - nearly all of them - in which the toothbrushes, toothpaste, dental floss, and toothbrush holders are all in different aisles. How can store managers not realize that those things should be kept together? How can they not know that if you're planning for a trip and you're in tooth mode, you want to get all your tooth needs fulfilled at once? There should be a Tooth Supplies aisle, but instead you have to hunt down the Handheld Tooth Tools aisle, the Handheld Tools Spreads aisle, and the Tiny Boxes of Waxed String and Other Flexible Accessories aisle, before you circumnavigate the store several times helplessly searching for the Randomly Shaped Little Plastic Containers aisle, which is in fact not an aisle but rather a little nook hidden next to the employees' bathroom.

I killed a good bit of time on a humorous quest for the pita bread, which wasn't in the breads aisle, either. And it wasn't in the bakery. It wasn't even among those shelves that stand back-to-back with the end of an aisle - you know, the shelves that contain items that have nothing to do with the aisle but might fulfill one of your shopping needs should you chance upon them at the right moment and in the right frame of mind. One such set of shelves, next to an aisle of pet food or paper towels or panty shields or some such thing, did have various flavors of bread - how would anyone find them? - but not pita, alas. At the opposite end of the store I even found another shelf with a different brand of hummus - I was now several time zones away from where I'd found the first - but there was no pita bread in sight. And I decided that such a disorganized store was clearly unworthy of my time, so I stepped outside and prepared myself to get on the bus.

I got on, and almost everyone else from the Wal-Mart/Raley's stop got on, and we waited; the delay droned on and on. It reminded me a little of bus travel in China, in which you often spend as much time stopped as you do in transit. Finally everyone was there, and we were able to pick up the others at the Black Bear. We got back on the highway at 14:20, 104 minutes after we'd left it, and at least a half hour after we would have reached Medford if we'd dispensed with the lunch stop to begin with. And by this time I was hungry. And angry.

When my mother taught a class at the Harvard Extension School on Tuesday evenings, exam nights were subject to the Bertucci's Rule: If anyone required more time than was regularly allotted, she would stay until the last person was finished, but if she got out too late to pick up a pizza from Bertucci's on the way home, the last person to hand in the exam got an F. I propose a similar edict for our bus: If we depart more than five minutes late, the last person to board should pay for everyone's dinner and hotel room that night. (Incidentally, my mother still teaches the class, but it's now done on-line, so the Bertucci's Rule has been mooted.)

I wasn't in the best of moods, but Brian was able to make me laugh. He's great at impressions and voice disguises, and he occasionally prank-calls other tour members on their mobile phones, pretending to be Richard from Citibank and offering a no-interest-for-a-limited-time credit card, to see how they'll react. He made one such call during the last hour of the journey, and half the bus was riveted to the conversation; the person he called was polite but eventually firmly refused. He called back - after telling us it was Erica - and tried to persuade her once again; she'd already suspected a prank by this point, and, hearing uncontrollable laughter in the background, realized without question that she was talking to Brian. Whereupon he handed the phone to me and I relayed the basics of the 104-minute delay.

Twelve miles from Medford, we stopped once again, this time at a weigh station - I cannot thank the Oregon highway authority enough for caring that our bus comprises 12500 pounds, or kilograms, or tons, or tonnes, or angstroms or light-years or whatever unit of mass they use, and for putting this need above the needs of thirty-five weary travelers - and, finally at the Red Lion Hotel in Medford, we circled the place until finding our little wing in the rear; the multiple-building guest quarters are detached from the lobby. I thrust my luggage in my room, stormed off, and never looked back.

I found Erica near the theatre, a few blocks away, and after a brief stop at a pet store with some unusual reptiles, fish, and birds (though I will never begin to understand why anyone would want to keep a ferret) we went in search of a meal. Medford seemed to have all of about five restaurants, but one stood out. It was a Russian restaurant called Samovar, and while it wouldn't open until 17:00, it seemed to fit the bill.

We entered a few minutes before 17:00, hoping to study the menu a bit and save some time, as I'd have to be at the theatre by 18:00. A boy about twelve years old greeted us in a T-shirt and shorts and summoned his mother to seat us. I apologized for arriving early, and she said, "No, it's five o'clock. We should be open. I didn't change the sign yet." This must be a first in the annals of Russian dining: a hostess who not only is polite and apologetic but even lets you in before opening time!

She couldn't have been more warm or welcoming. The menu was full of descriptions that sounded as if everything had just been harvested from the garden out back and lovingly assembled together. We had the seventy-appetizer sampler, or whatever it was - Russian meals usually begin with a deluge of cold plates - and moved on to shi (a thick beef soup) and borscht, served in flowered porcelain crocks that clearly came from somebody's grandmother's kitchen, and rounded out the meal with blintzes. If we'd had more time we'd have spoken with the hostess at length about her immigration and why she'd settled on Medford (no doubt it was a premonition to establish the most appealing eatery in town), but I had to duck out early and head for the theatre to be within earshot of our all-important company meeting, which always occurs two hours before our first show in a new city. I contemplated being forty-four minutes late, to make a point - "I would have had a ninety-minute lunch here, but you delayed me for no reason, so I'm having a ninety-minute dinner instead" - but one lateness is not rectified by another. So I rushed over.

The company meeting usually deals with a few minutes of talk about earth-shattering housekeeping matters, such as whether house seats are still available in Pensacola, followed by a lengthy discussion of what part of the set is being used based on how big the stage is. The discussion usually takes place onstage or in the house, while the band is in the orchestra pit, so it's virtually impossible for me to hear it most of the time, and I usually just listen for key words and perk up when a topic of interest arises. At this particular meeting someone raised the issue of departures from rest stops, and I stood up, readying my ears for commiseration, preparing to nod vigorously in agreement, and thinking I might even intersperse a few Amen, brother!s for punctuation.

Instead, what he said was that "people" - and he could be referring only to your curmudgeonly yet practical narrator - should not exude negative energy by making comments on the bus about late departures, because it brings everyone down; they should speak to Anika if they have problems with seventeen-hour breaks in the middle of nowhere. Someone else popped up helpfully to add that when people are sleeping in the aisles on the bus, others should take care not to step on them. A third capped the discussion with something like, "Just be nice, like your mommy told you."

I contemplated calling my parents and asking me to show me my last report card from elementary school, because as far as I could remember I had been promoted out of the fourth grade in 1984. But here I was again, being lectured to about being compassionate and having patience. This little excursion out of the real world - a world where being forty-four minutes late does matter - and into fairy-magic-happy-kiddie-let's-all-be-nice-and-share-and-get-along land was amusing, if inappropriate, and as the company meeting ended I thought, "Boy, do I have good travelogue material tonight!"

We left Medford for Cupertino, California, on Friday, once again heading south on Interstate 5, through the same fercockte mountain passes and around the same bends in the road. Brian said we've driven this section so much they should rename it the "Fosse Stretch," a pun on an element of Fosse's choreography. I'd been up late, my fingers violently spewing out text regarding lunch stops, so I was well-prepared to make the tedious trip again; I slept for the first five hours and awoke at 12:15, an hour and a half out of Cupertino and once again tantalized by the prospect of getting there without a lunch break.

But no, we couldn't pass up seventy-five minutes at the Sunvalley Mall, an hour from Cupertino. I grimaced and headed into the nearest mall entrance before realizing I was headed straight for the perfume counter at Macy's, a prospect that sparked a powerful burst of dry heaves, and so I returned outside and found another door. This time I stumbled upon a mall directory, which was much more interesting, and also entertaining, especially as it would probably have dozens of typos that I could snicker and sneer at for a good portion of the break. In the corner of the map I noticed the word Todai.

I knew what Todai was only because Brian had mentioned it the day before. It's a chain of Japanese seafood buffets that's primarily in California but is rapidly expanding, and not nearly quickly enough. I sprinted over there (why do malls always put kiosks and other obstacles in the middle of the corridors, so that you can't go straight?), my spirits heightened.

The lunch buffet offered sushi, rolls, cold dishes such as baby octopus, and hot dishes such as wonderful barbecued yellowtail. Some of the rolls were innovative; the sushi wasn't the best, but for $12.95, I'm not complaining. I stuffed myself appropriately and, upon returning to the bus, thanked Anika - with a sly I-know-I-acted-surly-before grin - for finding such a splendid place to eat.

Then followed a weekend of performances in Cupertino, though we stayed a dreary twenty-minute drive away in Sunnyvale, a traffic-light-riddled drive that, once again, could be made a lot shorter if they turned some of those intersections into roundabouts. There was virtually nothing within walking distance of the hotel; there was virtually nothing within walking distance of the theatre; somewhere in between was a delightful assortment of inaccessible Asian and Middle Eastern markets and restaurants, the Asian population spilling over from San Francisco, just 38 miles away. There was, at least, one good sushi place across from the theatre - it provided a soba lunch and a sushi dinner on Saturday - but most everything else required a hefty walk.

Thus it was with no hesitation that Erica and I found ourselves, shortly after Saturday night's show, driving to San Francisco with one of the local crew; the entertainment options were certainly more numerous and attractive there. On this particular night Erica's friend Virginia (the college roommate she'd stayed with two weeks before) was co-managing a primarily lesbian party at a club called the Galia. Though Erica is not a lesbian - and neither, for that matter, am I - we felt quite comfortable and welcome; after the party we devoured gargantuan pizza slices and crashed briefly at Virginia's (a crash cut short due to the onset of that obnoxious and unnecessary custom known as daylight-saving time) before finding our way back to Sunnyvale Sunday morning, a trip that required a taxi, two grueling buses, and the Sheraton's shuttle. One of the buses would have been a commuter train, but due to track work Caltrain has thoughtfully suspended all weekend train service for about the next four decades and provides only express substitute bus service that bypasses about eight out of every nine stops, so we had to take the bumpy express bus for an hour and then transfer to a local.

On Sunday I sneaked some time in between shows (a sneak cut short by a photo shoot of our cast and orchestra - don't they know what we look like by now?) to trek the 25 minutes to the M & M Food Mart, a Middle Eastern grocery store. It was worth the trip. There were olives and cheeses sitting in juice, garlic hanging in nets from the ceiling, rows of goods with labels printed in Hebrew and Arabic, and all sorts of Middle Eastern pastries. Inspired, I bought some stuffed grape leaves and a big container of hummus. Pita bread was again curiously lacking, except frozen packages that couldn't be eaten immediately, but I picked up some tasty lavash (thin, floppy bread in baking-sheet-sized portions).

On Monday we flew to San Antonio on American Airlines, a carrier that promises extra legroom and really delivers. They've also installed electric outlets under the seats, so you can plug in a laptop or television set or refrigerator or whatever it is you happen to have with you. On arrival we were transferred to the Sheraton Gunter, right in the heart of downtown, where we'd have the rest of Monday and all of Tuesday free.

San Antonio is beautiful. I'd been there with my college choir ten years before, and I'd looked forward to coming back. There are basically two things to do: visit the Alamo, and dine on Mexican cuisine along the Riverwalk while drinking margaritas (and playing bridge, as I did with my college choir). It being late, Erica and I chose the latter. The Riverwalk stretches for miles along the imaginatively named San Antonio River; the downtown portion is lined with bars and restaurants in picturesque buildings that retain quaintness and festiveness without being garish. Every once in a while there's an arched footbridge to take you from one side of the river to the other. We strolled for a while, casing the Mexican restaurants. Many of them have approximately the same menu, but the one at Boudro's stood out. Soft salmon tacos! Lobster-tail fajitas! Quail salad! Prickly-pear margaritas! This was the place; it was also quintessentially romantic, with evening strollers on one side of the table and the gently flowing river on the other.

We covered pretty much the whole city on foot on Tuesday afternoon, finding attractions that were not the Alamo or the Riverwalk. We stumbled upon the Spanish Governor's Palace, an early-eighteenth-century adobe building with several bedrooms, a ballroom, a kitchen, a dining room, and several other rooms, all containing ancient chairs, tables, and artwork. It also has a delightful garden with a fountain, a well, and several kinds of cactus. Nearby was the statue-festooned San Fernando Cathedral ("They didn't skimp on the fake blood," remarked Erica), the final resting place of three Alamo heroes, including Davy Crockett.

Beyond these attractions was El Mercado, a slightly-more-touristy-than-we'd-hoped-for shopping center containing Mexican curios, leather goods, and the like. It did have a good Mexican restaurant, La Margarita, which served up an excellent spiced-goat dish. We sat outdoors; on one side pigeons picked at the remains of one diner's meal, and on the other, a woman remarked on the wonderful margaritas and her daughter of about seven years replied, "Are you drunk?" She answered, "No, but if I have one more, I will be." What a festive place.

Only then did we visit the Alamo, once a mission and now a shrine to those who were killed there during a 13-day battle in 1836. I never really understood the Alamo's significance, and there's no good succinct explanation of it at the site, but eventually I pieced it together: It was the site of the second of three battles that led to the ousting of General Antonio López de Santa Anna, the dictator who assumed control of Mexico shortly after the country gained independence in 1821. In the first battle, the Battle of Bexar, American Texans and anti-Santa Anna Mexicans staged an uprising against General Cós; angered, Santa Anna sent in his men, who overwhelmed the Texans at the Alamo with their sheer numbers; a month later, Santa Anna was defeated at San Jacinto. The Texas Revolution complete, Texas became its own country briefly, before it joined the United States in 1846.

Our quest for history satiated, we headed south, to the King William district; King William Street and the surrounding streets are the site of numerous mansions, some of which date back to 1870. This put us in a residential section of the Riverwalk - the city is really to be commended for creating such a long path along the water - and we followed it back into town, whereupon I met the rest of the band for a steak dinner at Texas Land & Cattle.

And then I boarded an overnight Greyhound bus and went to Mexico.

LINCOLN, NE / CHICAGO, IL / CLINTON TOWNSHIP, MI / KNOXVILLE, TN / DANVILLE, KY / LEXINGTON, KY
The country's first planned shopping mall, according to the National Register of Historic Places, was built in 1916 in Lake Forest, Illinois, notes Bill Bryson in Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States (a ready-to-lend copy of which Erica just happened to have been carrying around for months).

Shopping centers multiplied in the '50s, he goes on to say - enough to provoke a 1956 Business Week article called "Too Many Shopping Centers." An Austrian named Victor Gruen was initially responsible for their design. He had lived in the U.S. since 1938 and sought to emulate European cafe life by creating "shopping towns" where people could socialize, stroll, and sit; shopping was secondary.

By and by, Gruen's hopes for tranquility and social interaction were abandoned in most malls. In fact, they were designed with the opposite intent: to get people off the benches, out of the food courts, and into the stores. Their proliferation led to the demise of many downtown areas - notably and ironically that of Detroit, whose flagship commodity, the car, took people out of the city and into the suburbs.

"And what of Victor Gruen?" asks Bryson. "Appalled at what he had unleashed, he fled back to Vienna, where he died in 1980, a disappointed man."

For most of the first hour, Nebraska looked just as I thought it would: gentle hills, with vast pastures and old mills that still eke out a living for their owners. Route 2 took us through the town of Unadilla (pop. 294, or about the population of the upper half of my apartment building) and then took on various names with increasing grandeur - at first it was just "F"; then it became Rokeby Road, and finally the Nebraska Highway. When we entered Lancaster County the cross streets started counting down from 190th Street, and then suddenly a Wal-Mart loomed up in front of us and we were on the outskirts of Lincoln.

Lincoln was fuelled almost entirely by the University of Nebraska and testified to the state's major product: We weren't staying at the Holiday Inn or the Hilton; we were at the Cornhusker, an elegant place with a grand staircase. Downtown was a delightful assortment of little restaurants, bars, record stores, and second-hand-clothing shops, among other things. The Haymarket district, at one end of downtown, was a collection of old buildings housing antique stores, international stores, and more restaurants. There was also an art complex with, on one floor, a permanent exhibition of paintings of the plains, and on another, a temporary installation of photographs and paraphernalia of Japanese gardens.

The meal rundown was as follows: Tuesday afternoon, intriguing pizza at Yiayia's; Tuesday night, light bites at a party thrown for us at a bar called CB's; Wednesday afternoon, alligator and fried frog legs at a Haymarket restaurant called Craw Daddy's (it was, suspiciously, out of crawfish that day); Wednesday night, a fine gyro at Gourmet Grill. I happened upon this last place at the recommendation of a remarkably intelligent bartender at a place claiming to be a "Shrimp and Martini Bar." I was going to dine there, but the kitchen had closed, so I asked what else might be open. "Do you like fast food?" the bartender asked. Seeing me grimace, she said, "It's local fast food, not corporate. It's called Gourmet Grill. They have excellent gyros." She even pronounced "YEE-ros" correctly.

We were supposed to drive all day Thursday and have the evening off in Chicago on the way to Michigan, but instead I took the Greyhound bus overnight - you may recall that I get antsy about late arrivals in Chicago. The ticket cost $42 and it was a direct bus in the sense that no transfers were required, but it was by no means a quick trip. It left at 23:35 on Wednesday and got in at 12:50 Thursday - and that was twenty-five minutes early.

I found two free seats near the back and plunked myself down at the window, to be joined a minute later by a 350-pound woman who had no choice but to invade a third of my space. I wasn't sitting so much next to her as in the lee of her. She spent the hour's journey to Omaha fingering two cigarettes and fortunately transferred to a Kansas City bus after that.

As we approached Omaha, the driver launched into a bible-length explanation to prepare us for the hour layover, listing the various buses to which one could transfer, directing smokers to the appropriate area, and providing step-by-step instructions depending on whether you had checked luggage but no destination tags and were transferring, checked luggage with destination tags but weren't transferring, checked luggage but no destination tags and weren't transferring, checked luggage but no destination tags and were transferring, or hand luggage only. Fortunately I fell into this last camp, which meant that I still had to get off the bus with my backpack, as the bus would be taken away for cleaning.

The Omaha terminal was packed at half past midnight, with people trying to comprehend the assortment of transfers and ticket options whilst negotiating luggage and small kids. There was, to my surprise, reasonably priced fast food. A little black-and-white television showed a fuzzy picture of a comedy program - quite possibly the same program that the same TV had shown every night since the 1950s. I took out my phone and keyboard and spent a productive hour reading and responding to e-mail.

The driver welcomed us back onto the bus with another lengthy speech; this was his version of the Nuremburg Laws. It went something like this: "There are three things you're not allowed to do on this coach: smoke, drink alcoholic beverages, and use narcotics. That includes in the bathroom, which is part of this coach. If you violate any of these rules, the police will be called and you will be removed from the coach. It's a low-priority call, so it may take them up to an hour to arrive, and that will cause a delay to other passengers. If you have children, accompany them to the bathroom, as once the door locks they may not be able to open it, and we don't want any little munchkins stuck in there. Behind me there is a yellow line painted in the aisle. Anyone who crosses that line will be removed from the coach immediately. If you have a cell phone, you must turn it off at this time. No cell phones may be used while the coach is in motion. . . ."

I had nearly drifted into a gentle slumber throughout all of this, but the last couple of sentences jolted me awake. No cell phones? What was this, an airplane? It did not take long for me to decide that was the most asinine thing I'd ever heard of, and the no-phone rule landed instantaneously and inveterately - along with 55-mile-an-hour highway speed limits, airline carry-on restrictions, and anything that attempts to dictate where and when I may cross a street - on my List of Laws to Be Disregarded. (With rare, justified exceptions, I'm otherwise fastidiously law-abiding.) Heck, I'd already been expecting two calls the following morning. Whatever the case, this driver left us in Des Moines, and the driver who replaced him made no mention of any preposterous regulations.

From Omaha on, I was in the second row, next to the window. The absurdity of the cell-phone ban provoked a mental turmoil that hampered my sleeping efforts for a half hour or so, but eventually I relaxed, and I slept until about 6:30, next to a man who managed to sleep with his head resting on the back of the seat in front of him. He left shortly after I awoke, and the seat was vacant for about seven minutes, until another passenger boarded at Quad Cities Airport.

This passenger was very intelligent, and he and I were probably equally pretentious. Actually, he was more so. When someone tried to sit in the first row of seats, which has been off-limits to passengers for a couple of years now, he was the first to tell her she wasn't allowed to be there. Even I would never do such a thing. But we did have a delightful conversation all the way to Chicago. We discussed various things, including classical music . . .

"Do you know the Shostakovich symphonies?" he asked.

"I've heard a couple of them."

"Which ones?"

"Five and six, I think."

"Well, if you've heard any, it's probably one, five, nine, and ten, because those are the ones most played."

"Do you know the Khachaturian piano concerto? That's my favorite." I said eventually.

"No, I've never heard it. What's the best recording?"

"Well, I have an LP with Khachaturian himself conducting it, but I can't remember who plays on it. Other than that, I know of recordings by Constantine Orbelian and Wilhelm Kempff. . . ."

. . . and our respective trips to Peru . . .

"Did you make it to Machu Picchu?" I asked.

"No, I just stayed along the coast. Could you believe the poverty in Lima?"

"Pretty amazing. So you made it all the way to Puno? To see the floating houses?" (The natives build rafts out of totoro reeds and dwell on them as they float amidst Lake Titicaca.)

"No, not that far. I would have, but I didn't have my malaria medication."

. . . and how to get to Little Italy in Chicago . . .

"Well, there are two Little Italys," he said. "The main one is down Taylor Road, and even that's not much to speak of. You'll have to walk through two . . . interesting . . . blocks, if you understand what I mean." (I did.)

. . . and why the front row of seats is unavailable to Greyhound passengers . . .

"It's a blind spot for the driver. A few years ago, a passenger sitting there pulled out a gun and hijacked the bus," he said.

Well, that explains it. It no doubt also explains why anyone who crosses the yellow line in the aisle is summarily evicted from the coach.

The Greyhound terminal in Chicago is in Greektown, not too far a walk from Little Italy, the main ethnic neighborhood I didn't get to see in January. I headed down Taylor Road, past the two . . . interesting . . . blocks (the street here was lined with boarded-up brick houses that still seemed to have people living in them), and into the neighborhood. The man had been right: There wasn't much to see. There were nearly as many Asian restaurants as Italian ones, though at least there was one good Italian supermarket and a park in honor of Joe DiMaggio. After some thought, I had a quick lunch at a half-restaurant, half-cafeteria establishment called Pompei. I stood in line to order minestrone soup and a pizzicoto (somewhere between a pizza and a calzone) and helped myself to a soda (they came in two sizes, both with free refills, which I found a little odd), and then found a seat and waited for someone to bring me my lunch.

At night a few of us saw a performance of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Daniel Berenboim. We had terrific $24 seats in the seventeenth balcony, or some such thing; the view and sound (and price) were all superb. Twenty-year-old pianist Lang Lang played Mendelssohn's first piano concerto (a piece I'd never heard, and neither, it so happens, had the passenger from the bus); he and Berenboim surprised everyone with a four-hand version of a Brahms Hungarian rhapsody (or so I think - I'll check my Dictionary of Classical Music Themes when I get back to New York City); and then the orchestra played Bruckner's Fourth Symphony. You get a lot for your money with Bruckner. The symphony's over an hour long, and it's very theatrical, evoking, at various moments, a film score, traditional classical themes, wandering-through-the-jungle music, even the scores of Sir Arthur Sullivan. It's tremendously captivating for about three and a half movements, but then you (or at least I) start thinking it's time for him to wrap things up. Quoth a fellow music major at Harvard, "Even if you've heard a Bruckner symphony, you can't have been paying attention all the way through!"

I walked back to Greektown and had a fourteen-part appetizer and an entree of spinach-and-cheese-stuffed squid at the Parthenon. Then I tried to see some live Greek music at the Parthenon's lounge next door, which they had assured me would be open until the wee hours, but it was already closed (or perhaps hadn't opened yet), so instead I went back to Redheads, that piano bar I'd patronized last time. As the doorman was checking my driver's license to see whether I was of a sufficient age to enjoy piano music, he glanced at my shoes and said, "We have a dress code. I can't let you in with running shoes."

"They're not running shoes. They're Mephisto shoes. They were fine when I was here in January."

"He has you there," said his coworker.

"I'll have to check with the manager." He went inside.

"You'll be fine," said the coworker, as if my future happiness rested on whether I'd be allowed entry into such a highfalutin place.

After a while the doorman and the manager came back out. The manager spoke: "I'll waive the rule this time, but in the future, no running shoes."

"These are the only shoes I travel with."

"Just the same . . . you can come in this time, but for next time, no athletic gear." He went back inside.

"Go ahead," said the doorman.

I paused for a moment. "Actually, I'm not in the mood any more," I said, and I walked away. I didn't want any favors from them. I wasn't about to give them my money knowing I wasn't really welcome this time and certainly wouldn't be welcome the next time. Above all, the rule was absurd. My shoes were black, and once I sat down, no one would see them anyway. This was a piano bar, a casual place (heck, jeans were acceptable) where the emphasis should have been on the music. It wasn't the Russian Tea Room or Lutece.

On Friday we drove to Clinton Township, Michigan, a place that would have made Victor Gruen cry. Our hotel was separated from the Macomb Center theatre by three of the most unappealing strip-mall miles I'd ever seen. At least there was a Dave and Buster's entertainment center next to the hotel, and that's where we spent Friday night, playing skee-ball and the like, and giving Liz a fond farewell - she played her last show Saturday afternoon before heading home for some family business; the assistant musical director who just finished the Cabaret tour, Robert, has stepped in to fill her place.

The most redeeming feature of this area 20 miles of Detroit was the fact that several dozen of my relatives live nearby. About thirty of them came to Saturday's matinee, including my grandmother (who turned 91 the next day), and my parents flew out from Boston. It was truly splendid to have so many fans in the audience, and it seems they all loved the show, or at least they are very good liars.

My parents threw an afternoon party for everyone at Tirami Su' (don't get me started on the spelling), an Italian restaurant about five miles from the theatre. It was intended for the cast, crew, and orchestra as well, but due to the genuinely kind, but haplessly uninformative, folks at the Macomb Center, we didn't find out until Friday night that the theatre was providing hot food for us between shows on Saturday, so many of those who would have attended the party stayed behind, where they could eat without traveling.

Those who did go - and there were only six, in addition to my relatives - were happy with their decision, though; there was a practically bottomless amount of tortellini, fresh mozzarella, and something that was sort of a glorified bruschetta, among other things, and Casey said the restaurant made the best tiramisu she'd ever had. We all lingered for about two hours; I hadn't seen some of my relatives for years (or, in a few cases, ever), and it was wonderful to get back in touch with them. Sadly, we couldn't stay too long; I had to get back for the evening performance, and I brought back to the hotel two enormous tins of leftover food, most of which was devoured.

I was certain the 550-mile drive to Knoxville on Sunday was going to suck. I'd tried every which way to do it overnight. There was no Greyhound service from Clinton Township. There was a local city bus to Detroit, but even from there there was no overnight connection to Knoxville. I even looked for an overnight to New York and then another overnight (there was no show Sunday) to Knoxville. No luck. I even considered renting a car and leaving early Sunday: Too expensive, and probably not worth the effort. So I did the only sensible thing. I stayed awake until 4:30 Sunday morning and hoped I'd be so tired that I'd sleep most of the way.

For the most part, the trip wasn't too bad. I did sleep all the way until the lunch stop, which was tempered to a palatable 65 minutes at the Florence Mall (it was situated on Mall Road, which gives you an idea of what else was around), just over the Kentucky border across from Cincinnati. This location was chosen because Jim's grandchildren lived nearby and his wife could take them to see him for lunch. Apparently Jim's presence was a surprise - they hadn't been told he would be there; they were only told they were going to the mall. One can only wonder how that alone was enough to lure them into the car!

There was a Kroger supermarket across the street, and, still well-endowed with summer sausage and a few bits of salad from the Tirami Su' party, I searched for some pita bread to go with it. A lady had to help me find it (it was cleverly nestled under an assortment of dinner rolls), but I balked when I saw it was $1.79 for a 12-ounce package. Kroger must be a Scandinavian company, because Norway is the only place I've seen prices that high. It's almost four times what I pay in New YOrk. Besides, the package consisted of pre-sliced pita, and part of the fun of pita bread is ripping it apart yourself. So I left and, appalled at the idea of eating in a mall food court when there was a lush lawn and resplendent sunshine outside, I plunked myself down on the grass and picked out marinated peppers and prosciutto with a fork.

During the afternoon leg of the trip, a few people decided it would be fun to put on the movie Labyrinth. It was the most annoying film I'd ever had to avoid watching. It began with a baby crying for fifteen minutes (the only sound worse than snoring, as far as I'm concerned), after which it consisted mostly of an assortment of grunts and groans by monsters. Every once in a while there was a cheesy song that ended abruptly with a crash of some sort. It's a children's film, and what it does it probably does very well. But unless you're seven years old, or completely intoxicated (or both), I can't fathom the appeal. I had to call Erica just to hear some sound other than the film. I even wouldn't have minded a rest stop, as a break from the cacophony.

We were stationed so far away from downtown Knoxville that when Interstate 40 forked toward Knoxville and toward Nashville, we had to take the latter. We were a full ten miles from downtown. Erica had gotten to the hotel hours before (I had almost tried to bribe Squatch with $50 into letting me ride the crew bus overnight to Knoxville, but I knew it would be fruitless), and, as we were both starving, we walked across a vast parking lot to Sonny's and indulged ourselves in all-you-can-eat ribs for $8.99.

Erica had to leave for the theatre early on Monday to load in for that night's show; I slept in and decided I'd find my way down there a few hours later. I noticed, in the visitors' guide, that a lot of restaurants and so forth were on Kingston Pike; I figured I could walk part of the way and then catch a bus at some point. I started at the 9200 block of Kingston Pike.

It was easily the dullest walk I've taken on tour. It wasn't even as interesting as strip malls. It was mostly car dealerships and law and medical offices. And of course there was no sidewalk. The West Knox Farm Market would have been worth a stop, but a sign indicated it had lost its lease. Apart from two Mexican stores and a couple of the restaurants, Kingston Pike would have made a great candidate for a nuclear-testing zone.

After nearly an hour, I was only at the 8100 block, and, seeing a bus stop for route 11, I called the posted phone number for transit information and asked when I might expect a bus to arrive. The guy said, "Well, there should be one coming by soon, and then there'll be another one."

"OK. I didn't know what the schedule was, whether they were every half hour, or every hour, or every two hours." That would affect whether it would be worth waiting.

"That depends on what time you want to go."

"Right now."

"Well, like I said, there should be one coming by soon." He offered no indication of a specific schedule.

I waited fifteen minutes, but the one "coming by soon" never came. Hungry, I walked a few paces, and, as if a beacon of culinary satisfaction, across the street there appeared a sign for BJ's Asian Grill and Bar, which offered a sushi buffet lunch for $6.99. I hied myself over there (walking mostly in the center left-turn lane, the most convenient place - I could cross only halfway at first, and the traffic never synchronized such that I could cross the entire street at once) and went inside. The sign wasn't quite accurate - it was a buffet of sushi rolls, plus a create-your-own-stir-fry station - but at such a price I wasn't going to complain.

By the time I emerged, of course, I had missed the bus, and there was no telling when the next one would come. I continued toward downtown, hoping I'd catch the next one eventually, but since I had to walk in the highway shoulder, there was a problem with this plan. I figured it would be safer to walk facing traffic, which meant that if a bus did come going in my direction, I'd have to see it in time to cross the highway and find a bus stop on the other side. I plodded on, glancing over my shoulder every few seconds to see whether a bus was on its way. After forty minutes I came to the top of a hill, and of course just as I began my descent a bus zoomed by; I couldn't see it in time to cross. Presently a sidewalk appeared on both sides, and, exploiting the opportunity, I crossed. Eventually I came to a bus shelter with a posted schedule (imagine that!), and I noticed that bus 90 (the crosstown loop, not the Kingston Pike route) was due to arrive in one minute. It did, and I jumped aboard. I was only at the 4600 block of Kingston Pike, about six miles, I'd guess, from where I'd started.

Incidentally, I eventually learned the reason it took so long to see a bus running along the Kingston Pike route. It's because the Kingston Pike buses don't actually spend much time on Kingston Pike.

Downtown was small but attractive, with a small "old city" area consisting of old brick buildings that have been turned into convivial restaurants and live-music venues, with delightfully precarious-looking passageways leading from building to building. Colorful music-themed murals abounded. Barley's Taproom & Pizzeria had a worn-out-looking painted sign on the side of the building and a sign on the door that said, "We accept cash, Mastercard, cash, Visa, cash, Discover, cash, Diner's Club, and cash." It also advertised $2 microbrew drafts on Mondays. It happened to be Monday. Clearly this was worth a pause. There were about fifty beers on tap, most of which I'd never heard of; I decided on the Highland St. Teresa's Pale Ale and only after thinking twice realized I should pronounce it "Saint Teresa" rather than "Highland Street." It was refreshingly cold and served in a frosted glass. Perfect.

I walked to Market Square, an attractive one-square-block park lined with little art galleries and cafes. At least it usually is. The park was entirely ripped up for construction, and, figuring the eyesore might deter customers, many of the establishments had closed up shop for restoration as well. The roads leading out from Market Square were the site of buildings representing many time periods, such as the immaculately new brick courthouse and the 1792 mansion of William Blount, a signer of the U.S. Constitution.

No doubt I would have returned to Barley's after the show if there had been any means of transport back to the hotel, but instead I joined Jim and Eric at Bailey's, a pool hall and sports bar. I was in the mood for a burger, and by golly they served up an excellent one. They also served up refreshingly cold Newcastle in a frosted glass. Perfect.

I spent that night at the Microtel, three blocks away from the Best Western, where everyone else was staying. Erica and I officially became roommates a few days ago, as part of something like a thirteen-person roommate switch that involved bringing in several new company members and most of the couples getting their own rooms. The change is terrific for resplendently obvious reasons, but it leaves me with (and paying for) my own room the last night we're in each city, since that's when the crew loads out and drives overnight. I don't mind that at all - I'm very happy to have my own room once in a while - and it opens up intriguing planning possibilities. For instance, when there's a convenient overnight Greyhound service to our next city, I can cancel the last night's hotel room, take the bus, get there early, and save a few bucks in the process (as I did going from Lincoln to Chicago).

And when we're on the outskirts of town, there's often someplace cheaper than our prescribed hotel. Our special rate at the Best Western was $64.49, but my room at the Microtel was only $43.33. To save $21.16, it was certainly worth the hassle of hauling my suitcase three blocks - though the two hotels were on the most exasperatingly sidewalk-deprived four-lane road I've ever had to deal with. The road was hemmed in on both sides by hills, and where there weren't hills there were trees. Come to think of it, even without luggage there was no way to walk this stretch. It took nearly twenty minutes to wheel my suitcase over. Sometimes I walked in a traffic lane; sometimes I walked in the median strip; sometimes I dealt with the dirt shoulder, hunched over to avoid the tree branches. But like I said, it was worth it, so much so that I'm doing a similar thing on Sunday (Toledo's Holiday Inn is $62.84 but the nearby Motel 6 is $32.99 plus tax), and I wished I'd done it more often. (No offense, of course, to my previous roommate, Greg. He's a great guy. But I'm prone to solitude when it comes to spending the night.)

I wheeled my luggage back over to the Best Western Tuesday morning, and we were off to Kentucky for three days. I welcomed the chance to drive through Kentucky again. Once we were off Interstate 75, we got onto windy, hilly U.S. 150 and passed a picturesque assortment of little ponds, wooden fences, healthy cattle, and tall grass. We drove through tiny, but pleasant-looking, Crab Orchard; the sign as you enter says, "Small Town Living at Its Best," and a sign at the town's main intersection proclaims it a "Congested Area" - it can't see more than a couple dozen cars an hour.

Tuesday's performance was in Danville, home to Center College (and little else). There weren't many food options unless you liked pizza, but sandwiches were provided for us before the show. There was, however, a cozy bookstore, with comfortable sofas and a porch with rocking chairs. The theatre was across the street; it was noteworthy in that the pit could be reached only by a spiral staircase and that the balcony seating area was much larger than the orchestra section.

We were spared a night in Danville thanks to the clever planning of Anika, who decided we'd head immediately for Lexington, an hour away and the site of our next two days' performances. We're stationed downtown (thank goodness), and while it took Erica and me less than an hour to explore it, it's really quite pretty. There are some elegant homes, and most of the businesses are equally attractive, especially the hundred-year-old shopping arcade at the corner of Main and Broadway. Across the street is a large grassy area with a fountain.

On the way to lunch at The Bistro 147, we found a store calling itself the Clock Shop. It was run by an eccentric but friendly guy who can't possibly earn a living from the store alone. Clock parts were strewn over the shelves and floor; most of the clocks were clearly in some state of disrepair, and some hung on the wall at skewed angles. But that wasn't all: It was also a magic shop. There were playing cards all over the place, including a few attached to the ceiling. When the owner wasn't repairing clocks, he was rigging up little magic tricks. He had Erica walk toward a benign-looking Altoids box near the entrance, and as she did he activated a remote-control device that made the box emit a whirring sound. But that wasn't all. Randomly placed in the middle of the room was a box of fresh tomatoes, which he said we should try. They were delicious.