Palm Springs
In early 2019 Casino Royale had our first gig in a couple years - a conference party in Palm Springs. The Oakland contingent of the band got Southwest Airline tickets to arrive the morning of the show. The night before, due to particularly bad weather forecasts, our flight got cancelled. After a flurry of panicked texts and phone calls I discovered seats on an earlier plane were still available. We rebooked on that one.
It wasn't an easy trip - constant rain/turbulence the whole trip south. Due to thick cloud coverage we didn't see the city until a few seconds before we arrived at LAX. Easily the roughest commuter flight on the west coast I've ever taken. Yeesh.
Given the flight change we were super early and super tired. Without any better plan we decided to meet up with Paul flying in next from Seattle. We dragged our luggage across several parking lots to a different terminal to greet him. Then Chris was arriving back in our original terminal. And so we shlepped back. His plane was delayed and it took ages for his bag to come out on the carousel. So, bottom line, I flew in 90 minutes earlier than originally planned, and we left LAX about 90 minutes after we were supposed to get on the road.
The trip to Palm Springs should have been a couple hours, but holy shit the rain. Sheets poured down, making typical LA traffic worse. John heroically did all the driving down the highway. As we approached the region all our phones simultaneously screeched. Flash flood alert. Great.
The other side of the highway suddenly transformed into a creek and all cars across the median ground to a halt.. But the flooding wasn't too much of an issue for us until we pulled off into town. Of course GPS navigation knew nothing about which surface streets had half a foot (or more) of standing water. So we doglegged our way to the venue best we could, following signs and other cars and carefully going down roads that had since became rivers. Pretty frickin' sketchy!
We arrived at the venue about an hour after soundcheck was supposed to have ended. This was a bit scary as (a) I was using a backlined keyboard so I usually need extra time to learn the interface and find all the appropriate sounds, and (b) the usual A-listers were rounded out by three newbies: Jamila, Ross, and Christopher on voice, bass, and drums. Luckily I got to use a Kurzweil keyboard, already set up for me and easy to dial in. And these subs were all LA pros and on top of their shit. I didn't even greet them yet before we were running a couple tunes. Everybody was nailing it.
Somehow I had time to have a relaxed dinner at a nearby Mexican restaurant with Scrote and the other LA people. Back at the venue the party went on sans hitch. We played two tight 45's. The event theme was Austin Powers, and thus the proceedings included rather impressive Austin Powers and Mini Me lookalikes. These two stayed in character most of the night mingling with the crowd, but at one point I caught them in our shared dressing room talkin' shop in their street accents.
Anyway, easy gig, and ended as early as 11pm. We just had to get to the hotel 30 minutes north where we could get 5 hours' sleep before hauling ass back to LAX the following morning.
Back in the van with John we followed the GPS but it took us to a dark road caked with mud, washed out due to earlier flooding. You could see other cars that followed the same directions and got capsized. We dared not try it ourselves, and attempted to take a different path. The next obvious artery heading north was also closed. Fuck. This wasn't an easy area to make your own path back to the highway as there were a mix of private roads, gated communities, and blocked roads which Google didn't know about yet. Eventually I made the executive decision to head south just to get to the damn highway already and work our way back. This detour took about 45 minutes.
As we started this new route we got a call from Paul wondering where we were. He and Scrote got to the hotel 15 minutes ago. What the fuck?! I asked how, and they said they just followed their phone navigation due north from the venue and it was a straight shot and all the roads were clear. To this day I have no idea what route they took as I swear every road we tried was closed or super fucked.
So much for sleep! We got to the hotel a few hours before having to wake up. Some decided to stay up and hang in the hot tub. Not me. I had myself a nap.
Woke up around 5am and met in the hotel lobby. Just John, Jamison, and I. Once again John heroically did all the driving while I held up my end of the shotgun seat bargain by navigating and making conversation to keep us both awake. The early departure meant a chance to catch the lovely sunrise over the hills and far less traffic for the two hour haul to LAX. Of course the last 10 miles were dead stop, but we still arrived with plenty of time.
The flight wasn't eventful, and we landed on schedule. However, there was a problem with the jetway so we were stuck sitting at the gate unable to get off the damn plane until a tech arrived. Meanwhile an unexpected short rain came down, thus soaking the exposed interior of the jetway. So we had to wait until they dried it off before we were allowed to deboard. Sheesh.
Jamison got me home around noon. And then I went straight to work. Really.