Last night was a roughish night.
I came down with an illness that really cramped my style.
When taking the trash out I suddenly caught a mean chill.
It's a warm night so my wife got concerned.
I ran in the pad and got under some blankets shivering.
Was it a mild gall attack? I did eat lots of fattening 4th of July food. Maybe it was food poisoning? I don't know.
My skin felt all pricky.
Luckily my doctor (wife) was on the case.
While she was digging around in her healing cabinet I drink a lot of water, and took a hot shower. Then I got right into bed without bothering to dry off.
She got some lavender oil diffusing and brought out other essential oils.
Olive gave my aching body a full, no holds barred massage from keel to stern.
It took a very long time and I groaned loudly the whole time.
She giggled and giggled at the sounds she was getting out of me.
This gal played me like an instrument.
Part sensual massage, part getting thrown down a flight of steps, I made some sounds I didn't know I make.
It was surreal, I was shivering under wet blankets while my lady was rocking a bikini. She looks very different when not in clown drag.
I was so lucky to have her sharing her skills on me. In fact I was bummed that I was too sick to fully appreciate the scene (like I normally do). I'm a lucky clown.
I passed out into a fever dream.
In my dream I dug up a book from a barren landscape. Upon opening it there was only one page and one sentence.
"Color and time are illusions"
Some sunshine should get my body running.
I was still feeling sick but we had a show to do in an hour.
They were expecting happy go lucky Dingo D to make with the merriment and jokes.
When I opened the front door for some sun but the sky was overcast...doh!
It's easy to get dressed since all my clothes are clown clothes. Can't miss. Painting my face is equally easy to do on auto-pilot.
After "stand-cuddling" a bit with Olive (while she did her make up) it was time to load the bikes.
Every day we carry a lot of gear all over town doing busking shows. Our bikes are heavy with books, sound stuff and props.
Often we put 19-25 miles a day on our bikes carrying all that kit.
I'm not bragging or complaining. I'm just saying.
yuk yuk yuk
My rig "The Behemoth" still had a disco ball on it from another nights ramblings. It was installed by my very thorough friend Nathan Bennet. I didn't want to mess with that so I put a trailer on my bike to carry all our appurtenances.
We took off.
Now I was 18 feet long, 12 feet high, sick, still waking up and tugging a rock uphill. WooHoo! I should write a song about it and call it "Prometheus rock".
It wasn't fun but I was expecting to have just enough energy for the length of the show.
As soon as we got to Hawthorne street the folks were dialed into us from the gate.
That is sort of troubling. Portland people ignore us, politely smile or cheer at us, these folks clearly had never seen us. That begs the question...where the hell are our Portland people?
When we arrived at the venue there was a good sized show waiting for us. Great people.
The energy coupled with some prosperous promise made me really forget I was sick. Those shows carry on like that.
The kids shouldn't suffer a canceled show just because I ate ribs, ice cream, chocolate and candy for days straight.
Our gig was dreamy, we did our thing, ended strong, hugged hugged hugged the friends and fans then went outside. To lots and lots of people taking our picture again. We were nice and even happy to see them.
We rolled down Hawthorne and then doubled back up Belmont to a Vietnamese restaurant we like.
We had made enough dough at the gig for a nice lunch. Just what we needed.
As we rolled up we hear "Freak Bike" we hear that all the time so we nodded but paid it no mind. Then as we landed a couple with a toddler approached us.
"Freak bike! We are friends with Rat Patrol!"
I hear "Rat Patrol" and it gets my attention.
They are a fantastic freak bike club out of Chicago and some of my vewy first email friends back in the day.
They kept mentioning the city they were from and it wasn't Chicago. That's when I noticed the Australian accent.
Rat patrol has an Aussie chapter! Good for them.
http://rat-patrol.org/RPOz/RatPatrolOz.html
We posed for pictures and said so long to our new friends.
Olive got soup and I got noodles.
That food was really good going down, just what I needed to feel better.
After that I had just enough energy to pedal my big ass bike home, toss my clown gear and crash. I'm feeling much better now.
Just looked in the fridge...all 4th of July foods! Bah no way!!!I learned my lesson...well, maybe later. :)
I still have the disco ball set up.
Also a few apartments over we can hear a man making long, anguished groans and yells. I guess what I had is going around, glad that fella has the same kind of doc I have.
Like what we do?
http://oliveanddingo.com/donate/
No comments:
Post a Comment