Writing the Snow Plow reminded me of a few more transportation related adventures. None of them on their own is enough for a dedicated post so I thought I’d combine a few.
St Louis and the F15’s
We accepted a invitation to St Louis to perform at some sort of event. It was the first time I flew anywhere.
It was an uneventful flight down. We performed, went up the St Louis Gateway Arch (google it – kind of impressive) and got into our usual trouble.
The trip home was something different though.
The flight back was on a nearly empty jumbo jet. Suddenly we were in the middle of a massive thunder cell. Buffeted by strong winds we had quite the ride, not to mention the bolts of lightning all around us. The plane would drop suddenly and then regain altitude. I had a good idea of how a bull rider felt sitting on top of a bucking bronco.
Then a series of lightning flashes illuminated two F15’s jets as they raced to intercept us.
Concerned? What do you think!
Then the pilot’s voice came over the intercom. He apologized for the rough ride and then pointed out the fine gentlemen to the left of the plane who were there to escort us. Apparently the storm had blown us over a secure Boeing facility and two interceptors had scrambled to ensure we left the area as soon as possible. Imagine the paperwork that had to be filled out after that.
In the end survived the flight, didn’t need the barf bag, didn’t get shot down and was left with a great story to tell. Bonus.
We come from T’ron to
This one is a “what not to do” when passing through American customs. The full band was heading down to the U.S. for another show of some kind. This time we rented a motor coach. Refreshments flowed to the extent that we had to do a shopping trip after a couple of hours driving.
Then we arrived at the border. The Customs Officer that came onto the bus wasn’t in the greatest of moods. He walked down the isle asking everyone to declare where they were from and their citizenship. In the late 70’s all a Canadian citizen needed to enter the U.S. was a birth certificate and valid drivers license.
Half way through the bus a couple of very ‘happy’ band members decided that it would be fun to respond in broken English and declared they were from T’ronto. The Customs Officer had enough. He ordered us off the bus and proceeded to do a full inspection of all its contents. It took forever.
Luckily we had consumed most of the supplies from our last pit stop so no issues there. Unfortunately we had forgotten about the cases of records we took with us to performances and the officer quickly imposed import duties on them.
It was the early hours of the morning before we were again on our way – talk about a buzz kill. On top of that the waste storage tank on the bus was close to overfilling. It would put a serious crimp in the party restart plan.
A revenge plan of a sort was conceived which may have involved the storage tank and the nice green lawn of the customs office some distance from the border.
After that we were much more behaved when going though any Customs crossings