November 14, 2022 - St. Andrew's School, Austin, TX

After three days home following my show in West Virginia, I headed back out on a Monday morning for the second part of my ten show run: four Odyssey shows in three days in two states, Texas and Connecticut. 

You might be saying to yourself: “Those states are both nowhere near Illinois and nowhere near one another.” 

And you would be correct. 

This set of shows required me to deploy a level of creative travel planning reminiscent of some of my first extensive touring in 2015. 

It started with a 5:20 am flight out of Midway to Austin. 

The flight was without incident and I rolled into St. Andrew’s School at about 9:00 am with plenty of time to get situated before my show in the afternoon. I was honored to have my performance be a part of a day of creative academic programming.  I hung out with some of the staff, got set up in their beautiful auditorium, and it was time to perform to 200 9th and 10th graders. 

The sound system was amazing. It was a wonderful show. A couple of students came up afterwards and told me they had seen me perform at a JCL convention and several of the teachers knew of my work by reputation, which warmed my bardic heart. 

Just like that, I was in an Uber and back to the airport for a 5:30 flight to… Atlanta! To connect to a flight to Bradley Airport in Hartford, Connecticut. My 60 minute connection window got trimmed to 35, but after pulling an OJ (the running in the airport, not the murdering) I made it: the last person on the flight before they closed the door. 

After landing in Hartford at midnight, the final leg of my Monday odyssey was a shuttle ride to a hotel near the airport for a couple hours of sleep before a morning show on Tuesday, an hour’s drive from the airport. 

When my travel gets this hectic, I try to pull an Odysseus (the being resourceful and collected under pressure, not the murdering). He had monsters and enemies at every turn and I have… the Atlanta and Hartford airports. 

So maybe I *do* have it worse than my protagonist…

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