In Which The Revivalists Commune With Nature
Hello, friends! Rob here.
Today’s entry comes in the form of a logistics problem:
Imagine that you are some sort of traveling entertainer. Like, I don’t know, just throwing something out there, first example to come to mind, just for the sake of argument, let’s say you’re the leader of an exhibition yo-yo troupe. Your yo-yo troupe tours the country by automobile, wearing matching backwards hats and performing highly choreographed and surprisingly impressive feats of coordination and daring using a popular children’s toy. Your routines are set to music, mostly current hip-hop and top 40 hits. The name of your troupe is something edgy and vaguely urban, like "The Zero Gs.”
So let’s say that you and the rest of The ‘Gs just finished a fun and challenging weekend of performances in the southeastern United States. You started out in Mobile, AL, which is close to your troupe’s home base (you all live in Chalmette, LA). It was one of your most enjoyable yo-yo exhibitions to date. You played in front of a big outdoor crowd, many of whom seemed to be longtime supporters of your yo-yo troupe, based on their jubilant enthusiasm and obvious familiarity with many of your more popular yo-yo tricks.
After the show in Mobile, once you were done saying your goodbyes and packing up all of your yo-yos and backwards caps, you still had to drive for a few hours. There were many miles between The Zero Gs and your next engagement, which was actually a double-header in Augusta, GA for the city’s Arts in the Heart festival. You drove into the night, checked into a hotel for a few hours, then woke up earlier than you would have preferred and continued driving.
The festival in Augusta was lovely and you wish you had had more time to explore it. There were booths representing the culture and cuisine of upwards of forty different countries, and stages showcasing various forms of art, dance and music from around the world. Unfortunately, you had a very limited amount of time there because you were yo-yo-ing at the festival AND at the festival’s official late-night afterparty down the street at a venue called Sky City. The latter performance also featured a group named Stop Light Observations, who, for the purposes of this purely hypothetical scenario, are a team of jugglers and contortionists instead of a cool band with whom you’ve done several shows in recent memory.
The whole weekend, while extremely enjoyable, was admittedly a bit draining. But now it’s Sunday morning and it’s time to check out of your hotel in Augusta. You have two days until your next exhibition, which takes place in Knoxville, TN. Your obvious choices are either to remain in Augusta for the days off or drive directly to Knoxville and stay in the same place for three nights. In theory, you could save a bit on hotels by driving all the way back to Chalmette, LA on Sunday, but it would take all day and then you’d just have to turn around and leave again on Monday in order to make it to Knoxville on time. Conversely, you could find a cool place to stay somewhere in between, like maybe Nashville for example, which will be easier on you and your exhausted teammates but significantly more expensive. What do you do?
The Revivalists found ourselves faced with an eerily similar dilemma when planning the first half of this ten-day run we’re on right now, and we think we came up with the correct answer: rent a big cabin in The Smoky Mountains and kick it with some nature (click for big):
(Also pictured: New front-of-house engineer Chopper Brady, tour manager David Melerine’s freakish, panorama-distorted neck wattle)
How’d we do?
