This weekend is the beginning of the 9-day Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta, so the sky will be full of color for a while and things will be busy around town. They are expecting somewhere around 900,000 attendees through the course of the event this year. Words and photos don't describe the sensation of watching 500+ hot air balloons aloft.
Our band was scheduled to play for a corporate event Saturday afternoon at the Fiesta, but those plans got changed in a hurry Wednesday evening when my bandmate Mike got hit on his motorcycle by an idiot* hit & run driver making an illegal U-turn in what most likely was a stolen car. Mike will be OK, but he's got a broken right hand and wrist, as well as minor fractures on both feet. The bike was totaled, but his helmet and armored ballistic nylon jacket did their job and paid for themselves. Mike is the acoustic guitarist in the band, and that's hard to do one-handed.
In the short term, Jeff (the bass player) and I will be working up a repertoire that the two of us can cover with just a drummer. We have other shows coming up in October and November that we don't want to cancel. It should be doable...Jeff and I have played together off and on for over 40 years, and for some of those, it was just the two of us and a drummer.
(Mike will likely tag along to add vocals and harmonica on some of the songs.)
Other than watching balloons and working on guitar stuff, not much else going on here aside from the weekly yard and garden stuff. I might also be providing a sound system and recorded music for the corporate gig that we had to cancel at the Balloon Fiesta, depending on whether they are able to get a replacement band or not. There's also a gun show happening this weekend that I might go check out. Not really looking for more guns at the moment (I know, that's hard to believe), but there are some accessories I'd like to look for.
* "Idiot" is not my first choice of words, but the CoC and all that...