A long twelve hour drive from Columbus got us in to Lawrence just in time for us to tuck in to a huge Easter brunch spread at the hotel. There is something about an all-you-can-eat buffet that is slightly obscene, but we were all more than happy to get down and dirty…they didn’t see us coming, we definitely got our moneys worth.

Lawrence is caught in the grip of March Madness with their number one seed Jayhawks moving on to the Sweet Sixteen this weekend. There is Jayhawk paraphernalia in pretty much every window down main street. This would be an exciting place to watch the tournament, but we will be long gone by the time the tournament resumes on Thursday night.

This is a nice little town to spend a day off and we were lucky enough to enjoy some relatively spring-like weather, our first taste this year…I even saw my first robin. The gig tonight was fun. It was a small but very vocal audience and the venue is pretty much a rock club, so we turned it up a bit.

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Another day off yesterday. We were suppose to be in Memphis, but the venue closed down which left us wandering the streets of St Louis. St Louis is another one of those middle-American cities that is trying to bring back the downtown core and has been doing so for many years. There are three state-of-the-art sport complexes, a huge riverfront reclamation project, many condo developments, a few new cultural centers, all of the text book markers for creating a downtown resurgence...and yet there is still something a little flat about the town, a few too many empty store fronts and a few too few people on the streets.  Maybe it’s the time of year. Despite that I’ve always enjoyed coming here. The city has such a great and important history in the building of this country: the luster of the past helps to cover up a bit of the dinginess of the present.

The Blues were in town for our night off so a bunch of us went down and watched them fall 2 – 1 to the visiting Red Wings. It wasn’t the greatest game, but it was nice to have only paid $15 per ticket and not feel fleeced leaving the building, like one does when walking out of a Maple Leafs game.