Tour Diary – Summerside, PEI (June 30, 2012)

We were thoroughly beat up by the time we reached Summerside: another 11 hour overnight drive. We were shared the town and the grounds surrounding the arena with Atlanticade (or something like that), a large motorcycle rally. Man those things are loud (and annoying). I made the effort to get off the bus and walk along the beach boardwalk and stick my feet in the red clay sand. Then it was back to the bus and a lot of waiting around. It was a nice venue with very good catering (including some very tasty PEI new potatoes). Just as showtime was approaching there was an area wide power failure. We waited for two anxious hours for the power to come back on. We were beginning to worry that the show might be postponed to the next night, robbing us of one of our much-needed two days off (just one more turn of the screw). Finally, the lights popped on and we were given our 30-minutes-to-showtime cue. It wasn’t a great performance. Half of the lights in the auditorium needed to stay on as they were still seating people because of the power outage. As a result there seemed to be more than the usual milling about during our set. We did our best, but this was our tenth show in ten nights, starting in Calgary and ending in Prince Edward Island…quite an epic run, time to shut down for a couple of days.