We managed to leave Dubuque a little after 7 am. The crew was just myself, Kalan and Matty. Matty is joining us this year for the first time. He lives in Asheville, NC and is an old friend of Sadye’s. We brought him on as a non-performing member largely to help watch 10-month-old Otis during the performances but he’s been doing so much more than that – cooking many of our meals, sourcing food and other supplies, carpentry, bike repair, and helping pilot the boat. He’s also a great fiddle player and puppeteer. Yesterday he drove the boat most of the journey while I tried to sort out logistics and local contacts for our upcoming shows this week.
We got to the town of Bellevue, Iowa a bit past noon and went through the locks. Bellevue is one of the many towns we ended up having to skip on this trip. I had originally hoped to stop in Bellevue on the 20th, but it wasn’t feasible for a few reasons. A lot of towns on the west bank are really high up and don’t have a great spot to gather a crowd. It’s also nice for the crew to get a day off every now and again. Kalan is from Bellevue, WA and he blasted a trombone greeting to this other Bellevue as we passed. Side note – at some point I should talk about Flotsam’s Trombone Curse.
We got to Savanna a bit past three. Savanna is one of the smaller, more conservative places on our trip – but the City and local businesses really showed up to support us. The owners of the local biker bar, Hawg Dogs, put us up in a big empty house that they Airbnb and gave us dinner. A bunch of folks from the city and the fire department were present at the show to help out. The local marina let us keep the boat overnight for free. There was a big healthy crowd with a lot of kids, but I think our show might have been a bit weird for Savanna – the crowd thinned out noticeably by the end of the show. But a lot of people were really into it. After the show a boy of about 8 came up and said it was the greatest thing he’d ever seen. I keep talking about how 8-year-old Jason would be pretty excited about what 50-year-old Jason is up to right now.
After the show, we moved the boat to marina and walked over to Hawg Dogs. It was a nice scene. Some circus performers had come down from Chicago. I fell asleep in a bed and passed out hard.
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