Escape from Indy, on to Cali.

(Out of the frying pan, into the fire.)

Look! Up in the sky!

It's a bird!

It's a plane!


It's...it's...a Toshiba Technorainbow video wall!

That's right, 4000 pounds of levitating hardware that would make one big hole in the pavement if one of the cables were to part...
(Astute readers will note that Yours Truly is nowhere near this beast while it is on the move...)

Breakdown in Indy was a slice of pie...
Play was over about 4:45 on Sunday afternoon... We had already loaded out the outside court alpha boards onto the truck earlier in the morning, so we were ahead of the came as the finals got underway.

We had 2 of our scoreboards that were heading to San Diego as cargo, one of our trucks was heading to Cincy, and the other was heading to Washington DC with the Video wall...

Polly and Matt handled wrapping up the TV Graphics equipment and cables, Glyn and Chris broke down the operations room, and Rich and I did the courtside equipment like the radar and the clocks. Once we wrapped up all the cables and the displays, we hit the Match Update center en-masse and wrapped that beast in record time.


The Match Update Center, A/k/a, The MUC.
And, if you haven't seen Hayes lately, he's the bald bastard next to the wall.

Next Matt and I undressed the video wall- taking apart everything that could be unplugged or unbolted or taken apart that wouldn't compromise the assembly...

We were way ahead of schedule, and thus were able to leave the site by just after 10:00.
A quick nosh in the restaurant in the hotel next door and we hit the sack- we had an early call on Monday... We had a rigger and a gaffer meeting us to help break down the video wall.

On the way out I saw one of the more bizarre sculptures I've ever seen...

I'm sure every city had a Deerwood, Deercreek, Deermeadows or something that the designer and landscaper decorate with a brass deer or two... Indy is no different...



But... I've never seen this kind of statue...


I just don't have the words to describe it...

7:00 saw us arriving with a vengeance- ready to put everything in the truck that wasn't nailed down...
The stagehands were on-time and we flew the walls and disassembled them without incident or injury.
We had to play "magic box" to get all the cases into the truck; they were packed carefully in order to distribute the load inside the truck so we'd have no trouble while going through the weigh stations on the highway...
(The truck was back-axel heavy on the way up, unsafe and marginally illegal, so we were taking care not to have it happen on the way to the next event.)
It took some loading and unloading, repacking and stacking, but in the end we were successful...



We were out of the site by 2:00- An hour under my estimate.
We headed back to the hotel.
The other guys had one more night in Indy-
Yours Truly was on a 6:00p flight to the OC... Again.

A quick shower later and I was heading to the airport - and guess what...
That's right, 2 upgrades... Indy to Houston and Houston to Orange County.
I skipped dinner on the first flight, thinking I'd get something in Houston or in OC, but a thunderstorm killed my extra time in Houston and they only served a snack on the second flight...Oh well...
I can survive missing a few meals...As a matter of fact, it wouldn't hurt me to miss a few more.
But I digress...


Back here in OC for the WTT match tonite,
Gave the entire system a good scrubbing today- got the speed displays taken care of...
They are looking good. The scoreboards are good...
And since things were going too well, the NBA had to call and ask about doing a USAB game in Las Vegas next week.
So... I'll be in Lost Wages for a couple days before my next gig in Montreal.

All is going smoothly here. The radar is working, Hawkeye is hawking, our scoring software is chugging away...

We'll be out of here by 10:30...
I have an early flight to Sacramento again... Southwest Air... And I'm going into this with an open mind...
We'll see how it goes.

Famous, out-