"Sometimes the Gods bless you in the morning and curse you in the afternoon."

-- Hector

Big, broad shouldered Chicago welcomed us with open arms. We put down anchor in front of the venue. I was the first to step off the bus into a city that was waking up on a beautiful mid-summer morning.

As the Gods would have it, a tall, young woman with long dark hair was also just rising in an Edwardian-style apartment across the street. She was enjoying a morning breeze through her wide open window, and she was obviously confident in her appearance knowing that she had at least one admirer on the street.

I enjoyed the haunting contrast of her youthful beauty with the sturdy 100 - year elegance of the building itself. And I felt special being the stranger in the play. One hundred years from now she and I will be long gone, but this old building will look like the day it was new. This city has a monumental presence that defies the passing of time.

The day sailed easily towards the show at 9 p.m. Mike found a ticket to the Cubs vs. Pirates game at Wrigley Field, and I had lunch in a neighborhood sports bar Not being a baseball fan, I found the patron's reaction to the game, as it unfolded on six television sets above our heads, to be an even greater spectacle than what was on TV. I am convinced that the Americans could launch WWIII over a baseball dispute. No, I did not have apple pie.

Later in the afternoon, I took a long walk with Margo in search of a fruit stand. The older homes on the tree covered urban residential streets are a tribute to the skill of the tradesmen who built them. This old railway town had backbone, but there was also an artistic eye for design that is really moving.

Chicago is the cenotaph in the middle of the neighborhood. It is a male city, big, powerful, and sure footed. Yet, it can be elegant and artistic. It was built to withstand time and the changing seasons, and it rises proudly above the middle of the neighborhood as a point of reference saying in a comforting way, "you are here, now." But if you read it closely, you find a new perspective against which you can measure your life and time, "you may be gone sooner than you think." Chicago is a straight face riddle.

The club, Park West, is my favorite to date. It is a Las Vegas-style, terraced 1000 - seater with tables on the terraces and a big wooden dance floor in front of the stage. The sightlines are great, the sound is superb and the whole building works efficiently for the band from the dressing room shower to the side stage loading dock. It was a pleasure to play here.

We were happy in this room, tonight. The show was sold out and the music felt great. Our two encores included Walking, Jane, Misguided Angel and Anniversary Song. I had a chance to watch Tracy Bonham open for us, and spent money on her new CD called Blink the Brightest.

Thank you Chicago.

Afternoon becomes evening, and evening becomes early morning. We are on the bus and rolling for Des Moines. It's 2 a.m. Several of us are in the front lounge kicking back and enjoying the opening minutes of Meet The Fockers. Everything is cool. We've just played a great show. There are no worries.

Twenty minutes later, we are still rolling for Des Moines and Bob DeNiro is pulling into a driveway in his CIA-designed RV with a horn that plays the opening six notes of Puff the Magic Dragon. We all bare our monkey teeth and laugh uproariously. That's when I sense the bus is moving too slowly and open the blind to discover that we are no longer rolling for Des Moines.

No, we appear to be beneath Chicago in a washed out, vitreous green, underground parking lot with a road running through it. There are low slung rafters everywhere you look. The driver has apparently decided not to proceed any further down this rabbit hole and is backing up. That's when the Internet satellite on the rear roof of the bus got demolished.

The bus lurches forward and frees itself (and the remains of the dish) from the punishing low slung rafters. The antenna on the roof over the front lounge is making a slow clicking sound every time it hits a rafter. This means that as long as we can hear this sound we have, at the very most, a three inch clearance. We are now all staring at the ceiling as the clicking persists for another few feet. We are no longer underground, we are underwater, running silent, waiting for the sonar to pass and the silence that precedes the depth charge explosions to begin. Someone has turned off the the Fockers (which wasn't that funny, anyway). The bus is in reverse, another crunch. We`have pulverized the Internet satellite for the second time. Anyone left in the rear bulkhead area (we're now talking submarine) is now up front and responding to the mounting paranoia in his/her own endearing way: I have gone Buddha; Mike is shouting unintelligible orders to no one in particular, something about "apple pie!"; Margo, realizing that she in her underwear, swears a blue streak about "seeing it all" and goes back to bed; Pete is still rolling towards Des Moines; Jason, his head in his hands, is wondering how many more years Joan Baez can possibly support him; mercifully, Jeff is still asleep and Al, a frozen visage of horror, (recognized only by those of us who know him) is now staring out the window at the homeless people who are crawling up through the grates and down from the rafters to surround the bus.

We are all hitting on the same idea at the same time: that the only thing worse than been taken down like an African Wildebeest in a hidden corner of Chicago is becoming the late night play thing of a bunch of bored Chicago cops.

All we wanted to do was watch the Fockers and now the whole weight of Chicago is bearing down on top of us and getting heavier. Fuck!

Our situation is about to spiral out of control, which is a really tough place to be for a bus full of passive aggressives from Canada. The bus lurches forward to the excited yells of the gathering hyena people (with apologies) outside the bus. Curiously, Jason opens the front door and gives someone a twenty dollar bill -- a thank you for helping the bus driver back up. (Jason is a an American. He did what he had to do to regain some sense of being in control. This was his way of getting things done, regardless of what the consequences of his actions might have been.) We Canadians, on the other hand, brought the situation to committee and searched high and low for a consensual agreement on what to do.

It takes a while, but we decide to bake an apple pie. We crank up the microwave so that if the cops came on board (we expect them any minute) we'll have something nice to offer them. In the meantime, while Dr. Skippy's last pie is baking, Jason's solution is working. We can hear at least 25 homeless people shouting directions at the bus driver. The bus is actually beginning to straighten out.

By 3 a.m., Das Bus is back on the surface. We are at roadside, enjoying the night breeze and checking out our damage. Jason has been on the phone with airlines, taxis and rental car people. It is decided that the bus and equipment will drive through the night to Des Moines, and that we submariners will fly the next morning.

We check into a hotel at the Chicago Midway Airport, spent and stinking like apple pie.

On to Des Moines.