Travel Day Ponderings

I took some time to wander the neighborhood around the hotel after the show last night. Grant Park, Lake Michigan, Soldier Field… all beautiful things to see, but the bums are what my memory reverts to.

Picture this.

You’re walking around this well groomed tourist area when you happen across a disheveled old bum wearing a filthy t-shirt, torn sweat pants and mismatched shoes. Upon closer inspection you notice his hand down the front of his sweats in the familiar pumping motion that cannot be mistaken for anything else. Then you hear his song. “I’m gonna whack it and I don’t care who sees.” “I’m gonna scratch these balls ‘till I’m done.” bellowed like a drunken frat boy.

Or this…

A kinder, gentler, cleaner urban outdoorsman sitting outside of the door to the hotel with a cardboard and marker sign describing his obvious situation and asking God to bless me in exchange for spare change or cigarettes.

Both are accurate and true descriptions of people I observed while wandering the streets of Chicago.

What puts these guys in this situation? I’m sure that both of my examples had dreams and aspirations before whatever calamity struck them and rendered them into broken spirited humans, but what is the breaking point? When is pain and suffering so great that a person can finally cave in and accept their current situation as their lot in life and give up?

I usually don’t have much of a heart when I see those types of things, but I caught myself complaining that our buses don’t have internet access and I had a moment of clarity. Some people don’t have private spot in which to pleasure themselves. Some people have to beg for change to feed themselves and I’m bitching that my tour bus, while comfy with satellite TV and DVD players in every bunk, running water, flushing toilets, and electricity, doesn’t have internet access. I’m a dick. That is not to say I’m going to campaign for the homeless, give out any more freebies, or provide a private whack off shelter for the urban outdoorsmen to use, but I am a little more grateful that I have evidently made the right choices in life. I get to do what I love, eat what I want, and whack off in private. Perhaps that’s the definition of success.

But I still don’t have any fucking internet access on this bus.

***The travel day itinerary***

Bus call 7:00 a.m.

Roll out 8:00 a.m.

Arrive in Pittsburgh sometime this afternoon for a day stop.
Bus call 2:00 a.m.

Finish the ride to New York sometime tomorrow afternoon