I've Been to Spain, But I've Never Been to ME (Maine, That Is!)

This most recent trip was shaping up about a month ago to be a bad one. First off, it was an overseas show, which always increases the stress level. Second, our sister company, which handles all of the road gear, had neglected to notify us when the truck was leaving their warehouse for the freight forwarder's, and we were stuck with carrying absolutely everything we needed to take with us for the candids. And then we got word that the shipment of gear had been held up somewhere, either stuck on an ailing ship, or entangled in red tape in Spain Customs.

September 4, 2008 • Thursday
The storm that was once called Gustav oozed in over Chicago, dumping a steady downpour for the entire day. I had intended to head over to a costume shop to pick up a matador costume to use in a couple of gags we planned for the candids video, as well as to head to the US Customs office to register all the electronics gear we were taking. After frittering the morning away, I went to lunch, intending to head straight for the Customs office afterward. On my way to lunch I got a phone call by one of my coworkers telling me that the owner of the company (from this point referred to as "Owner") — who was on another show in San Diego — told him that we needed to definitely bring the bulky, heavy power transformer with us (Spain — and all of Europe — run on 220 volt, 50 Hertz power, whereas the US runs on 110V, 60Hz. Unless an electrical appliance is engineered to run on either system, you can't plug it in to the one it's not designed for without it running improperly or destroying it). I told that coworker to pull it out for me and I would stop back at the office and bring it with me to US Customs.

When I got to the office I saw that the transformer had no serial number, so there was no need to register it with US Customs. Trip wasted.

I headed to US Customs based on a spotty memory of the last time I was there…and I got lost. Not LOST; I knew exactly where I was, but I couldn't remember how to get to where I needed to go. Finally, after calling and getting directions, I arrived.

When you're leaving the country for any length of time it is advisable that you register with US Customs any item of value that you're taking with you and intending to bring back with you, such as laptops, cameras, iPods or other personal electronics. Should you be stopped upon re-entry to the USA and be unable to prove you carried such items out of the USA with you, you will be charged an import duty. Registering the items prior to the trip is your proof.

Last year the veteran Customs officer I spoke with pretty much rubber-stamped my papers without asking to see the half-ton of crap I had with me. This time, however, it was a very young officer who, though he seemed reluctant to tell me to bring everything in, kept looking at the veteran officers with apprehension (and fear of reprimand?), made me bring everything in. So, after two round trips out to my SUV in the pouring rain, hauling every heavy case out and onto a wheeled cart, pulling out every single electronic piece of equipment with a serial number and repacking it, and returning everything to the car, I was soaked and more than a little frustrated.

After a heated tangle with another coworker (heretofore referred to as "Editor") (more on that in a future post), we divided up the cases and left for the day. I called the costume shop, where I had one week earlier reserved the matador costume, and told them I would pick it up the next day.

September 5, 2008 • Friday
There I was, on my 44th birthday, preparing to leave to work for a week in Spain. The next crisis hit early: Owner now needed someone to locate and carry two teleprompter monitors to Spain. Our equipment guy was already in Spain, and I had no idea where to find any monitors even if we had them. We called to a local freelance prompter operator, but he was on a job and in session, so he was out of reach until at least noon. I had to leave for the airport at 1:00. I also had to pick up the matador costume at 11:00, when the costume place opened.

Stress was very high until Owner called back and said that he had gotten in touch with the equipment guy who told him that there was a case with three LCD flat-panel prompter monitors on the truck parked behind our building, waiting to go on to the next show the following week. We got the case off the truck, I picked up the costume and I headed to the airport. Owner told me that the LCDs were needed as a backup in case the shipment indeed failed to arrive in time

I normally fly United Airlines, where I have the vast majority of my air miles and, thus, Elite status. Where United allows me to check three bags at no extra charge, American Airlines, where I have no status, allows me one bag free, a second bag at $25, and then $100 for each additional bag, with a limit of five bags total. Then add a charge for three of the five bags being over 50 pounds, and my trip cost an additional $650!! And Editor, my travel partner, had four bags, setting us back another $550. Let's hear it for the company credit card! YEAH!

There was a minor delay in boarding the flight, and due to our lack of any status, Editor and I were among the last to board. Fortunately for me, it was not filled to capacity, so I had a vacant seat next to me.

September 6, 2008 • Saturday
We connected through London Heathrow airport to a British Airways flight to Madrid, landing sometime around 1:00 in the afternoon. Two of our 9 cases failed to make the trip with us: my tripod and the case with the three LCD flat-panel teleprompter monitors. I was given every assurance they would be delivered to my hotel.

We checked in to our rooms at the hotel, and then we hired a taxi to take the candids gear to the venue — the Teatro Circulo Bellas Artes — a mere five-minute walk from our hotel…and a six-minute cab ride. The Circulo Bellas Artes is apparently an old theater that is used by the president and the queen to hold official state functions. Judging by the condition and appearance of the place, you'd think raves were held there. It is grimy, run-down and underequipped for modern events. There's no loading dock — trucks load out through the main entrance on a side street, through the lobby and on elevators the size of a matchbox. Either the Spaniards have a much higher tolerance for heat and humidity than the rest of the humans on the planet, or the building's air conditioning is in need of serious repair. Other than that, everything is great.

We got our gear into the room set aside as our edit suite, and reported to the show crew in the auditorium. There we learned that the shipment had finally cleared whatever difficulty it had encountered, and would be arriving the next morning; my missing LCD monitors case was now, thankfully, redundant. We took a walk to scout the area around our hotel and discovered a large square filled with tables and people, surrounded by bars and restaurants. We grabbed an early dinner at what turned out to be a tapas bar, learning at that moment that 1) no one outside the hotel and the airport speaks English at all; 2) Spanish food is drastically different from food I've encountered anywhere else in Europe. Yeah, the language thing is my fault, I know. In the hours before I left I couldn't find the two Spanish phrase books I bought a couple years ago. The food? Wow! It's a good thing I'm culinarily (it's a word (really)) adventurous. Editor, unfortunately, foresaw a long week of fasting.

We returned to our rooms at the hotel and I fought off sleep as long as I could, finally succumbing to the jet lag at 8:00pm.

September 7, 2008 • Sunday
I awoke around 1:30am. Hearing voices outside in the street, and having learned that the Spanish are culturally night owls, I got dressed and headed out into the night. I returned to the large square I had seen at dinner time and found it to be humming with activity. People of all ages — even parents with four or five-year-old kids — were out in the crowd, talking, laughing, drinking. There were many young people in their 20s standing in groups and socializing. It seemed that I got out there just as the bars were preparing to close up: workers were stacking chairs and gathering tables, some were shuttering their windows and doors, but the crowd stayed put. After about an hour of walking around, my feet were getting sore, so I headed back to the hotel where I checked e-mail, flipped through the TV channels for a while and, around 5:00, went back to sleep.

I awoke again at 8:00 and prepared for the day. The bell desk called me and said that my luggage had arrived, however, when the bellman came to thedoor, he had only the tripod. The LCD monitor case had not been delivered. I spoke with the concierge, who then called British Airways baggage handling at the airport, and they said it would be delivered the next day. Hmmm.

Editor and I walked in a different direction from the hotel than we had done the previous afternoon, scouting now for locations to shoot for their scenic qualities. Around the corner from the hotel we found the Neptuno fountain, on the roundabout. Five minutes walking from there led us to another fountain on another roundabout right by the main train station. We grabbed breakfast at a café chain called Faborit, where the young man behind the desk spoke some English, saving me from ordering the bull penis sandwich, or something possibly as hideous. The sandwich was great (it looked and tasted like salami, so I'm assuming it was salami), the chocolate croissant was fab, and the café Americano was superb.

Next we boarded an open-top tour bus and shot as many sights as we could throughout the entire loop, scouting for other places we might want to shoot from ground level. For lunch we tried to find a place that appeared palatable to Editor, but defaulted to a McDonald's near the train station.

After exhausting ourselves on the scenic shooting, we refreshed in our rooms and then headed out for dinner, failing again to find a restaurant, instead winding up at a tapas place. The choricitos (think chorizo smoky links) casserole I ordered was okay, but the vegetable casserole Editor ordered was not very appetizing…even to me! Apparently, cazuela, the Spanish word for casserole, simply means "food served in a bowl," and does not involve noodles , cheeses or sauce. On the way back to the hotel we walked past an Italian restaurant that looked promising, and vowed we would go there Monday evening.

September 8, 2008 • Monday
By morning there was still no sign of the LCD monitors. I spoke again with the concierge, who promised me he would call British Airways. I had discovered a Faborit right across the street from the hotel, so I ate breakfast there. Editor told me that he had a rough night trying to sleep (I was able to sleep pretty much the whole night through, from about midnight until 6:00), and that he was going to try to sleep a little longer. He didn't have much to do that morning, so there was no problem with it.

I walked to Teatro Circulo Bellas Artes and right into a news event. I saw a throng of video cameramen rushing forward toward a person right at the main entrance to the theater. I noticed a man in front of me wearing a suit, with a clear plastic coiled cord snaking out of his collar at the back of his neck and running up to his ear. Security. I didn't recognize anyone as famous, but I did see a couple of female reporters with microphones. I walked around the throng of people and into the theater, expecting at any moment to be shouted at in a language I don't understand, and then shot in the back.

Once inside the theater lobby I headed for the woefully small elevators, only to be cut off by two men scrambling from the throng to secure the cars. Within seconds the throng was swarming to the elevators, so I gave up and headed for the stairs.

Did I mention that our edit room was on the fifth floor? And did you know that, in Europe, the ground floor is usually labeled as zero, making the fifth floor truly five floors above? And, did I mention that the floors of Teatro Circulo Bellas Artes are somewhere near double the height of normal floors? Somewhere between the third and fourth floors I was sucking wind like a fucking shop vac, my legs had gone numb and I thought I was certainly going to have a heart attack. I took a brief break to catch my breath, and then I labored my way up to the fifth floor. And you know what? I beat the reporters in the elevators!

I retrieved the betacam from the edit room and headed back to the hotel, where the arriving attendees would be registering for their week of meetings and food and fun.

One of the travel staff people told me that the Italian restaurant Editor and I had passed the night before had great food, and definitely recommended it. After I shot all I needed of registration and brought the tape to Editor at the theater, I had only little more than an hour before the Welcome Dinner started, where I had to shoot some more….but not eat…because the client doesn't feed us. I had hoped to hit the Italian restaurant, but Editor wasn't ready to eat at that time, preferring to get caught up on the candids video to the point that he had used everything he needed from my shot tapes.

So I went to the other restaurant the travel staff person had mentioned, a place called VIPS, just around the corner and actually in the same building as the hotel. She had said it was kind of like a Denny's. I went in and discovered a little convenience store at the front, with the restaurant seating wrapped around it. I had the breaded hake and a tasty greens salad. And no tapas.

September 9, 2008 • Tuesday
Jet lag, for anyone who's never experienced it, is an interesting affliction. It's the result of the sudden disruption to your sleep cycle caused by rapid travel to another time zone. The further removed from your home time zone, the wackier the disruption. You may feel during the day that you've finally adjusted — you're able to stay awake and not feel fatigued — but at night, no matter how tired you feel at bed-time, you wake again after only an hour or two, and sleep is hard to come by. Madrid is seven hours ahead of Chicago. Even putting off going to bed until midnight (damn blogs!), it was still only 5:00pm on my body's clock. That's nap time, at best. And a nap is what I got. I awoke at 1:00am and lay there for about an hour before feeling sleepy again.

One of the stresses added by an overseas show is the fact that I am always called upon to run camera during the show. We record all of the stage portions of our shows for whatever use the client may wish to make of it. It increases my stress level on site because it takes away or severely limits my ability to complete the other tasks I'm responsible for beyond shooting the candids. And, besides that, I hate it. The call Tuesday morning was 6:45am. Owner asked me about the LCD monitors and told me that it was crucial that they arrive today, and if we didn't have them by 2:00, it would be a "disaster." WTF?! Just yesterday they were redundant!!

I asked the concierge yet again to call about the LCDs case, and he told me once again that British Airways said the case was "on the truck." I told him that they had said that yesterday and the day before, and yet nothing was delivered. Then he told me that he would call again, but not until 8:00, when the baggage office opened.

Back at the theater I left a note for Editor (none of us has international calling on our cell-phones, so it was back to 20th Century communications) telling him of the now dire circumstances the missing LCDs posed, and asked him to go back to the hotel and make sure the concierge called about the LCD monitors.

Aside from the oppressive heat that the newly purchased fans placed all around the theater just blew around, the general session went without a hitch. Several locals were hired to act as ushers for the meeting. Two among them were stunning, attractive young women. I was stuck behind a camera, so all I could do was look at them. One of them made eye contact and smiled at me frequently enough to distract me from my work (okay, that doesn't take much)!

Immediately after the general session was over, I was ordered to strike the camera I had operated for the session in order for it to be used as the camera providing the big screen image at the awards dinner that evening. There ensued a great deal of confusion, as the other camera operator had to break away to assist with the technical aspects of some educational seminars — called breakouts — while Equipment Guy was already at the award dinner venue — La Quinta del Jarama — thirty miles away setting up there. Some of the breakout equipment was needed at La Quinta del Jarama, as well as some of the stage equipment, including those missing LCD monitors!

I ran upstairs to see what Editor found out, and he said that he had to get ugly in order for the concierge to call British Airways and investigate. It turns out that the baggage office's records showed that the case was on a truck, but it was actually still in their warehouse. They assured the concierge that it would be on the truck and delivered by noon.

I ran to the hotel around 1:00 and up to my room, as the case had my name on it, and that's where the hotel would deliver it. At last, the LCDs had arrived. I called a bellman to cart the case to the front entrance, where I got a taxi to take me and the case back to the theater. It started to rain.

By 4:00 all the gear that needed to go to La Quinta was ready to be loaded into two vans that would also carry nine of us. I brought my candids camera, as the awards dinner is one of the events we cover for the video. I had batteries, a camera light and one tape loaded in the camera. As the show camera and tripod were loaded into the van, I asked the technical director (TD) if he had loaded the control unit and control (power, video, data) cable for the camera. He looked at me like I was stupid and told me that we were using my camera's power supply with it. Well that was news to me! My power supply was still up in the edit room!

I ran back into the theater, rode the elevator up to the fifth floor and retrieved the power supply and cables for my camera. The catering crew that had served lunch to the attendees on the second floor of the theater building were clogging up the elevators, and where I had lucked out in catching one for the ride up, I could not afford the time it was taking for a car to reach the fifth floor for the ride down. I decided to take the steps. I was headed down after all. No fatigue to worry about.

I zipped down past the fourth floor. Somewhere between floors four and three, two cleaning ladies were busy at work, mopping the stairs! I hit the landing between four and three, and my left foot went wiggy on the wet marble floor. After a brief struggle to stay upright, I felt it better to just drop onto my ass. It would take less time than the Stay On My Feet dance, and I was less likely to get hurt. So down I plopped, and immediately from the stairs below I heard a woman gasping, "Oh! Oh! Oh!" She had heard me fall and came running up the stairs, horrified that I had fallen. I got up and assured her in a language she doesn't understand that I was unhurt. Meanwhile, the lady wielding the mop looked up at me in frozen bewilderment. I continued down the stairs, much more gingerly now, and climbed into the van.

I prepped the camera at La Quinta, and then was told that we would run two cameras for the program, which meant that Owner would call the other camera guy, who thought he had the evening free, to grab the other tripod from the auditorium and hop on the attendees bus to get to La Quinta.

It was at this point that I wondered why this was all so incredibly unorganized. We've done this sort of thing for years, and never has it been such a clusterfuck. I still don't know the answer.

We managed to pull off the recording of the dinner program without it looking like we were as disorganized as we were. And then, only a couple hours after we set it up, we tore it all down and left.

September 10, 2008 • Wednesday
It had rained most of the day Tuesday, so to awake around 1:30 Wednesday morning to what sounded like pouring rain was somewhat of a surprise. I feel that, had the noise not woken me, I would have been able to sleep through the night. But then it sounded like someone knocked on my window. Not an insistent rapping, but one loud knock. And then another, followed sporadically by others of varying intensity. Then, as I became more awake and curious, I thought, "Is that hail?"

I rose and opened the curtains. Sure enough, golf ball-sized stones were falling amid the raindrops! The hail dissipated after a few minutes, but the rain continued.

After another hour, I was able to sleep again.

It was another early call, but the morning session was only an hour before the attendees went off to breakouts the rest of the morning. I did call over to me one of the gorgeous women with whom I had made eye contact the day before. Her name was Angela. Now I had always thought Spanish to be kind of a sexy language, but when she told me her name, her pronunciation kinda ruined it for me. Mexican Spanish pronounces the 'G' in her name as English pronounces the 'H.' "AN-hel-ah." But Spanish Spanish, at least in the Madrid region, pronounces the 'G' much more harshly, and when Angela told me her name, she sounded like she was hacking up a loogie. But she understood little more English than "What's your name?" and spoke even less, so I was relegated to just looking at her, smiling and, no doubt, creeping her out.

While the breakouts were in session, Producer, who had arrived from San Diego Tuesday morning and was a zombie all day, worked with me to shoot some "funny" gags and skits. We finally put the matador costume to use.

After the breakouts, the attendees returned to the auditorium. I saw the other gorgeous usherette and called her over. She spoke just a bit more English and told me her name is Eva, which, in Spanish, sounds like "EH-fa." At least I didn't worry about getting phlegm on my shirt. Eva was actually damn funny, because, when the man speaking on stage put up a photo of one of his colleagues, his mentor and hero, she came up to me and whispered into my ear "Michael Douglas!" And that's exactly who the man in the photo resembled! I laughed silently behind the camera, nodded to her my concurrence, and fell madly in love with her.

After the session I bolted for the hotel with the betacam in hand. I went to my room and changed into a pair of shorts and headed down to shoot more gags for the video. Then I embarked on the walking tour of medieval Madrid. It was a fairly excruciating walk, considering I had to carry a 20 pound camera for three hours and an untold number of miles. It was a fascinating tour, however, and Yolanda, our tour guide had a really nice ass.

Toward the end of the walk, the attendees started breaking off, some to eat an early dinner, some to go shopping, some to explore a little more on their own. Before long, the only people left were Yolanda and me! We still had about a half-mile to go to get back to the hotel, and we talked most of the way. Earlier in the tour Yolanda had asked me how much the camera weighed, and I guessed at the conversion to kilograms to be around seven or eight. She asked to hold it to see, at which point I jokingly said, "See ya later!" and walked off like I was abandoning her with it. She guessed it to be about 9 kilograms, which, upon checking it accurately, is correct.

Anyhoo, on our walk alone back to the hotel, she asked me, "So what do you do now? Go have a beer?"

And I said, "Wow! A beer would be great right now. You wanna go have a beer with me?"

HOLY SHIT! I asked her out without even thinking about it!

She laughed out loud…really loud… I don't know if that's a good thing or not… and she declined, saying she had stuff to do at the hotel.

I said goodbye to her at the intersection I needed to cross in order to get to the theater, and headed up to the edit suite. Neither Editor nor Producer were there, as they were still out on the activities they had to shoot. I returned to the hotel and chilled in my room for a while, as I had the evening free.
I had hoped my coworkers would call me or come to the hotel to get me for dinner, but by 8:00 I started to doubt they would do that. I headed back to the theater and discovered that they had gone to Burger King and were chowing down in the edit suite. That's okay…they had work to do. I headed straight for the Italian restaurant I had waited two days to get to. I was seated near an attendee couple who, within a few minutes, asked if I was part of their group. I told them I was on the video crew, and that started a conversation. Then they suggested I pull my table up against theirs, and we had dinner together.

September 11, 2008 • Thursday
It was another one-hour session, then off to breakouts, and back for another hour, ending the final session around 1:30pm. The candids shooting was finished on Wednesday, after the activities, so I was free to be used to help strike the stage. The general session was over, now, and all that was left was the final night dinner party, this time at yet another venue, the Florida Park restaurant in the Parque de Retiro.

I broke for a quick lunch and changed into the pair of shorts I had brought with me to the theater. I wore the white t-shirt I had worn under my dress shirt.

I was on hand along with about six local hands and a couple of our guys (TD and the other camera op) to dismantle the cameras and the large center screen above the stage. It took about three and a half hours to complete, and as soon as that was done, I had to pack my camera and the tripod to take over to Parque Retiro in order to record the presentation they had planned over there. It was another bit of a clusterfuck as our hands and the loaders were trying to get all our gear down through the teensy elevators while the rest of the theater's employees tried to do their usual things while using the elevators. While they were loading the truck to take our gear to the freight forwarder's, we, the candids crew were packing our gear to take to our hotel (and I, of course, to go to the evening venue).

When all of the candids gear was packed, Editor and Producer and I hailed a cab with three large cases with my gear in them, and a small DVCAM VCR to head over to La Florida at Parque de Retiro. The taxi dropped us off and we were flummoxed. Parque de Retiro is a huge park! No signs, no arrow, no guide pointed toward the restaurant. We were essentially lost. Producer pointed off in the direction to our left and said, we should go that way. Editor and I said that we're not traipsing all over the park on a wild goose chase while carrying these heavy cases (Editor was dragging one wheeled case, I was dragging the other wheeled case and carrying the the 40-pound tripod case while Producer was carrying the eight-pound DVCAM VCR and a couple of tapes. He bitched that we didn't have time to scout for the restaurant and then come back for the cases. I said, "There is NO FUCKING WAY I'm carrying these goddamn cases all over the fucking park looking for the restaurant!" Producer said he certainly wasn't going to walk all over the park just to come back here for the cases (at this point in the story I must reveal to the one reader left that Producer is a fat, lazy-ass.) So I said, "Fine! I'll go!" I dropped my cases — literally — and ventured off in the direction he wanted us to go in the first place. It only took me about five minutes to discover the restaurant — embarrassingly — about 100 yards down the main walkway from where we were standing at the entrance to the park.

No sooner had we arrived to the restaurant than Owner told me we were desperately in need of plug adapters, things that receive the flat-pronged American plugs and allow them to receive power through the round-pronged European plugs. He told me he needed a half dozen of them and left it to me to find out where to get them. I turned to one of the local hands who was helping set up at La Florida. He spoke a smattering of English, so I asked him "¿Dónde por la…?" and held out one of the plug adapters we had. He told me a store name, and I asked him to write it down. "El Corte Ingles on Goya Street."

I ran out to the street and hailed a taxi. I said the name of the store, and the driver took me there. "Aquí," he said, pointing at a massive building. "El Corte Ingles." Holy Crap! The store covered the whole block! I ran in and found myself in the middle of the ladies department! I found an escalator and went up. FOUR FREAKING FLOORS of ladies department! and then, above that, another three floors of men's clothing, with another floor or two above those! I ran back down to the ground floor and found another escalator down into a grocery store section. I looked for household goods, but found no plug adapters.

I saw a woman in a type of uniform. I assumed she was security. I asked her if she understood English, which she did not. It was around this time that I realized I should have told Owner to send a local with a wad of Euros to do this. He'd know where to go and who to ask...or I should've taken a local with me. I said "Electricos," which, to my utter surprise, was the right word. She pointed toward an exit and made it clear to me that I had to go outside, cross Goya Street, cross another street, and there was another "El Corte Ingles" department there. WTF?! So I went out the doors and, sure enough, in an entirely different building, there was another storefront beneath an "El Corte Ingles sign. It was an electronics department. I asked the people there, and the woman wrote on a piece of paper, "S. 1. Ferretéria." And then she spoke and waved her arm in the general direction of the street. Seeing obvious confusion on my face, the man standing with her kept saying what sounded like "Flock. Flock," only with the phlegmy 'G' sound that Angela had used in her name. "Flocchhh! Flocchh!"

Then he led me outside to the sidewalk and pointed right from the door. "Flocchhh! Bandera!" HOLY SHIT! The guy was trying to speak English! "Flocchh" was FLAG! It wasn't until I heard the freakin word "bandera" — a SPANISH word — that I realized he meant FLAG! There, about 50 yards away, was indeed a flag, and yet another "El Corte Ingles" storefront.

Thanking the man, I headed for the next puzzle. I had already burned so much time I was getting frantic. I looked around and saw nothing that looked like "electricos," so I headed up an escalator. After being deflected by an employee who must've been going on break, who told me when I called to him to go to the information desk…at least I think that's what he told me, I sought help from a woman, pantomiming with my hands — in what could possibly have been misconstrued as a proposition for sex — the description of what I needed. She tried to speak to me, but I was understanding nothing. Then she led me to a store directory map. She pointed to the floors below street level. To S1. To "Ferretéria." Fuck. That's what the note meant.

All the way at the bottom of a rack I finally found the items I needed, and five minutes, six plug adapters and $70 later, I was in another taxi and headed back to Parque de Retiro. When I arrived the attendees were already filing in to the restaurant. I was still in my shorts and t-shirt, sweating profusely and probably not smelling too fresh, and I needed to find Owner to give him the plug adapters. I saw him just as he saw me, and he freaked a little because of my attire. I gave him the adapters and he hustled me out of the room and out into an anteroom and bar area (not stocked, unfortunately). He pulled the cases out from where they had been hidden, and I began to set everything up to record the presentation. With a few minutes left to kill, I grabbed my clothes, ducked into the men's room and quickly changed into the shirt and slacks I had brought with me from the theater.

After the presentation was over and the attendees were snarfing down their food, we struck the gear and blew out of there. After putting the three cases I had into bell staff storage, I walked over to VIPS and had a steak dinner with a beer, and then I walked in the direction of the square we had found on the first night until I found what I had seen Wednesday night on the way back to the hotel from the Italian restaurant. I snapped the photo of the penguin holding a keg under one wing and a stein of beer with the other and thought, "Scarletvirago will love this."

September 12, 2008 • Friday
Producer, Editor and I headed for VIPS around 8:00am, but they were not yet open, so we headed to Faborit and had breakfast there.

Afterward I finished the last bits of packing I had to do in my room and then dragged my bags down to the lobby. We three retrieved the rest of the gear from bell storage and accounted for everything. The client had arranged a private van (more like a small bus) for us and our gear, which we loaded up and boarded for the airport. Producer had come in on an entirely different itinerary and airline, so Editor and I left him on the bus after we unloaded the gear and headed for the Iberia Airlines desk. We missed twice before finding the right ticket counter. We each had to pay €300 for the extra and overweight baggage, but were on our way soon enough.

We grabbed a quick bite at a McDonald's right there in the airport before I had to board my plane. Thanks to a booking oversight, Editor and I were scheduled on different flights from Madrid to London, mine leaving a half-hour before his. Editor wandered off to find some Tums, or their Spanish equivalent, and left me in the line to board the plane.

We met up again at Heathrow in the American Airlines departure lounge and boarded the plane together.

Nine hours later, as we rolled our seven cases (we were able to send two cases of gear back on an air cargo shipment with other show gear) past the customs agents, one of them stopped me and wanted to know what all the gear was. I told him it's video production gear. He asked me what we do. I told him. He became suspicious about the amount and told me we should think about getting a carnet next time. I told him about the registration form I had filled out prior to the trip, and he asked to see it. He looked at the two small pieces of paper and seemed satisfied that I was telling the truth.

With the way the rest of the trip had gone, I fully expected him to make us open every case and check every serial number.

This ranks up there among the top five worst show experiences I've encountered. This particular client's shows are usually fairly well organized, on their part and on ours. This one, however was a waking nightmare. I am tremendously happy to be home!