Short version of my PDX/SEA trip:
Robyn and Grant-Lee were awesome. Fegs are the greatest.

Long Version:

Here goes.

We boarded the plane with a minimum of inconvenience and were sitting in our assigned seats when I looked up and saw Grant-Lee Phillips coming through the cattle line. I alerted Chris and as he was on the aisle he was able to peek up the line and look for our man. Sure enough, Robyn strolled right past us looking - as he often does - as though he was in his own world. GLP and RH settled into their assigned seats in the back of the plane amongst the screaming babies and the diarrhea-afflicted. I didn’t like seeing that. “Put those men in First Class!” I yelled, but I was quickly subdued by the smell of our seat mate eating his leftover Chinese food. I hung my head and sighed. “I did my best” I muttered with my best Iron Chef humility. After we took off I cracked open the Nick Drake biography which was a recent birthday gift. For some family background, it starts off with a short mention of the shipyard where the Titanic was built. I took note of the ominous nature of the text and it got me thinking: While I usually take time to evaluate whether or not this would be an OK time in my life to go down in a plane crash, crashing this flight would especially suck due to the higher than normal cult figure-to-normal Joe ratio. I rationalized our impending fiery deaths by figuring we would at least be footnotes in the annals of Feg history.

Upon landing in Portland, Chris rushed off the plane to alert Jeme as to the especially noteworthy passengers who were about to deplane. I waited on board; I’m usually the last one off the plane for reasons that will become obvious shortly, if they aren’t already. The top of my head blew off when the “light rock” they were pumping through the 737’s PA system consisted of Katrina and The Wave’s “Walking on Sunshine”! Surely this will bring a smile to Robyn’s face, right? I turned in my seat and spotted him coming up the aisle. Indeed he was singing to himself, but as he got closer to me I noticed he really wasn’t paying much attention to the surrounding music. Oh well, I thought it was funny anyway. I was summoned to the front of the plane when my wheelchair arrived from the cargo hold. I made my way forward and sat, then got a friendly boost up the jetway from Chris. (Side Note: Did I ever tell you that I went to Spain a few years ago? Well in Spain they call the jetway “The Finger”. I explained to the Spanish flight attendant that in America we call something else “The Finger”.) As we got out into the terminal I noticed I was sinking horribly into my chair, as if caught ass-first in a Venus Fly Trap. I explained to Chris that I should probably duck into the men’s room to evaluate the situation. I discovered that the Herculean baggage handlers at PDX had, while attempting to unfold the chair, sheared the heads off four of the six screws that hold the seating panel to the body of the chair. I tentatively resumed the ass squeezing and exited the bathroom to find that Jeme had finally met up with Chris. I explained the situation and Jeme took charge immediately, as he is wont to do. He discovered that we needed to go down to Baggage Claim and file a report or something. We did so and, long story short, assuaged the problem using the ubiquitous plastic zip-tie. We made sure to grab extras as we unanimously concluded that they would not hold up under my fat ass. Needless to say, they were changed out routinely throughout the weekend.

I was a bit annoyed by the sound at the Aladdin. It was rather cavernous, and for some reason Robyn’s vocal on “Queen Elvis” had way too much echo on it. I liked the rendition of “Gene Hackman” though, and also Robyn’s improv of Eddie’s request for “Bitchin’ Camaro”, which was interpreted on stage as “Changing Into Maryland”. A particular highlight was when jbj placed his full height traffic cone on stage before the first encore. Grant entered first to solo on “Happiness” and proceeded to do half the song seated at the piano with the cone on his head.

Part II Coming soon…