We left out of Long Beach on Saturday morning, heading to Big Bear Lake, CA. Long Beach is officially at 0 feet sea level (elevation) and Big Bear Lake is at 7,000 fee above sea level – that’s quite a climb!
We arrived at the Performing Arts Center around 7am. This is really early for us but the show was set to start at 2pm and we need those hours to get everything set up.
Sean, Robert, Dave, Brian, Kim, and Katie were all there to meet – wide awake and ready to get to work. We loaded in and the day went fairly well. None of the lighting electrics (pipes) come down here so I had to take all of our intelligent lights up in a lift and hang them from there. Robert was a big help with that while Dave and his guys figured out a way to get one of our backdrops in the air!
We hit a few challenges with the running of the show. There’s no space in front of the main curtain which means I had no place to do some of the smaller stage magic while the guys set up the next illusion backstage. We were able to put some special lighting on a small space stage right where I could do those things and it worked fine – just different for our normal style.
We had a great audience on Mother’s Day – very nice crowd of energetic people! I always ask for the assistance of a young guy from the audience in one of the illusions. Most of the time, everything works out okay. During this show, my young volunteer got just a little bit of “stage fright” and ran off the stage very quickly to the laughs and applause of the audience. People thought I actually told him to do it! Another volunteer quickly took his place and the show went on.
Keith had some friends drive up from Los Angeles to see the show – that’s loyalty because that is also a long drive! As it turns out, we also consider these guys (John, Sil, Tali, and Sam) to be our friends. They are such warm and personable people with very genuine spirit about them that’s rare these days. John is also an amazing magician, though he’s not one to show you a trick without some prodding. After the show, we all went back over to PONGS to indulge ourselves in the awesome Thai cuisine of this restaurant. Once the food hit my stomach, that was it. Getting up at 6am suddenly came crashing down on Cindy and I.
We made our way back to the hotel, fixed a hot cup of tea, and walked out to the lake. We sat down on one of the benches and took in our surroundings. It is simply spectacular out here. Cindy and I talked about the amazing places we have the chance to visit because of what we do – many places that we would never go or even have the opportunity to see. We walked out onto one of the docks just as the fish started coming to the surface.
We watched the fish for a while but, once the sun set, it got very cold! We scurried back to the room to get some rest.
This morning, we made our way down the mountain to West Covina. I picked up a rental car, got Ethan to the airport, and Cindy and I checked out one of the local malls. We are looking forward to a couple of days off!