Day 17: Omaha, NE
Welcome
Yesterday we flew to Omaha, Nebraska, to perform at Maha Festival.
We love to put our minds and bodies to the test and a 4am lobby call is one of the ways to do this. After several hours of sleep, we assembled out the front of the hotel and loaded our luggage into the shuttle for the short drive to the airport. Everything went smoothly at check-in, and we said goodbye to our bags before spending quite a while in the TSA line on the way to the gate. Eventually we made it through and shortly after 7am we were aboard a Delta Airlines Bombardier CRJ700, heading southwest towards Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, the busiest airport in the world by passenger volume.
In this photo it is 4.27am and we are at Providence International Airport waiting to check in.
We landed at 9am, and disembarked into the terminal, three hours up our sleeves before the connecting flight. There are five large concourses at Atlanta and instead of having to explore each one to find a good breakfast, I used their interactive 3D map to take a virtual walk through the entire complex. My brain became overwhelmed by this volume of information after a few minutes of browsing, though, and instead Gabe and I ended up walking around for an hour, exploring the terminal on foot. Finally, we arrived at a decent-looking spot where I ordered a crepe with tomato, basil, spinach, provolone, parmesan and balsamic dressing. It arrived in a triangular pizza box, with its tail contained by a paper cone to catch the huge quantity of balsamic dressing.
Back at the gate we settled in to wait for our boarding call, and enjoy the scene taking place at the gate just next to us. The the flight had been overbooked by 30 people, and they were now offering $3000 to anyone willing to give up their seat. Eventually they made it happen, and shortly after that it was our turn. We took off at 12.15 aboard a Boeing 717-200, a tiny regional passenger jet with the extremely rare 3-2 seating configuration. The two-hour flight took us northwest, over Tennessee, across Missouri, and just touching the corner of Iowa, before we landed at Omaha, right on Nebraska’s eastern border.
Most of our luggage made it all the way to Omaha with us. There was one piece missing, and it was our largest and most awkward item, our inflatable fish. There were two vans waiting outside to drive us to the festival, so we began loading everything else while Jonathan headed to baggage services to track down our most expensive piece of equipment. After a while it was located back in Atlanta; a luggage casualty of the busiest airport in the world. There were no flights to Omaha until the next day, so we had it redirected to La Guardia with the aim of picking it up when we made it to New York.
We didn’t let this setback affect our mood, and we bounded into our afternoon with cheer and enthusiasm. After checking in at the hotel we headed straight back out for an urgently needed lunch, the fuel to get us through a busy festival afternoon. Then we headed across to Maha Festival which was in a Stinson Park, a former horse racing ground five miles west of Omaha’s downtown. Two covered stages stood on the bank at one end of the park and at the other end of this grass oval was a monument that could probably be described as a modern obelisk, 27 metres tall and decorated with metal panels and a glass tip.
The event was a nice size, 6000 people and still plenty of room to sit down on grass and watch from a distance. We went out to play while the sun was still delivering a searing heat, but this time we were prepared and set up a huge fan blowing from the spot behind the amps that our fish normally occupies. Although the obelisk was a very distracting presence, we made it through the set unscathed and even had the privilege of playing an encore to this friendly crowd.
As we packed up, we watched Vancouver band Peach Pit kick off on the other stage. Our equipment was sent off in a van and then we had the rest of the night free to enjoy the music. The final act of the night were Big Thief and when they began the last few rays of sunlight were just disappearing behind the stage. It was a beautiful setting and a great way to close out an extremely enjoyable day of music, and the crowd seemed to think so too, the way they showed their appreciation through this last performance.
Peach Pit.
Big Thief.
This week in art corner we see a piece from the second-floor landing of Hilton Garden Inn Omaha Aksarben Village. A barbed wire fence takes centre stage in this photograph but an out of focus copse of trees and a spectacular sunset are what the photographer are trying to draw the eye to, suggesting that beauty has many forms.
And to help you digest these written words, a few minutes of video from Tristan Deck.