A DAY AWAY...

It's been a hectic week, and it really hasn't even started. My friend Jack (you can read the first note I wrote to his son below) was wounded in a friendly fire incident in Iraq over the weekend. I've been sick to my stomach about it. From what I've heard, though, his injuries, while severe, are not life-threatening and he should will recover from his injuries in due time. Please keep Jack and his family in your thoughts

With that on my mind, I wanted to get away from life and be somewhere where I was just an unknown. Fortunately, I got to do that.

I went to Asheville, N.C. to see one of my favorite bands, Nickel Creek, play on Tuesday night. It was a great show, and the band members are super nice. In fact, I spent about 30 minutes after the show chatting with Sara, Sean and Chris, which made the trip even better. It also gave me a chance to explore Asheville, even though it would have been a lot better to go with some more people.

The place they played, The Orange Peel, is downtown, so I spent about a good hour just walking around in the rain and watching people. I tired unsuccessfully to find a thai restaurant there, and not finding one I tried to eat at Doc Chey's Noodle House. No luck there -- the wait was too long. I crossed the street and tried to eat at Barley's Taproom (good pizza there), but again it was packed. So I just meandered down the street and went to the Orange Peel, which used to be a social club/dance hall in the old days. I heard it was even a skating rink. The good news was there was plenty of room for people to crowd around the stage. The bad news was you had to stand.

As I said show was great. It was better than the one that I saw in Asheville a couple of years ago. There was no opening act, so they just came out and played for about two hours with two encores, including a cool little acoustic set at the end. They played many of my favorites and mixed in several new songs, including a song off Sean's new solo CD, but didn't play When You Come Back Down or Speak, which is their current single.

Still it was a good escape... maybe I should do more of that.