Flying and Foam Sucking

Today we are flying from the Fukuoka airport to the Kansai Itami airport in Osaka. We had an internal flight on our 2005 trip, too, but then they sent our equipment via truck. This time, we are taking it with us on the plane. So we had to suck foam last night.

In "foam sucking", we take all the foam that we use to cover our performance table, stuff each piece into a garbage bag, and then vacuum the air out of it. The resulting bundle is then wrapped in packing tape & put into sturdy carry bags.

We've done this in some pretty interesting places, including at a US airport.

On our 1st trip to Japan, back in 2002, all of our equipment came back to our hotel with us after our last concert, so we sucked the foam in one of the hotel rooms.

In 2003, however, we *thought* the equipment was going to come back with us, but it didn't -- the trucking company was holding it for us overnight & it wasn't going to arrive until 30 minutes before we were to leave for the airport. So, when the truck arrived, we quickly grabbed all the foam & took it upstairs to Jim's tiny hotel room. We put all his furniture on the bed & formed 2 teams of frantic foam suckers. We got all 20 pieces of foam sucked in 28 minutes - a new record for us!

In 2005 & 2006 (we didn't go in 2004), we sucked foam at the last concert hall.

I was planning for us to do it at the concert hall yesterday, too, but we had to be out of there by 5 (and the concert was over at 4), so we did it in the hotel lobby -- after explaining to the hotel staff what we wanted to do (no easy task!).

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