The band
Adam was late to breakfast, and looked a little bleary eyed. The main room of the bar had high stools, and there were all ready a few people seated and eating, several pensioners in the background, the odd truck driver taking his first stop of the day, and now Adam, looking like an aged Hell's Angel, in his jeans and tee shirt.
Tyler heard the bar man's breakfast selection (cereals, eggs, bacon, steak, toast) and eyed Adam's choice with some bemusement. "Beer." he said staidly. Only after two beers was he even moderately coherent.
"Sleep OK?" was his contribution to conversation.
"I am rested", came the reply, in between mouthfuls of the menu.. "Night-time out here seems quite still. Very peaceful. I haven't felt this much at ease in ae...in a long time." Tyler paused to glance at Adam momentarily, before commenting casually, "And how about you? Looks like you haven't slept all of last night off yet."
He grunts after a moment, eyes distant. "I thought I heard something..." Then he shrugged. "Probably just a Dream. A rumble like thunder before a storm... Well, we gotta get out to the airport by 11 am to meet the others, so I had to get up early." he said abruptly. He looked at his watch. "Which gives us about an hour to take in the sights. What do you want to see?"
"As long as the weather holds out, I don't mind too much where we go, friend."
Tyler paused to munch on some bacon, slightly embarrassed by the realization that he couldn�t remember the name of the town he was in at the moment, and then started to talk somewhat hastily - getting trivialities out of the way.. "Uh, is there a...zoo 'round here? Koalas? Kangaroos? Whatever! Only got an hour...I'm much more of a flora person than fauna - I can spend hours in the one place just getting a feel for the scene...though what about those lizards? The ones that do that thing with their necks. Y'know, like -" he demonstrated that "thing" by cupping his hands on either side of his neck and poking his tongue out a few times. "That's it, let's get stoned and go to a reptile house!"
Adam laughed, and then led the way to his vehicle, and on to the zoo. Much smoking later, a wide eyed Adam and wry smiling Tyler made their way back to the car.
"Y'know..." said Adam. "Man, I had no idea the zoo was so great. I mean like really great... Wow. Never came here before. Them frill necks are cool. The chameleons were so spaced out, the way they moved, wow..."
And on to the airport... Windows wound down. When Darwin is not being hot and humid, it appears to just resolve itself to hot.
Darwin airport does not handle much heavy international traffic, all the 747s make the distance to Sydney or Melbourne. But a substantial number of airbuses and other medium size craft make up the numbers at this airport. There did not appear to be huge numbers of flights over the day, generally one to each major Australian city in the morning and another in the evening, with the odd flight to Indonesia and Papua.
They waited for several minutes among the odd people in loose business suits (no ties) and tour guides, and then the announcement came that QF 903 from Sydney had landed. Adam went off to check that the hire truck was ready.
Twenty minutes later, a motley group made their jet lagged way towards Tyler and Adam. The massive form of Rudy the drummer overshadowed the remaining people in the group, and he had a typically bemused expression on his face. Saul, the thin, smallish figure towards the front, was scanning about, alert, and was clearly relieved to make eye contact with Tyler.
The rest of the road crew were carting several large trolleys, not the least of which was the tarpaulin covering Rudy's giant paper mache green Buddha.
Saul came straight over. "Glad you got here OK. I decided against leaving your things as they were when you did not come back by morning. All well?" he asked gently.
Adam nodded. "But of a run in with the man in blue, but we are fine. There is a lot of set up stuff we need to do, so I will get you guys to the pub, and we can catch up this evening."
Saul raised a curious eyebrow to Tyler, and Adam went to help the road crew move stuff into the hired truck.
Tyler waited for Adam to become fully occupied with the roadies, then attempted to downplay the story as the group headed towards the car.. "Just a couple of questions asked about my altered flight arrangements...", he drawled, knowing that Rudy would buy that at face value, and Kyle didn't really give a shit about him, as long as he was a good bass player. But Saul would want to know more, so Tyler gave him a look and a brief nod before changing the subject. "...but that's done, and we're here and we're ready to do - our - thang!"
Tyler drew out the last three words, high-fiving Rudy as he did so. He looked around as they arrived at the car. "So, where's Kyle? Has he been inspired by airport sounds or something like that? We ain't got time for sampling shit now - and it's been done before, anyway!"
Tyler helped one of the roadies load a bass-drum on the truck. To be more precise, he grabbed the drum one-handed and shoves it up the back, tersely ordering the hapless roadie, "Hey, go get Kyle." He then turned back to Rudy and Saul. "We got a lotta shit to pull together for the show, guys. We got a sound check, we got a press conference...at least we don't need to rehearse - unless you guys've come up with something new?"
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