My wife loves to tell me how amazing I am writing stories, at least the amount of production I have since I do admit to being somewhat of the “one man news show” here at The Slidell Independent.
But I have to admit that when I sat down at the keyboard for some writing this week, I found my fingers bouncing around to all kinds of incorrect keys. No kidding, I struggled for a while to find my groove.
That’s probably because I actually had the nerve to disappear with my girl for a 10-day vacation to Florida. We haven’t gone away anywhere close to that amount of time since starting the paper over 13 years ago.
When we agreed that we would make this a lengthy time away, I faced the task of knocking out a lot of extra work in advance. Not only did I have to do the writing for at least two editions of the regular paper, but it happened to also be the time of the year we put out our Football 2022 publication, which previews all of the high school football teams, plus Saints, LSU and Tulane. That’s quite a bit of work.
But somehow, I managed to get it done and we had the greatest time ever getting away, especially since my wife has fallen in love with “road trips” more-and-more as we have gotten older, and there is nothing I rather do in my free time than party with my “hippie girl,” as I like to call her. (I think she likes the nickname too!)
She loves the two of us hitting the road with “no rush!” And of course, “no schedule!” And that’s how we like to do it. Plus, we get off the interstate as much as possible and cruise through the little towns where you see all kinds of interesting things.
Even though we did have one key reason for going to central Florida—Orlando, Tampa and St. Petersburg in particular—there was one main event we were heading to see after a week of lounging around in the sun, by the pool and at the ocean.
It was over a year ago that I bought tickets for Santana at one of our favorite concert venues, the Mid-South Amphitheater in Tampa, and we have waited, and waited, and waited for this show since Santana is positively among our favorites.
This concert and trip had some concerns built into it. Even though the venue had a mask mandate over a year ago, we were confident it would be dropped since COVID was starting to fade away. And even when a lot of places added the vaccine mandate to attend a show, it was pretty clear that might be dropped by the time the summer show rolled around.
Things started to fall into place earlier this year as masks and vax mandates were dropped, then a little more than two months ago I walked into the kitchen to hear my wife say, “you won’t believe this. Carlos Santana collapsed on stage last night during a concert.”
Yup, I kept hoping nothing would happen and now it did. But surprisingly, even though they cancelled his tour for a month to rest from what they said was dehydration and exhaustion (he is 75), he returned in July and has been performing again, albeit at a slower pace and shorter concert schedule.
So, yes, we did see Santana, along with Earth, Wind and Fire, on a beautiful crisp evening in Tampa last week. And the very regular afternoon thunderstorms that roll across Florida practically every day in the summer weren’t even going to stop us, even though we had probably the wildest, torrential downpour an hour before the concert.
Fortunately, we were prepared for that, so even with the rain coming down as we headed for the show, we put on our very adorable ponchos and marched right to the venue, got our seats, and enjoyed some cool music from great seats with 30,000 in the sold-out show.
The trip was excellent for me since I really did leave the paper behind, at least for about 95 percent of the work, as my reliable number two in command, Jennifer, stepped in and told me, “I’ve got it dad.” And she sure did, which I greatly appreciated since I couldn’t do this without her.
So, if you see a few less stories in the paper, at least for this week, give me a break. I need to have a few days to get my fingers moving again.
Kevin Chiri can be reached by e-mail at kevinchiri@gmail.com.