greetings from The Salad Bar

The Sprockettes’ From Cascadia with Love tour is underway! Let me try to translate some of it into cyber-magic for you.

We’ve been staying in a gorgeous, historic part of Chicago filled with boulevards and wide, green parks and spaces. It’s ike Portland’s Park Blocks but huge, and the streets are lined with towering brick and stone buildings reminiscent of fairy tale castles. Most of us are staying in a National Register Historic Building built in 1809. Hey, happy birthday, house! A huge shout out to Ryan, Allen, Eric, and Michael for letting us stay in their gorgeous home just across the street from Palmer Square where Tour de Fat was held. And to the Sprockettes’ local Chicago mascot, Champu the dog (that’s Spanish for shampoo) and his people, Jack and Brandon (and their other roommates whom we didn’t have the pleasure of meeting and begging for coffee). Champu boasts the mid-West’s cutest tail wag and is bi-lingual, having grown up in Costa Rica. And thanks, of course, to Agent Trouble’s sister, Jenny, and Caesar, who let the rest of us stay at their home. Their home proudly boasts our *other* Chicago mascot, Albee the Boston terrier. Albee can lick your ear at least 60 times per second, and he will. He took excellent, snuggly care of the girls at that house.

So Palmer Square was under renovation for 18 months, reopening mere days before TDF. Shwew, I tell you. Consequently, it hadn’t been mowed well, and not that we’re complaining, but it was nothing if it was not a good, old-fashioned salad bar growing out of the dirt. It was sketchy for our fancy bike trickery. After a few practice runs on The Salad Bar, we knocked a few tricks out of the show and rolled it out Cascadia style for our new Chicago friends. The donated bikes from Working Bikes are hilarious and adorable and totally decked out in hot pink and black paint, puffy paint, and electrical tape. Sure, we have a few white tires and seats, some purple grips, but they are Sprockettes bikes all the way.

After TDF, we had dinner on the rooftop, watched the area raptors soar around and do their raptor thing, and the next stop was a pie party. Every kind of pie imaginable. Vegan chocolate avocado pie, people. We got some double dutch action going and danced the night away until heading out for drinks and…dancing! Sunday brought us continued warmth and sunshine (oh, I didn’t mention it was in the mid-80s by early morning on Saturday and only went up from there). Some of us did a little farmer’s market action, we made brunch to thank the folks who’ve housed us so lovingly, and then it was off to explore the town. Just before sunset, we did another show in a park just down the road. After the show, the Sprockettes and audience alike rolled down to a house party to live up our last handful of hours in gorgeous Chicago.

Tomorrow, we hit the road in our rented 15-person van. What? We have a phenomenal driver, Daniel, who will drive us this week and then return the van in Chicago as we fly out from Minneapolis. It was the only way we could get a rental for that large a vehicle, as they don’t rent one way out of state for those behemoths. Thank you, Daniel, for appearing at the perfect moment and offering to let your life revolve around hot pink and black for a whole week. We’re grateful to you and all the other Chicago folks who have made this stop on our From Cascadia with Love Tour outstanding and one to remember.