Dayton

I got up at 6.30am and I left my hotel at 9am today and drove for only about 10 minutes to Carillon Park where I was due to meet the tour guide at 10am. As I was early I walked across to the bell tower (photo below) and then had a quick look around part of the Dayton museum – apparently the pull ring on cans was invented in this city!




There were only 9 of us on the tour and we were driven in a mini-bus to Hawthorn House which is the house where Orville Wright lived with his sister and father from 1914 until his death in 1948 (Wilbur Wright died soon after the house started being built). It was a lovely house and our guide was excellent and told us loads of interesting stories, like the fact that each brother had their own front door at opposite ends of the house but, as Wilbur never lived in the house, there is no path up to his door.



Orville's study:




The tour lasted about 2 hours and after they returned us to the park I had some lunch and went to the Sunwatch Indian Village nearby. It was a village for only about 20 years around the year 1000 but it’s been well excavated with lots of items on display plus there is a film about the village and then you go outside and they’ve reconstructed some of the huts.







I then drove to the Post Office to mail a card and returned to my room. Soon afterwards Kathy arrived so we chatted for about an hour.

After our ablutions, we met up again for an early dinner at 5.30pm. It’s kind of a tradition with us that we have Chinese before Kasim’s gigs so we drove to a nearby one which turned out to be a buffet (the first time I’ve been to one of those). I really love Orange Chicken, especially as it’s not a dish that we have in the UK, and thankfully they had that. It was a lovely meal and my fortune cookie told me that my “fastidious nature will soon start having more fun” – I can’t wait for that!

We then drove to the venue. As it was so busy in Reisterstown on Friday (which I didn’t expect) we wanted to get there early to ensure we got a good spot. However on the way there I started getting really bad stomach cramps so I dropped Kathy off at the venue and drove back to my hotel where I was quite badly ill for about half an hour. Thankfully the hotel was only about 8 miles from the venue so I had time to drive back and still arrive about 15 minutes before Kasim came on stage.

Unfortunately the gig wasn’t as well attended as I had hoped (I thought maybe 40 people but Kathy said over 50) and Kathy had opted for a table right at the front that we certainly would not have sat if I’d been with her when we arrived! However, we did have a good view (except I had to turn my head slightly to see Mark) and we shared the table with a lovely lady called Tina who last saw Kasim at a big Utopia arena gig in Dayton in 1978.

It was a good gig (my full review is at http://www.KasimInfo.co.uk/2009/10/14.html ) but I didn’t think it was as good as Reisterstown as the atmosphere wasn’t as great and Kasim had to work hard to get a response from the audience. I thought Kasim’s voice was better tonight in Reisterstown but he didn’t. I did get a kind of mention on stage again tonight (in Reisterstown Kasim said that TOST was for me) as someone said that they had come the furthest for this gig as they had from Cincinnati but Kasim said that someone had come a lot further but that he wouldn’t point her out as she’ll be embarrassed! Afterwards Kathy wanted to stay for a while but in retrospect, due to a couple of separate things that I won’t post here, I really wish we hadn’t as they spoilt the evening for me.

We got back to our hotel by midnight and I got to bed at about 1.30am.