While Tim and Chad were at my hotel room and we were recording, I felt a real buzz from our conversation. It was a blast sitting around with two like-minded Mac guys and exchanging ideas. Once everything was packed up and they had left, the flight from DC, all the running around squaring things up with the Apple Store, and making sure the equipment was going to work like we thought it would finally caught up with me. I fell asleep pretty quickly and even though I wasn’t feeling my best, managed to sleep straight through to the morning. Normally while on travel (which I have done a lot of), I find it difficult to sleep in a strange place. Not so on my first night in Grand Rapids.
When I got up the next morning, it took me awhile to realize that my voice was not in the best of shape. Being alone and having no history of talking to myself (except in written asides’¦um’¦like this one), I had no reason to speak until I went downstairs to the hotel lobby for breakfast. When I asked the attendant about some particular item that was laid out, it took me a moment to actually say it aloud and I had to repeat it as she did not understand me the first time. I made sure I had plenty to drink before going back up to the room. Tim called sometime around 10:30 AM and he noticed immediately that I wasn’t exactly firing on all cylinders. When he showed up about an hour later, the first stop was over at Target to get some OTC cold medicines and throat lozenges.
After dosing myself up, we were off to find one last piece of gear that we were sure to need. A microphone stand tall enough for us to use at the Apple Store. Tim didn’t know Grand Rapids that well and as a first time visitor, I was certainly clueless as to where to get one. We both of course realized that we needed to go to a music store and after a couple of false leads found one relatively close. While Tim scoped out microphone stands and a pop filter, I spent the time looking at guitars that I could neither afford or play.
With purchases in hand (or actually in the trunk of Tim’s car) we set off for the Woodland Mall where the Apple Store is located. Our time before the podcast was beginning to run short, but we began to think about getting something to eat beforehand. Neither one of us were really hungry, being somewhat nervous about how the show was going to turn out or really what we were going to do while we were there, so we decided to skip it. We parked and went inside to find Lori Boss, the manager of the Apple Store, waiting patiently for our arrival. She was kind enough to lend us a cart to bring in all the goodies we were giving away which made things much easier for us.
As we set-up, we got lots of curious stares from people wondering just what the heck we were doing. We put the table in place and all the shwag we were giving away grew taller and taller, barely leaving enough room for Tim’s MacBook Pro and my Alesis mixer. We put the microphone stand together and managed to put both pop filters in place. Next I walked around the store giving out the tickets that we would later draw for the give-aways. At just a little after 3PM, Tim started us recording with, ‘Recorded live, September 23rd, from the Apple Store in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I’m Tim Robertson and this is our 100th podcast!’ We were off to the races!
I won’t go into all the details of the podcast itself, you’re probably heard it by now plus Tim and Chad’s round-up with the MyMac podcast 101. I managed to get through it without losing my voice and lots of people got cool stuff even if they had no idea who we were or what we were doing there.
Rick Stringer from the Variant Frequencies Podcast (http://web.mac.com/rstringer/iWeb/VariantFrequencies/Podcast/Podcast.html) was there taking lots of pictures which was great because Tim and I were way too busy to even think about it. It didn’t make it to the podcast, but one of the coolest things that happened was that the winner of the Microsoft Office 2004 prize was a guy who was a first time buyer of a Mac and had just purchased a Mac Pro. The hour just flew by and before I knew it, it was time to sign off and pack up. I wasn’t keeping track of the time and was surprised when Tim called me over to wrap things up. We said our goodbyes and thanks to all the great people from the Grand Rapids, Michigan Apple Store and set off to the Grand Rapids Brewery for some after show food and fun. Rick and his two kids (they of course were completely bored as I would have been at the same age), Tim, one of the listeners of the podcast (who’s name escapes me, sorry. He was a great guy and he picked up the tab for the whole she-bang!), and myself. I found that I had a lot in common with Rick as we both are active in Martial Arts as well as podcasters. All in all, it was great to just sit down and relax knowing that it was all over. Tim and I had talked about setting up one more time and adding a bit of closure for the weekend, but I think we were both pretty exhausted at that point and he soon headed back home to Battle Creek.
I of course had one more night to spend and a flight to DC, but that was all pretty much typical. No need to go into it. I would like to say that I had a great time, and I hope to be able to come back for one of the future Apple Store podcasts that will come up whenever they give us the nod. My thanks to Tim and Chad for their wonderful hospitality, making me feel welcome and for putting me at ease. The weekend and podcast could not have gone better.
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