Early in the morning... but not too
early, we were stirred to life to discover the complimentary coffee and
muffins in the lobby of our nice north side Chicago hotel. Many of us had
a good case of the fugahwees while downing that robust java brewed from
the dregs of Lake Michigan, "this ain't no artesian water mom",
it's good old lake water and the people here are quite proud of that fact!
Now where fug are we? 
Another bus came by and we got on,
that's when it all began this morning. There was cowboy Bob at the wheel,
the bus to the commercial bus business where the Prankster Bus was waiting...
to be cleaned and re-rigged for the GRANDFURTHUR Tour. 
The Bus was all dirty from the Low Boy trip across America
and needed to be rewired for sound and video, much work needed to be done
today. The Pranksters were like worker bees all day long, in and out of
the Bus, underneath and on top of it pulling wire, taping loose panels,
screwing loose stuff back together, pasting new fabric on where some had
blown off on the trip from Oregon. 
For
seven or so hours, the activity around the Bus was amazing. By six pm,
the Bus was ready for a test run... as Babbs reverberated over the speakers...
"we are loose in Chicago".
The art process is what's it's all about. There are several boxes of art debris
on board in case someone gets inspired. Kesey is always suggesting to try
this and teaching you how to do that. We had a hell of a time getting the
plane geometry down for the reflective green triangle fabric panels. Cutting
the material was really challenging, the exact shape varied a prankster
little. The fabric triangles were glued onto the flap on each side at the
top of the Bus. A relatively minor fix, but a really important one.
Emergency...
where is Babbs with the Crazzzzzzzy Gllllllue! Kesey's upper
left incisor fell out of his face. Folks, don't try this at home without
consulting Dr. Bernie Bildman first. Babbs, the No Doctor, didn't even
have to wait for the anesthetic to kick in before
he had the patient on the floor
in the back of the Bus glueing the incisor back in perfectly lined up so
the bite is now much bigger than the growl.
The fine folks from WXRT, whoever they were, had not only 50,000 watts and stacks of wax. They had a Quicktime VR camera and whipped out the Quicktime VR you can see here.. The purple metallic 10 degree variable tripod was fascinating. I had a hell of a time keeping a straight face during our the Virtual Reality photo shoot.In the background is George wearing the ever stylish and highly effective diffraction grating glasses, applied Prankster physics.
