Saskatoon, Alberta

Down to the very well equipped hotel gym this morning for the usual on some very unusual machines. The resistance is regulated not by adding or subtracting weights, but by air compression. Every machine is hooked up to a main compressor and with the use of a button or foot pedal you control the amount of air that is fed into the thing, the more air the higher the resistance and vice versa. It's a little tricky to control very precisely but got the job done all the same.

Saskatoon, another Canadian city that I'd never been to before and sadly will see nothing more of it than the ride from the airport to the venue. A city of a quarter million people and looks flat and wide with the big sky beaming overhead. I kept recalling a song titled Girl In Saskatoon but couldn't remember who it was by. I asked all round the band and no-one had heard of it. I got thinking maybe I'd made the whole thing up. As soon as I got to the venue I took out my laptop and Googled it. Turns out it was on a Johnny Cash album in 1961, written by him and Johnny Horton. Cash sang it live in a concert given here in Saskatoon in 1961 to the local beauty queen who was murdered about six months later. To this day the murder is still unsolved and being re-opened for the third time.

Tonight's show was held in the Sid Buckwold Theatre to a capacity crowd of 1,900. We played a really good show last night I thought and the audience was VERY warm and responsive.

A runner back to Edmonton with some tasty Thai food on the plane. A couple of night-caps with Guy and Dan then off to bed.

So long,

Richard