With only 12 hours to go until we all converged to load the van, things were still looking pretty good. Marx managed to get all his projects done, and still avoid a breakdown. And we were all bracing ourselves for some overtime duty to make up for the missing GM. Then the call came. Don, one of our core people, scheduled to run over 25 hours of events, had just suffered a devastating loss. His mother, who had been in the hospital, had just died. He would, of course, not be making the trip to Columbus.
Though the loss of Keeper X was a crippling blow, most of the team were fairly optimistic about the future of the show. We planned on hitting the recruitment drive extra hard to fill in as many of the holes as we could. Whatever we couldn't fill would have to be canceled. There was just nothing else that could be done. The loading went smoothly and we hit the road to Columbus no more than an hour and a half behind schedule. Spirits were as high as they could be, given the news of Don's loss (and the loss of Don). Everyone has heard the old adage, "bad dress rehearsal, good opening night", and that adage usually holds true for the Rogue team. Things often fall apart backstage, but when the curtain goes up, it's solid gold. As yet, only the crew from Canton even knew of the tragedy that had befallen the team. Dustin, Rod, Justine, and Chad were still blissfully unaware that we would likely have to cancel some of our events due to the manpower loss. Jeff and Mike seemed confident that we had suffered our requisite pre-show disaster and that it would be smooth sailing from here. But Marx, being the eternal pessimist, kept waiting for more lightning to strike. It would.
