Rodger and I with Brian from last seasons "Biggest Looser"
Debris in the street outside of the hotel
The Westin Hotel
Closed off downtown streets
This past weekend I was in Atlanta with Rodger for the APCA National Conference. Rodger and I were at the conference to perform in the Speaker's Showcase. The Conference is four days of various performers showcasing there talents to a crowd of college students and several branches of the United States Military. The students and service units are there to book performers to come to their campuses or installations.
Rodger and I were selected to perform and MC the speakers showcase. We literally pulled our hair out for trying to figure out how to condense our speech/show into 15 minutes! We didn't know if we should just give a sample of what we do or condense the everything into 15 minutes. We decided to go with option number one.
The first night of the conference was Friday. We didn't have to speak until Friday, so Rodger and I networked with some other performers and shook people's hands in our agency's booth. Our friend Matt offered to give us a ride back to our hotel. While walking to his car, we noticed a storm approaching. While leaving the garage, Matt and I talked about all the lightning and strange looks of the sky. This was about 9:30 PM.
Rodger and I went to the Renaissance Hotel at the Atlanta International airport for dinner. When we arrived we saw reports on the television of storm damage at the Georgia Dome. Soon after that, a really bad thunder storm arrived at the airport. The rain, thunder and lightning was amazing. One bolt of lightning hit the airport and soon after, the entire airport went black. The busiest airport in the world was completely black! No runway lights, nothing. The hotel and restaurant we were in shook several times. The tvs went out too. About 10 minutes later, the airport came back online and the tvs came back on. Thats when we saw the television reports of the tornado that hit downtown Atlanta. One block away from the garage we walked to. One block away from the conference hotel. We spent the rest of the night watching the news reports, making phone calls to other performers and our agent, and practicing for our showcase.....just in case we still performed.
We woke up the next morning to find out parts of downtown were closed but things at the conference were still a go. Half of the conference hotel was without power when we arrived. I took some pictures of the damage downtown and heard stories from students who were downtown when the storm hit. We missed the storm by 10 MINUTES! Rodger and I taught some early morning workshops and got ready for our sound check and performance.
During our practice we tried option number one. That didn't go so well. One of the other speakers (Matt) who is a co-worker and friend told us, " I don't get it!" That was great input on his part. So, Rodger and I scrapped our plan and went with plan number two. We had two hours to redo our slides and walk through things. There is nice clock on stage to let you if you go over on time and if you go too long they will cut your microphones, so the pressure is definitely on.
Everything turned out great and we really enjoyed ourselves on stage. The students and service people told us they really enjoyed our message. We were really excited about several of the speakers and other performers telling us "Wow" and "You two were great!" We also like the fact that we finished at exactly 15 minutes! We have to thank Matt for being a very honest friend and helping us with our showcase.
Here are a few shots of downtown Atlanta, the debris in the streets and our performance.
