Sorry Rochester, Hello Austin

I missed my first talk last night. Equipment trouble led the pilot on my already-delayed flight to Rochester to abort take-off (quite exciting) return to gate, and then order some repairs. Seven hours waiting at the airport, and no flight materialized to Rochester. Yes, I could have driven or trained in that amount of time.

But it meant canceling a 400-person event at Nazareth College, and for that I’m really sorry. I’ll get there in the fall, I promise.

Today I’m flying alternate planes to Austin, for my KRLU talk.

(FYI: I’m always glad to buy people tickets for my gigs, or to get them on guest lists when I can. But it’s a whole lot easier to do this if you let me know ahead of time! Email requests for tickets on the morning of the event – especially when I’ll be flying all day – are really hard to make happen. I’m buying seats (I”m assuming it’s not sold out) for everyone who emailed by 9:30am EST today. But I’m not going to have time to check email between now and the event, so that’s about as good as I can do. I am sorry this particular event costs so much – I’ve done a bunch of talks in the past in Austin for free – but it’s a fundraiser for PBS, and that is a worthy cause.)

I’ll try to make tonight worth it, though. Here’s an interview I did with the Austiner about it. I’m thinking of bagging my prepared speech, and instead inviting the audience to come up with five topics they’d like addressed. I wouldn’t want it to come off as a cop-out – it’s actually a lot harder to think on one’s feet like that. But it’d be an opportunity for people to witness me actually process live, rather than just downloading something I’ve thought of.

Plus, it would guarantee the stuff I talk about is relevant to at least someone there.

I’ll decide on the plane.