What does it take to organize a world-class magic tour for U.S. troops stationed overseas? In the third article in this series, magician Jason Michaels pulls back the curtain on the travel challenges that are involved in bringing a top-tier magic show to military audiences across the Middle East. From making sure everyone stays hydrated to losing a performer’s show bag on the first day of a three-week long tour, this is a raw, inspiring look at the magicians who choose to serve those who serve.
In article #1 I shared my personal reasons for performing magic shows for deployed members of the military. You can read that article by clicking here.
In article #2 I discussed my selection criteria when selecting magicians to join the Operation Magic All Stars team and travel overseas to entertain the men, women and families of the armed forces. You can read that article by clicking here.
This photo of luggage was taken in Djibouti, Africa on my first tour with Armed Forces Entertainment. The one thing not photographed is Stephen Bargatze’s show bag - which had all of his show props in it! That bag was lost on the flight from America to Djibouti and Stephen didn’t see that bag again until almost four months later! That is a tough start to a tour.
ARTICLE #3 - Travel, in general, is both exciting and exhausting. However, when you are taking a magic show overseas then travel takes on a whole other level of stressful.
For instance, what if an important prop (or an entire show!) never makes it to the first destination because it is in a piece of luggage that gets lost during an overseas flight? That has happened more than once on these tours.
Or, what if one of the flights is delayed and a team member doesn’t make it to the start of the tour? That, too, has happened!
Or, God forbid, what if security in another country’s airport confiscates an important piece of equipment that an airport in the U.S.A. didn’t have a problem with? Yep…happened.
The simple truth about travel is that anything can happen. When traveling, I expect everything to go to plan, but I make sure to keep a flexible mindset in case we run into any unforeseen hiccups.
SO LET’S GET INTO IT!
Having toured magic shows to military bases overseas for about a decade now, I always tell my fellow entertainers to pack as much of their show as possible in their backpacks and/or carry-on bags. That simple rule of thumb has helped keep my stress level low and made sure that we were able to do a great show under sometimes trying circumstances.
(Our goal has always been to do a great show and never let anyone know how difficult it may have been to pull off!)
My logic is that we can always purchase clothing when we get to our destination, but it may be difficult to replace a one-of-a-kind magic prop that is necessary to pull off that amazing closing trick that I had planned.
You never want to see this when you open the bathroom stall door!
The next time you see Stephen Bargatze (Nate’s Dad), just ask him how he dealt with losing his show case (with the majority of his show props in it) on our very first stop into Djibouti, Africa on the first tour that he and I did together!
If you haven’t traveled overseas, you may wonder what airports are like in places like Djibouti or Doha or Abu Dhabi. The majority of airports are very modern and have everything that an airport in the States has. Honestly, some of these airports are so much bigger and nicer than the ones we have in the States that it is embarrassing.
Oh, don’t get me wrong, I’ve ended up in open air airports, in the 100 degree heat, with feral cats running around our luggage, getting bitten by flies, while I wondered where my next meal was coming from. That is definitely a thing. For the most part though, the majority of airports are perfectly fine.
When we arrive in each of our destination cities we are picked up by a contact person who Armed Forces Entertainment has coordinated with ahead of time and taken to our lodging.
The lodging where we stay is dependent on multiple factors. The simple answer is that sometimes we stay on the bases where we are performing and other times we stay in hotels near the bases where we are performing. Every scenario is different.
Christian and I pose outside our lodging at Camp Taji in Iraq. Notice what it’s called in the upper left corner, the Taj Mahal - ha!
When we stay on base our lodging can also vary. Many times we are given our own rooms that may or may not have private bathrooms. However, based on conditions on the base we also may stay in a multi-person room, or in a tent, or in a shipping container that has been retrofitted as a living space, where several of us are bunking down together and the latrine is a hundred yards away from us in a dedicated latrine building. Again, I tell you that the name of the game is to be as “go with the flow” as possible – and no, that’s not a “pee” joke!
When we stay in a hotel that is not on base, that basically means that Armed Forces Entertainment and the military believe that the city where we are staying is pretty safe. It’s important to note, that while I occasionally find myself in “hot spots” neither AFE, nor the Department of Defense, want me or my team to be in any immediate danger – and they definitely don’t want us to get hurt.
These hotels that we stay in are typically in major metropolitan areas where it is easy to get food and to get around. I’ve taken taxis, buses, and even rickshaws to get around when I had extra time in the area and my team and I were not performing shows.
(For reference, the above photos show Christian Painter knocked out in a tent somewhere in Africa, Ben Young checking on me while I was in my “room” in the same tent, and then me having a Vesper martini at the hotel in Spain where Ian Fleming wrote the first James Bond novel, Casino Royale. The below pictures show Stephen getting out of a very interesting little motorized buggy that we took to get dinner after a show. If you are wondering, I got the Pizza Special Gravy!)
One of the struggles of travel comes with the fact that you don’t always know when you are going to eat. Let me explain…when shows run late and you have an early morning flight, there have been occasions when my team and I might not have options for food at a convenient time. I always tell my team to pack snacks for those occasions when we can’t find a hot meal. Having something to eat is better than going without – I assure you.
On the flip side of that, sometimes we eat meals just a few hours apart from each other because our schedules dictate it. It isn’t that we want to eat, we just feel like we have to because we don’t know when our next meal will be.
I do want to point out that I’ve never gone hungry at all on a military base. If anything, they overfeed us. We take trips to the dining facility at least three times a day, if not more, and the food is, generally, very good.
When travelling in the Middle East, it is stressed to us time and time again to drink lots of water. Hydrate, they say. And they say it a lot. Case in point, on my most recent tour, we were told the story of a politician who had visited the base we were on just a few short weeks earlier and had gotten dehydrated and had collapsed. Hydrate indeed!
My favorite memory was going to the latrine on a base and seeing a “pee chart” on the wall in front of the urinal. It showed you what color your urine was supposed to be when you are hydrated and what color(s) it would be when you are dehydrated. (I wish I had a photo of that!)
SO. MUCH. BETTER!
Speaking of latrines and bathing…again, it depends on a multiple of factors. The majority of the time you have access to a private bathroom and shower facility. Occasionally, you have to go to a building that is dedicated with toilets, sinks, and showers. Sometimes, you end up using port-a-potties to relieve yourself of waste. The toughest times are when you have to go to a special building to bathe, etc. and you have to walk a hundred yards or more through the desert in the middle of the night to do so. (But hey, these are the experiences that make tours like these the adventures that they are!)
Just for the record, the worst time I ever had was when I was sick with E.coli and I had to walk through the desert to the latrine building any time my stomach started gurgling. Brutal, I tell you – brutal! It wasn’t pretty.
Speaking of that, getting sick is about the worst thing you can imagine on one of these tours. Besides hydrate, the single best piece of advice I can offer is to wash your hands frequently, and make sure you know if the water is safe to drink or if you should only ingest bottled water.
At the beginning and end of each tour, exhaustion can strike because you have just travelled a long way and you probably are dealing with getting your sleep adjusted to a new time zone. For that reason, I urge my teammates to take it easy and get as much rest as their body tells them they need. It can take several days, easily, before your system gets acclimated to a new time zone and exhaustion can try your patience and your health.
My last tip when traveling, is to have several credit cards that will work internationally. You don’t have to do “travel notifications” for most credit cards nowadays, but do it if you can. It can be frustrating paying, or attempting to pay, for things when your credit cards are being declined because the credit card company doesn’t know that you are going to be in Riyadh, or Kuwait or…you get the picture. By having several cards, hopefully, it won’t be too big of a deal if one of your cards goes down for the count. (Or if one gets compromised, like I said above - it happens!)
In the next article in this series, I am going to discuss what happens on show day – meeting the commander, doing unit visits, doing the show, and much more.
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