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State’s summer fires filled the Columbia River Gorge and the
venue itself. Jason Mraz was the headliner. After several years
of working for Latitude 45 Catering, dining room and kitchen
locations still amaze and surprise me. This one was on a cliff.
Hours earlier both the kitchen and dining room were
barreling along I-90 in flight cases loaded inside one of the
semi-trucks that carry concert paraphernalia all night from
one venue to another. Catering equipment was packed tightly
along with wardrobe, band equipment, lighting, sound, and
everything else needed to put on a concert. This morning the
trucks and tour buses pulled in and parked backstage at The
Gorge in eastern Washington. The Latitude 45 crew climbed
off one of the buses and greeted us with handshakes, grins and
hugs. My son, Zach is usually on the road with one of the
catering crews, but he’d just finished his last tour for the year.
Today, because this was close enough to home, we were the
local help. Live Nation, the production company, also had two
or three guys there to help us for the day. The Gorge is a
unique situation for catering because it’s in the middle of
nowhere. Zach rented a refrigerator truck and we’d done a big
shop in Seattle. After the shop, Zach, his cousin Elijah, and I
had driven as far as Ellensburg the night before. Zach’s job for