RUSH drummer Neil Peart has updated the News, Weather And Sports page on his website with a blog titled The Frying Pan And The Freezer. In this latest installment he discusses his motorcycle travels on the last leg of the 2011 Time Machine Tour. An excerpt follows:

"Even people who don’t like our band have to appreciate our audiences. They simply enjoy themselves so much that it’s contagious! Some sing along with every word; some play air drums or guitar; most just smile and rock along with us. It’s a wonderful thing to witness, especially from my vantage point.

Not that it makes my job any easier—quite the opposite. I feel I have to live up to that level of devotion, so I drive myself all the harder. The touring stories I write during the breaks tend to have much more to say about the journeys than the shows, because the basic “story” of the show is pretty much the same: soundcheck at 5:00, warmup thirty minutes before showtime, then go up there and try my best to reach my inner standard of “acceptable” (never higher than “good”)—and either succeed or don’t. That’s the only variation to what is essentially the same story, eighty-one times.

Thousands of people stand in front of the three of us when we’re onstage—but a lot of important people stand behind us, too, a network that’s almost immeasurable. And . . . let’s not forget the ones who stand behind us at home.

That can be the loneliest and least-appreciated place of all—at least by outsiders. After I was home for a day off after the Phoenix show, then had to leave the next afternoon for a show in San Diego, little Olivia, almost two now, woke up from her nap and went running down the hall toward my office, saying, “Go see Daddy!” When she was told, “Daddy’s gone to work again,” she burst into tears. Hearing about that made me feel very bad. As I’ve written before, I can stand missing her, but I can’t stand her missing me.

However, on the “happy side” of that equation, an audience of more than 13,000 people attended the final show of our Time Machine Tour, on July 2, 2011. Most of them had traveled a considerable distance—The Gorge is a long way from anywhere (the nearest town, humorously, is George, Washington). But we too had a traveled a long way to get to that stage. And despite how many shows we had played, our weariness, and our sheer age, we managed to pull off a magic show that night.

We could feel it in our ensemble playing, tight and energetic, but these days an exceptional night is often apparent in our improvised sections—Geddy on his bass in the outro of 'Leave That Thing Alone', Alex in the frenetic solo section of 'Working Man', and for me, the first half of my solo. When the three of us are at the top of our individual games, we are able to elevate the whole to a sublime synergy.

At the end of the show, as we bowed and waved and Geddy thanked the audience for being so great, at that show and so many others, I heard him drop the f-bomb—for the first time in history. After saying, “It has been great,” he repeated that phrase and added that emphatic modifier. It was definitely a case of “when no other word would do”—to express how successful the tour had been, how much it meant to us, and how much we appreciated the people who had made it great.

In that moment, the three of us knew that at last we would be stepping away from the “frying pan” of live performance (the crucible) for a while, and would have some time off to chill: “the freezer.”

And what a great way to mark that transition.

Sometimes things are so perfectly right that you can’t help but get carried away in the moment . . . "

Read more here.