I woke up and most everyone else was already up. Brendan got to take a shower, and I was jealous, because we were all figuring out what we were doing and thinking about heading out. I get my stuff together and check my phone, and Danny had tried to call me and she texted me saying that her granddad had died, and left me a voicemail telling me that she wanted to talk. A bit later she tries to call again but I was loading the van up so I texted her saying that I would call her soon. Once the van was loaded, I called her back and she was a little ticked off that I hadn’t been answering my phone, because her grandpa dying was a big deal and she wanted to talk to me. This is valid, and I said I was sorry. Ryan stays in and sleeps, and we go out with the lady to get some more Tex-Mex food at this little diner place that she says is really good. We take her car and we go in and I order an enchilada plate, and then go outside to talk to Danny some more while the food gets ready. I talk to her for a long time, and I get back inside and everyone is pretty much done eating. I eat real fast, but it’s OK because it wasn’t that great anyways. The place had homemade chips that were delicious though.
We go back to the lady’s place, and grab Ryan and start our epic drive to Austin, which is a 10 hour drive. We don’t have a show to play tonight, so today is pretty much a “drive day.” I listen to some podcasts and keep myself pretty entertained. We drove on the I-10 and it was sand and dry brush. We stopped at a gas station a few times. One of them had this little food place inside, and it was the first time that I heard a noticeable southern accent. They also sold gizzards. Ya know, like, to eat. Yum. We also stopped for some food at a KFC/Taco Bell and it was the first time that we got stares and people sort of gave us a “you’re not from around here, are you?” vibe. The guy at the counter asked where we were from almost immediately.
The one interesting thing that did happen was we got stopped at a border check point. John was driving, so of course they flagged us down and questioned us. Then they had us pull over to the side of the road and told us to all get out of the van and keep our hands out of our pockets. They had us stand 100 feet away from the van, and line up in a line while they search the entire van with a contraband sniffing dog. While we were in a line, we were surrounded on all sides by a bunch of border patrol agents. I’m always nervous around these types, because a few years ago I flew on an airplane and they checked my bag and found nothing, but after I landed after the flight, I looked through my bag and found a few hundred firecrackers that they luckly skipped over. Basically, I forget things in my backpack all the time because it has a million compartments, and I really don’t know what is in there. The dog finds nothing in the van, of course, so they let us on our way. Later that night I looked through my bag and found an empty package of firecrackers. Those dogs can’t smell shit; that dog was literally directly on top of my bag.
We listened to the Lonely Island, and then Mitch Hedberg, and then Daniel Tosh in the van. John is from Columbia, so it was kind of funny noticing that he didn’t really understand the Mitch Hedberg jokes. We drove into some city about an hour out of Austin, and pulled into a Pilot gas station. It was freezing temperatures outside, and there was talk about John maybe buying a motel room for all of us, but I was more along the opinion that we should save our money and the wusses in the band should man up. Freezing really isn’t that cold; we all have sleeping bags and sweatshirts. We decide to stay in the van, which I approve of. I put my cooler outside and opened it up so that the contents would freeze. I put on a thermal long sleeve, a shirt, my sweatshirt, and my jacket on, as well as a beanie. I was warm, it was fine, and I slept well.
This entry is kind of short, aka acceptable in length, so I guess this is a good time to mention some of the stuff I forgot about or are just constant things that don’t really have a place in the timeline.
The van – The van is slowly committing seppuku. Peter and Ryan talk about it all the time, and they aren’t sure if we should sell it and get a new one, or pour money into it and get it fixed, or what. They keep talking about a “cam shaft” or something. I’m not sure either of them really know what they’re talking about, but I’m not sure of the converse of that either.
The tour journals – It seems that I’ve started a trend and Peter and Brendan now have a notebook each and are writing in it daily. Ryan thinks it’s silly, and I even think that it’s kinda silly, but we all do it anyways. My entries are about 5 times longer than theirs, I think, because I’m longwinded and enjoy detail.
Peter got hit on – I don’t know how I forgot about this. At the El Paso show, after our set, this girl comes up to us. She’s maybe a few years older than us, and I think she was half black or something; it was hard to see in the dark. Anyways, she approaches Peter and I and tells us what a good job we did and all that. She then says “I just love white boys” and “I didn’t like the band before you guys, but as soon as I saw y’all setting up, I knew y’all was going to be good.” She pinches Peter on the cheek. She leaves, but comes back a few minutes later and hands Peter a card with her number on it, written in black eyeliner. Peter has a girlfriend, but she doesn’t really come up much (I didn’t even know he had a girlfriend until months into being in the band) and Ryan and I wonder if she’s really in the picture or not. We totally want Peter to call her, because it would be hilarious. He doesn’t, of course.
We are going broke – This tour, so far, has been nothing but bad shows. Low payout at the door, and long drives between states is running us into the ground. We’re not really sure what we’re going to do about it just yet, but at the rate we’re going, we’re going to be paying out of our own pockets in order to get gas money. We’re out of the south west, where you’re just asking for a bad show, so hopefully things will start catching up. We profited on our last tour, so it’s not like it’s impossible.
Caster Holocaust – Throughout this tour, we’ve lost 1 wheel on Ryan’s cab, 1 wheel on Peter’s cab, and there’s one wheel on the bass cab that broke and is now literally half a wheel. This makes loading in and out totally blow. Especially the big bass cab. I’ve said that we should call this tour “Caster Holocaust,” and Ryan and Peter thought that it was funny. We really need to get new casters, but putting them on the cabs isn’t easy. I think you have to full dismantle the bass cab to do that, so fuck it.
I registered theatomage.com – In El Paso I got an email saying that someone had freed up “theatomage.com”, so I jumped on it and got it. Awesome.
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