Hey, hey, hey friends!
It’s currently 10am on the nose on what I think is Wednesday. This has been my first opportunity to write something. I just gave up the drivers seat to Matt after 4 ½ hours of driving through Virginia, Maryland and West Virginia. We are currently driving through West Virginia and it’s windy as hell! It is also quite cold, 33 degrees to be exact, a far cry from the 70 degrees we experienced yesterday in DC.
(3/3) As I look back on Monday it was a hectic morning. I got up around 8am and got myself clean and ready to face the long day ahead. Made some coffee, said my goodbyes to my roommates and headed to the grocery store to visit the Coinstar machine. I had 2 big zip lock bags full of coins from all of the change I’d saved over about 3 years time at my place of Employment. I went to redeem the coins for cash thinking it would be sweet to have some toll cash handy. It ended up being $35 worth. Very cool. As I walked back from the store, some random dude stopped me and told me he liked my moustache. Sorta flattering, yet creepy…
Patrick arrived at 10 something and we loaded up mine and Mike’s gear into the van, then we picked up Mike. In heading to Matt’s, Patrick in an attempt to “avoid a few lights” took a round about way to J.P., which really didn’t save any time or avoid any real traffic. We arrived at Matt’s and began to start the ever evolving process of trying to load the van so everything fits without the fear of having something impaling one of us if we stop short. We managed.
It was a fairly long journey to Delaware. We did manage to avoid any major traffic issues, which was super sweet! We arrived at Mojo 13 really early, we had about 3 hours to kill before anyone would be showing up to set up. We went to the local grocery store down the street so Patrick could grab a few things, and then we sat in the parking lot and made PB&J sandwiches for dinner. I fucking hate PB&J. I started eating them the week prior to leaving so that I could get accustomed to the taste again, as they are one of my least favorite things in the world to eat. Why am I eating them if I hate them you ask? Quite simply, they just make economical sense when traveling on a budget.
After our romantic parking lot dinner we headed back to the venue. We hung out inside and tried to relax a bit. I did some light reading while Matt did some work. Patrick just seemed to walk around aimlessly for awhile, and I’m not sure what Mike was doing though he was sitting right next to me… At one point Mike and I played some old school Gauntlet.
The show began with some singer-songwriters. We hit the stage around 10:30 and did some rocking out. I think people dug us. We were able to sell some merch, which is awesome because it helps us get from city to city. We packed up fairly quickly as we were staying in VA (about 40 minutes outside of DC), so we had about a 2 ½ hour drive ahead of us. I think we ended up at our destination (Matt’s friend Ken’s house) at about 2:30am. We crashed hard.
(3/4) I got up at about 8am the next morning and got clean and ready for the day. I kinda just sat around and watched a tv show about wolves and The Price is Right for awhile while everyone slept.
We eventually got our collective shit together and headed out to D.C. to check out some of the sites. We ended up at the Air and Space museum. It was cool. We went to the other air and space museum (the hangar) on our ’06 tour. As we were leaving the museum, we got caught up in a rainstorm. Good times. We drove around for awhile looking for a parking spot so we could roam and find some food. We were absolutely unsuccessful in that venture. So, we ended up just going to the club and hung out there for the rest of the night.
We hung out with the downstairs bartender Anne, who was super friendly and gracious to us. We bonded while watching the old school American Gladiators on the bar tv. Nothing says fun like watching “Viper” and his headband wearing, mullet sporting ass kicking the shit out of some 150 pound deaf dude in Powerball… Mad fun yo.
The Red and the Black is a cool little venue unless you’re a drummer… They don’t have drum monitors and the stage is set up so that the drummer is in this little nook at the back of the stage. So, all of the amps and such are forward of the kit, so I get to hear none of what everyone else is doing. Pretty much you have to fly by the seat of your pants and hope that everyone else in the band is following you, and that you’re not totally fucking up. I think I did all right, or at least well enough where no one wanted to punch me in the dick at the end of the night. Rock On.
We narrowly avoided loading out during a downpour. As soon as we shut the doors on the van to leave to go back to Ken’s, the rain came down with a Vengeance! Shit was crazy! We got back to Ken’s at around 1am, which only gave me 3 ½ hours to sleep as we had to be out the door this morning by 5:30am.
(3/5) We all got up and out the door on time, which was key in traveling today. It’s basically a 9-10hour drive to Indianapolis, so we need to be hauling ass all day in order to make our appearances on time today. Today has been okay. I did get a nasty caffeine headache though as I was driving for 3 straight hours before there was ANYWHERE to stop for coffee. That sucked ass. I did however finally get a cup of joe and feel better. I now have to piss like a racehorse, which kinda sucks.
Things are going well so far, and I’m psyched to be back out on the road with these guys. I am ready for my hands to heal though (blisters), as that would make the trip much more enjoyable. Oh, and if you know anyone who can give a Back-i-otomy, that would be sweet. Mine and Matt’s backs are killing us. Oh well, gotta suck it up, right? Right.
Ok, I’m done being long winded. I hope everyone enjoys our blogs and our video footage, we’ll try to keep it interesting, but I make no promises. I’m ready to rock Indianapolis today! So ready in fact, I’m gonna rock that shit twice! Bring on Peyton Manning, I’ll fucking rock his FACE off! Ok peeps, I’m outta here. Viva The Motion Sick!
Travrad