The trip to Delaware was slated to be around a 6 hour drive. I had spent a considerable amount of time trying to pack as lightly and efficiently as possible, trying to decide if I should bring one or two pairs of pants. I knew that we would have significantly less space this tour (if you’ve read our previous blog, we had a trailer last time) and every inch would be precious in the van. I decided to bring two pairs of pants, just in case.
As I had expected, the guys were a little late getting to my house, but after some artful packing (but not pretty) we were off. The drive down was relatively uneventful (fortunately) and we arrived at the venue; the Mojo 13. The doorway was a giant clown’s mouth (with red light bulbs for eyes) and the venue had the theme of a circus freakshow; but I mean that in the nicest possible way. Everyone there was really great; even though there was a guillotine in the corner.. I guess that’s the sentence for bad bands. We had to kill some time before we could load any gear in so we drove to the local super market and walked around aimlessly for a while. Patrick had to buy some food (since he hadn’t before we left) and Travis was about ready to kill him for eating all of his pop-tarts and bread (although; Pat has continued to eat Travis’ pop-tarts and bread despite having bought some rations). We then ate in the van; a delicious display of bagels with peanut butter and raisins and some dried fruit. After our feast, we headed back to the Mojo where we still had about an hour to kill. Unfortunately, being gone for two weeks meant that I was missing a week of classes at school, so I had to rearrange the schedule to have my midterms while I was away. That however required me creating the tests. Because I had been so sick over the weekend there was no time for me to do an adequate job of preparing them, but fortunately for me, the hour or so time we had hanging in the Mojo gave me time to work on them. You’ll see me on the Mojo Tour Video slaving away at the computer preparing them. The show went alright; even though we had played a fair amount before leaving for the tour, I felt a little rusty, mostly due to still being fairly sick. After the show, we were heading to Virginia to stay with my friend Ken. Pat lost his cell phone and we looked around for it for a while and he made arrangements with the bartender Trish and the host of the open mic Butch to either mail it or potentially meet up in Austin, where Butch would be during SXSW.
The drive to Virginia was long and tiring, taking about 3 hours. Ken and his folks were amazingly hospitable, having 2 actual beads for us to sleep in and letting us come in at 3 in the morning.