…but I think…

This was Bate’s feeling enough for me to enjoy it.

So we were in the desert and were thoroughly excited to be away from the cold, until we got out of the van. It was freezing, absolutely freezing, in New Mexico on the 31st. I couldn’t believe it, I mean I knew it wouldn’t be like shorts weather or anything, but I didn’t expect to have to wear my winter coat in the desert.

We were however close enough to Mexico for this to happen, if I get my AT&T bill and find out I was charged this insane rate it will really ruin my day. I turned my phone off immediately after receiving this message, so hopefully I wont have any kind of crazy charges.

We got a room in Albuquerque (whose name I have yet to spell correctly without needing spell check) at the Holiday Inn Express and it was awesome. 2 queen sized beds and a pull out sofa bed meant everyone had a spot to sleep. A*Ross and I went swimming a little later that evening and I realized the next day that I left my Floorpunch shorts in the closet drying.

Win some, lose some.

There was a mall in the area, which is a favorite pass-time. I found this sweet Free Mason folding knife at an oriental gift shop… We actually saw various Masonic rings, watches, belt buckles, etc. in almost every gas station we went to for the rest of the tour.

We played a house show that night with the guys from Dead Hours. It was typical with what you would expect a house show to be on New Year’s eve, afterward A*Ross was speeding down the hill outside of the show house and was pulled over. Being the charming young man that he is, he was let off with a warning for going 43 in a 25mph zone.

PS: Check out the pictures from the set.

After the show we decided we needed to go to a casino and celebrate the new year with depravity, but first Andrew needed to get liquored up at McDonald’s.

Truly a man on a mission.

So we got to the casino with about 30 minutes to spare before midnight, so we got ourselves some party hats and blowers and were ready to welcome in the new year:

After this I lost $100… 2010!

We went back to the hotel and slept before the 7 hour drive to Tempe, AZ the next day.

When you’re in Arizona, in the middle of what you could only describe as the desert, you don’t except to see this:

sNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOw.

And here’s a good example of what one deals with when on the road for an extended period of time:

This can of Arizona lemon tea was a smaller version, which is why I put it next to the V8, but it cost $1.57. COME ONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN

We were in the van for the rest of the day, until:

Truly a high point in the entire trip. The show in Tempe was awesome as well:

So after that we drove over night to Fullerton, CA to stay with our friend Steve (of Creatures fame) and apparently eat lots of spaghetti. Along the way I was sleeping on the equipment in the back and all of the sudden was woken by “Oh… shit, shit!” and other various oral excrement, I slithered down to the mattress with the rest of the guys and pretended like it was comfortable.

I’m struggling and can’t remember exactly who was driving, I’m pretty sure James was in shotgun and possibly A*Ross (clearly a wanted man, in more ways than one) was driving. Turns out it was the US border patrol, they stopped us because we were zooming in a windowless cargo van with Indiana plates… makes sense. This was obviously not a very big deal since we are all legal citizens, until I remembered what I bought in Oklahoma…

This is the closest thing I could find to the $10 knife I bought in an Oklahoma gas station, clearly as a novelty. I put the thing in the glove box to keep it out of the way, and forgot about it… When the guys were looking for the rental agreement James opened up the glove box and I heard, “Holy cow…. THAT’S a big knife, let me see that thing”. I immediately started to imagine the officers having us unload the entire van in search of other weapons, but luckily the guy said, “This is just like the one I had in Iraq”, put it back in it’s sheath and sent us on our way.

And I went back to sleep.

We got to Steven’s house and crashed until we woke up a little later to the smell of spaghetti. We decided that we would go to Venice Beach that day and check out the weirdos/enjoy the weather, both of which were well fulfilled.

These were the basketball courts featured in American History X…”Bye-bye!”

These were the wonderful bathroom facilities provided by the Venice Beach municipality.

Yours truly.

That night we played Murietta, CA. Here’s how it went:

(That’s clip 2 of 5, Jame’s mic was broken for the song)

That night we had to drive north to the bay area because our show the next day was in Berkley, we decided that we wanted to spend a day in San Francisco so we got a hotel in the Oakland area and rested.

A*Ross, Patrick and I explored the area around our hotel called Jack London Square, we were delighted to find a little Farmer’s Market where Aaron picked up this $5 jug of apple cider (and I got a $.50 apple).

There was also a Barnes and Noble in the square so we checked that out, I found this:

If you need Christmas/Birthday ideas for me… this blog is ripe with them.

We headed out to Gilman Street in Berkley a little later:

We got to play with our friends In Disgust and hang out with them, we haven’t seen them for over a year but it was like we never skipped a beat. Love those guys, San Jose Supremacy.

We also got to see my favorite human on the planet currently:

My man Yong-Sung, make sure to check out his band Thousands Will Die .

He and Andrew hit it off over beer, no complaints.

We hung with the dudes for a bit and then went back to our hotel, the next day we were going to San Francisco for the first time ever so we wanted the full day at our disposal.

SEALS!!!!

Alcatraz.

I’m a tourist.

For the life of me I can’t remember the name of the instrument this guy was trying to play, I believe it was a hammer dulcimer. The guy was really good, I think, it’s hard to tell when you’ve never seen an instrument played before. This is what it sounded like:

It’s such an awesome mix of melody and percussion… we were all pretty entranced for a few.

It was James birthday a few days before, and his dad was kind enough to let James take us all out for a meal, so we went to a seafood place on Fisherman’s Wharf;

This made Andrew happy.

At this point we split up for a bit, Patrick and James wanted to see the Ghirardelli chocolate factory, and the rest of us went to check out Chinatown.

If you’re ever in a city with a Chinatown, go check it out, and if you’re ever in San Francisco… guess. It’s awesome, so many toys and plush toys and weird instruments and food… way better than the Chicago Chinatown.

So we left San Francisco and headed towards Fresno for the next show, last year this was easily the worst show of tour but we were pleasantly surprised this time around, there were more people at the Fresno show than at Gilman.

We stayed the night at a place called the VEGABOND INN and had a day off to get to Denver. I started the drive the next day, we had some Chipotle and headed off towards Denver, along the way I found my new favorite soft drink:

Supposedly this is available around us at home, but I have never seen it.

From Fresno CA to Denver CO it’s a 17 hour drive, so we had some serious ground to cover. There was of course one place kind of in between the two cities that we had been wanting to go to…

Yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! I have been to Reno, but never Las Vegas, so driving down the strip was a fun thing for me.

Patrick and James insisted that we go to “Old Las Vegas” and more importantly to the Golden Nugget for our gambling needs, this was right on Freemont Street.

It was cool, I gambled and lost another $80 really quickly. We played in the casino Binion’s which was a damn mistake. The dealers were dressed like this:

And periodically they all get up and dance on a little platform with a poll… this is why I lost $60 here.

Then we wanted to grab some food, it was someone’s bright idea to go into another Casino and get this:

From left to right, deep fried Oreo’s, Chicken Fingers, and Fries, all for under $5.

I absolutely know my limit when it comes to eating too much shitty food, and it’s thanks to this place.

That is the last picture I have on my phone… why you ask? Because after this we went from Las Vegas NV to Chicago in 3 days. There was seriously nothing but driving, traffic, and snow.

We played the Blast-o-mat again in Denver, which was awesome like last time. Stayed the night in Denver, woke up early and drove straight to Omaha, which due to snow had us in the van for about 9 hours. Immediately after the show we left to come home, almost spinning out one time because of some black ice, but thanks to James trusty cast we were just fine. All in all, we went from Fresno CA to Chicago in 3 days, which is 2,141 miles, meaning out of those 72 hours we spent more than half in the van. So I really didn’t have much to take pictures of, I really didn’t care much either.

I’m home now and posting this from my work computer, and that’s all I have for the tour.