Heyyy y'all. It's been a while since we've had posts that aren't about ice cream... or cheese, or Polish Big Brother. I'm glad Shaun is blogging though! I thought maybe we'd do a real life update. David's Diary style.
So, we played our first show of the tour since we joined last night in Chicago. It was funnn, but we were all pretty dazed and crazed after being in the van for literally 32 hours (almost) straight, only sleeping in a bed for 4 hours at 11 AM in Billings, MT. Huuuge props to our van drivers Brian and Damian! At one point, we almost thought the whole trek was going to be in vain and we weren't gonna make it to Chi-Town. It was 5 AM and we were going for a refueling. Our Sprinter van takes diesel fuel and Brian grabbed the usual green-handled pump to fill the tank. Immediately after we got back on the highway the van started lurching and shuttering and the floor sleepers (David...) started waking up and wondering what was going on. Brian called the gas station and matched the price on the receipt with what he had filled the tank with: unleaded regular gas. Ohhhh nooooo! We pulled into a Wal Mart parking lot and after panicking and making some phone calls, we decided to go into the Wal Mart and buy a garden hose, garden shears, and five 5-gallon gas tanks. We were going to siphon the gas out of the tank. It worked at first. Damian had several mouthfuls of gas, but we were getting it out. A nice man in a truck drove Brian to get some more diesel and offered Damian a Sprite. We kept siphoning, but we couldn't get all five gas tanks filled, so we knew there was still gas inside. After filling the tank with diesel again, we tried our luck at starting the engine. It stuttered, but nothing.
We made more more phone calls and amazingly luckily, a truck repair shop agreed to drain all our pipes and filters and fix the problem immediately. At this point we had 6.5 hours left to drive to Chicago, 6.5 hours until soundcheck, and 2-3 hours to fix the car. So we did the only thing we could do: get some breakfast Subway, buy things at a dollar store, and wait. After 2 hours, the van was magically fixed! Just like new. And we booked it to Chicago, just in time to throw out stuff onstage and wait to play. After 32 hours of living in a moving van, we were sitting still in the green room casually drinking water and tea, with a spread of dainty fruits and chips in front of us. It was weird.
The show went by really quickly. I saw a lot of people singing along and that was awesome. After some Chicago hot dogs, it was time for our first real sleep in a few days. What a glorious, glorious thing. After I finally got in bed I started laughing and couldn't stop for about 5 minutes--a hysterical combination of sleep-deprivation, relief, and joy.
Now I'm sitting in a hotel room in Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin. If you don't know about this place... oh boy. When we drove in we started screaming and freaking out to see huge water slides everywhere, a giant Trojan horse dressed as a mummy vampire, a ripped apart White House, and the Roman colosseum. Definitely a WTF moment. We had no idea. Sadly, we're on the road early tomorrow heading to Minneapolis for our next show and we won't be able to experience these delights first-hand. But we got a few great pictures before we left. Shaun has some more pics later.
SEE Y'ALL SOON.
Luke
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