Right now I'm sitting in a college rec. room, using Nate's laptop and the schools wireless internet to type this blog. Let me give you a recap of the day yesterday and today.
Yesterday morning I slept in the van because I was so drained after the show at camp nowhere. That morning (as I wrote in the previous post) I woke up to shit smeared on every window in our van. I walked into the house where everyone was sleeping and I confronted our roadie Bryan who has been smearing shit everywhere on this tour. We then retaliated with shit on their van. Eventually we all showered and then we started the very slow process of cleaning up the vans. In short we all ran around with poop covered napkins wiping them on each others vans/door handles. I ended up with poop all over my hands and I ran around throwing up or close to throwing up. I rad as fast as I could have into the house and washed my hands for 5 minutes straight. The rest of the day I was psychologically suffering being paranoid that I smelled like feces. After we spent an hour hosing down our vans we went on our way to arayas all you can eat vegan thai restaurant. We ran into my room mate Chris and Ashley who were on vacation in Seattle, it was nice having lunch with those two. We discussed once again the zombie apocalypse with Thomas, Ben, and mosher Matt. I love those talks, they keep me sane and prepared for the inevitable end. After Arayas we went to Radio shack to try and find a phone charger for Eric. After the failed mission in Radioshack we went to American Apperal. I got a cardigan (i dont know why) and a nice v neck sweater. I'm actually wearing them both right now. After American Apperal we headed to singles going steady, a nice record store with a bunch of history surrounding it. I got The Promise Ring "Nothing feels good" cd and a few seven inches. After the record store we headed to Bremerton and got to the Tiki house. The guy who booked the show, Evan is a very nice kid. I wish I had a house like him when I was younger. I always wanted to book hardcore shows at my own house. But, at the same time I'm glad I didn't because my house would have been a mess, like his is/was last night. Anyway, I thought we played a good set. The show got as good as it could get. After the show I just fell asleep in the van at 11, before the count down. I felt kind of shitty and depressed, I don't know why, but I suppose that's how I always get around this time of the year.
This morning I woke up and showered and got all dressed. We walked to Albertsons where we acquired some food. We walked back in time to catch everyone as they were waking up. Kevan, Eric, Thomas, Joey, Ben, Harry, and I all sat in the separations van just chatting about random stuff. I think this is the most connected I've ever been with a band on tour. On previous tours we split up and don't really do much together, but this tour almost everything we do is together. After everyone woke up, we headed on our way to Olympia where we heard about some vegan restaurants. The first two we checked were closed. We went to this really good burrito place down town and had some food. Everyone wanted to hang out around town since the show wasn't for a few hours. I told everyone in our band that we should just get to the place we're playing cause I was tired. So we headed to the college, and the room we were playing in was very hard to find. We asked people and they didn't really know what we were talking about. Then we pulled up to this hippy guy who was upset with our van being so big...so much so he asked us to turn off our van "because of the carbons"..then said "thanks brother". He totally ignored the fact that turning on the car releases more carbons than having it running in idle. I hope I made his day by turning off our van.
Finally we call the Separation guys and tell them to meet up with us so they can show us where it is, do to certain members having previously played there. Anyway, we had to drive down some walk way to get to the rec room. We got there and it was a relief, no one was there and it was just a big living room. We had ping pong, air hockey, pool, wireless internet, bathrooms and other such things. We hung out for about an hour and then loaded in. Josh, the kid who booked the show and who has previously booked 7 generations shows up in Olympia arrived and we greeted him. We started arranging the place, moving couches/tables/etc. Kids started showing up, a lot of the kids from last nights show showed up. Those kids are crazy, they brought their skateboards with them and were skating inside the building, grinding random things and skidding acrossed the floor. Those kids give me a small glimpse of hope because they're happy and have a good time, always. Anyway, the show started, it was pretty small. The first 3 bands are bands that we've played with numerous times on this tour. Those guys are nice. One of the bands guitarists had a smiths patch sewed onto his back pocket so that was awesome. The Separation then went on, those dudes are what keep me sane. I love watching them play because they're all different personalities meshing together to play one style of music, and they do it well. We then went on and I thought it was a good set. I didn't like the part where my chord was cutting out but whatever. After our set, a lot of people said that it was the best set they've seen us play in awhile. I was flattered. It's nice getting those kinds of compliments sometimes. Sometimes you wonder why you even do it. Why do we tour to not make money? Or not get paid? I know why, but a lot of people think we're crazy for doing it. One more band went on, I wasn't paying attention though cause I went to go get our van and pull it up to the venue to load in. After we all loaded up and said our goodbyes we went back to that burrito place. I got sweet potato fries which were nothing compared to veggie grills. We then went back to Josh's house and got all settled. Everyone fell asleep pretty early but I was up all night on aim, trying to stay awake. Eventually I fell asleep talking to the person (sorry). I always do that. I remember at one point one of the cats came and sat on my neck and just layed there and wanted to sleep there. That was one of my favorite cats I have encountered. Eventually the cat got annoyed with me trying to find a way to get comfortable with it on my neck, and just got up and left.
This morning I woke up at 8 because we were supposed to leave at 9. Everyone got ready pretty quickly and we all went outside where our vans were running and ready for us to get into. Then the separation attacked us. They ran out of their van and got a fire extinguisher and blew it on our front windshield. All the chemicals came into the vents and we all started choking and our eyes started burning. That was a very creative move on their part. I'm glad we have all banned the feces smearing. The last time was pretty gross.
And now here I am in the van, typing this on our way to Portlands vegan grocery store "food fight!". I am excited to see their new location. Today is our day off, but we have a 12 hour drive ahead of us. We'll see what happens on this long drive. We should be getting into Redding at 11 p.m. Tonight.
Falling with no one to catch me,
XadrianX
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