Half-asleep and dead-tired, I guess it’s the best time to describe what our days are usually like. I have to be careful, because no 2 days are the same, but this is the basic breakdown.
If we’re lucky, we wake up after noon. It takes about 2 hours for everyone to get ready and load into the van. When possible we scavenge food from the hotel lobby or someone’s house. The first couple of weeks I was with them were long driving days, so we would get on the road and drive all day. This week the drives have been shorter, so we run errands in the afternoon.
Wal-mart is the biggest treat. You get to stock up on snacks and anything you may have run out of, soap in my case today. Jon and Brian do all the grocery shopping. This can be problematic because Jon is a vegetarian and does most of the cooking. He sees no reason to buy meat if he’s not going to eat it. After sandwiches one night of bread, lettuce, and onion and chive cream cheese, Brian took a more active role. The next time we went to the store there was bologna and salami for the sandwiches as well. I didn’t know about this so I bought salami too. That was cool because we actually had lunchmeat for 2 days!
Driving to venues is how we spend most of our time. Brian, Jon, and Joe do all of the driving. Brian is an amazing parker, I have to give him that. I used to have problems parallel parking the Pulsar; he on a daily basis parks, reverses, you name it a 15-capacity van with a trailer attached to it. Joe frequently sits in the passenger seat, it allows him to be a buffer between Jon and Brian. The second bench is the sweet spot, almost everyday we argue over who gets it. If Brian wants to sleep he wins, because he’s so tall and can’t go anywhere else. The next 2 benches are Tasha and Scott’s, respectively. The last bench I’ve nicknamed the dungeon. When you want to sleep, it’s the perfect place, but if you’re just trying to kill time, it sucks. Usually Tash and Scott are sleeping, so you’re back there all alone, and you can’t participate in conversations or anything.
At the venue the first priority is parking. Then we load-in (unload), actually the guys do that, but occasionally I’ll help a little. Tash and I spend this time getting girly-fied. I think I’ve worn makeup everyday this week! It turns out that between makeup and carrying shit, makeup is the lesser pain in the ass. Load-in is usually around 7 or 8 p.m. After the boxes, equipment, and instruments are in the place, I set up the merch booth. It’s been nice the past couple of shows because with God Project around I don’t have to stay at the same spot all night. After the show we go to where we are crashing. Sometimes it’s a friend or family member’s house, but with so many people, it’s been hotel rooms lately. Last night 8 of us stayed in a room at the Super 8. Tash and I took one bed, Josh and Nate from God Project took the other. Brian was on the floor between the bed and the heater, Jeremy and Egypt slept on the floor at the foot of my bed, and Scott slept between the 2 beds. It’s not so bad until you have to get up to pee in the night and have to try to find your way out of and back into the mess. If possible we get a late check-out, because it’s usually 3 or 4 a.m. before we even check-in. Then the day starts over with Jon waking us all up and complaining that we’re not loading up fasts enough.
Sometimes touring is fun, sometimes it’s not. I was whining to Nick the other day on the phone and feeling sorry for myself. He told me to catch up on my blogging, so that poor schmucks at real jobs have something to read while at work. I then went into the bar, drank free beer, and realized that maybe this isn’t so bad after all.
