We're currently staying at Matt's in-laws house in Morgan Hill, CA. Very nice place, very, VERY big house. They're going to cook Korean bar-be-que for use today, along with having mass salad, and sushi, but this isn't the punch line of the story. We stayed here yesterday with no problems. Today, however, when I decided to take a shower, all hell broke loose...kinda. I had just gotten in the shower and was combing my hair. I then turned around and attempted a grab for the soap (sorry, no jail cell rape scene here), but it splooshed off the holder onto the floor near the drain. Natural reaction is to just pick it up, but once I grabbed it I came back up and smashed my head into the ceramic shelf in the corner. It's not just that I had broken the shelf with the back of my head (though my head felt fine, no bump or scratch), but the piece of ceramic that broke off and fell landed quite un-squarely into the top of my foot. At first I though something had falled off the shelf, like a long black bug of sorts, but then it started running down my foot, and I realized I had a giant gash. I then proceeded to bleed all over the bathtub. I could hear Armine outside the bathroom asking if I was okay. I said I was fine, and to hold on a second. I turned off the shower and tried to dry myself off as best I could before opening the door and breaking the news to Armine and Dave standing outside the bathroom. The pants were the difficulty. Trying to put on pants over a foot that's leaking blood is a tricky thing if you have no desire to have pants covered in blood. After I opened the door, Armine handed me a random towel (which I tried to abstain from, since I'd rather ruin my own towel than Matt's in-laws), but he insisted. Armine went into a sort of 'freakout' mode when he saw all the blood in the shower. He immediately told me to wrap my foot, and started searching on his iPhone for nearby hospitals. The gash was big enough that at first glance it might need stitches, but I have enough experience with flesh wounds to know when they're unnecessary. Granted...I should have had stitches for certain cuts in the past, but they healed fine. The only downside is you have an epic scar, and who doesn't love crazy scars?! I know the chicks dig it (note: the link I put there I have no idea what it goes to, I just made up the .com at random. It's just funny there is a .com with that name).
So Armine drives me around Morgan Hill, CA for about a half hour trying to find a hospital, or clinic, or something to take a look at my foot. We found nothing. We asked the police, we asked some community building...all were complete morons. The nearest hospital was 7 miles out of town, and at this point I was just telling him to take me to a Rite Aid to get some hydrogen peroxide and some bandages (at this point, Armine is furious with people, traffic, gps, etc.). He finally got fed up and went to a Rite Aid and got the fixin's for self surgery. We got back, I poured a quarter of the bottle of hydrogen peroxide over my foot, washed it out, bandaged it up, and I'm good as new...kinda.
I apologized immediately to Matt's mother-in-law. She didn't seem too upset by it (but appearances can be deceiving). Matt apparently was made to remove the entire shelf in the bathroom, and was told that he would have a project to replace it in December when he comes back for Christmas. This made me feel super bad. Anyway, seems like things are getting underway a bit better now. The cooking should start soon, and City of Ships are on their way.
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Onto the former:
So, I guess I'll just look through the show schedule on the Rosetta website and try to recollect what happened.
The Shred Shed:
SLC, Utah. What a difficult place to get to. Until we actually got into SLC, our van was huffing and puffing the whole way. The hills are mighty. We were originally playing at some venue or club type place, but they figured that the blues band they booked would bring in more people. Their mistake. We had to move the show to a little house in the most random part of town. The show had already started by the time we got there. It almost literally was a shed, just with more rooms...and a bathroom. The cops showed up at the end of the show, nosed around a bit then left. We went to an amazing diner with our friends Conor and Adam, slept, then moseyed on.
Gusto Bar:
Boise, Idaho. Pretty uneventful night, though Dave got a free tattoo from TJ at 'Nobody's Hero'.
The Boulevard:
Spokane, WA. I got some wicked awesome sunglasses that I was very proud of from wal-mart.
Ty (who is travelling with City of Ships bet me $10 if I would wear them our whole set that night, in addition, I had to twirl my stick at least three times during the set (while playing a song, not at a break). I was able to complete his task and get my $10, however, the glasses fell off my face at the end of the set and broke the left ear piece on the edge of my snare drum...very sad stuff.
Plan B:
Portland, OR. At this point, I don't even remember anything from this show other than we got fed really well, the actual show was awful, but the door guy had a crazy facial tattoo of a skull....on his FACE! rad man...rad. Wish I had a picture of this, but I would have felt like a dick being like, "hey! can I take a picture of your face so I can twitter/blog/facebook it!?"
The Rendezvous:
Seattle, WA. Except for the fact that we only got fed in nachos and cheese fries (grease before playing a show is bound to make you hurl all over the crowd) this show was pretty spectacular. I did end up backing into a trash can in the alleyway behind the venue. I thought at first I had cracked the trash can I hit...turns out I cracked the housing to our back right brake light. Bummer. Jordan from Tooth & Nail Records gave us the epic tour of Seattle, showed us all the 'know' places of music and culture...and stuff. He then proceeded to get s**t-faced at the show. What an epic dude.
A house (of which the name escapes me):
Arcata, CA. The drive from Seattle was f**king stupid ridiculous...that's all I have to say about that. This picture will show you just how stoked we were.
Apparently 60% (or some other random percentage) of all America's weed (or 'marijuana' for those not in-the-know) comes from this one area in upstate California. It was a sweet place, lots of awesome people, awesome frisbee peeps, and a giant whale. Thinking back, I wish I got a picture of that whale. But, instead, here's Armine being 'spiderman' and crowd surfing during our show.
Everything over the next couple days are kind of a blur...so I'm going to skip them. Stuff was kinda fun, we got pulled over for that tail light being exposed so we taped it up with red duct tape. The foot is healing pretty well by now though at this point I"m still worried it's leaking...blood...anyway. carrying on!
Los Angeles was absolutely fantastic, though we ALL felt like s**t the entire time. Our drive to Phoenix, Arizona was that of a drive through Hell, only we had iPods...so a tiny bit better.
The actual show in Phoenix was completely inconsequential to the following events...
That's right (matt wouldn't let me take a picture of him let alone post one to the internet) Matt and I shaved our beards into mustaches to rock for the rest of tour, or...as long as we could hold out.
It's at this point I'm kind of lost for what to say about the shows, and more trying to remember what happened in between. What you start to realize on tour is that a show is a show, you can play good, the crowd can be good, or any combination of those (plus some other factors), but pretty much the same. It's the fun stuff, or not so fun but slightly interesting stuff, you do in between playing the music. So here's my attempt to remember what the hell happened in between hitting drums.
Albuquerque, NM is hot, Austin, TX is hot and muggy, and I'm not fond of either of those cities or their surrounding states...plus Matt and I got sick with sinus congestion, and I spent the night in Austin flying between having hot flashes and freezing my @$$ off all night. The fever broke by morning, but the muscle pains, congestion, and sore throat continue even to today (fyi, I started writing this four days ago and now finishing it while waiting to play in Columbia, Missouri).
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma was predicted to be the worst show of tour just because of both bands past experiences. We arrived to the venue INCREDIBLY late. We pulled into the back parking lot just in time to pull our gear out of the vans, setup, and play. There were gasps of awe coming from all of us as we pulled up to the venue to find not only the front, but the back parking lot to be packed with kids (with more hanging out inside). City of Ships pulled out gear, setup right away, and started rocking out and tons of people were there and were really into, and they followed suit as we played. One kid even asked me sheepishly if he could have the drumstick I broke during the set. Quite unexpected, but very uplifting. We didn't spend much time there, in fact, we were only in Oklahoma for a grand total of about 15 hours, which is the least time we've spent in a single state all tour. We made our way that night straight for Wichita, KS where Casey from Battlefields lives and puts on a weekend fest every year.
The wait to play was excruciatingly boring, and not to mention it was incredibly hot and humid....again. Ty, Dave, some random girl named Michelle, and I played pool...a lot of pool, while waiting to play. Then we shipped out immediately after we were all packed up and stayed with Casey's partner's [in setting up the fest] house. She had two amazing cats, and two incredibly wild lovable dogs. The female cat had just been fixed, so she was incredibly high, and lying in a chair pawing at the air (so cute >.<). One of the dogs spooned with me all night, but I guess left me when I fell asleep and started snoring.
We are now in Columbia, MO. We had an incredible mexican lunch, played some frisbee, and despite stupidly long drives, stupidly hot and humid weather, and Matt and I still feeling absolutely awful, spirits are still high...kinda. Heading east is very different than heading west, cause we're that much closer to home, and we're getting antsy.
More to come, only 5 shows left (including today).
I'll leave you with a picture of Ty wearing Eric's (the drummer from City of Ships) hat and glasses doing his best Garth Algar impression:
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