Belgium

Packed in the van like sardines, the initial pack of the gear is always sub-par. After tonight's show I'll have to remedy that. My goal in packing is almost always about maximizing the comfort in the main cab. 

On the drive to Belgium I'm drifting in and out of a haze between tiredness and hunger. The airplane food wasn't too filling, and I'm ready for dinner, even though, at the time of writing this, it's only 2:30 in the afternoon. Jet lag is a bummer. 

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Got to Belgium, and our first show on this tour is our friend Davey's bands practice space. It's along side a school, and some of the children came up to us while loading out and asked about us. They were speaking Dutch though, so Davey had to translate. 

Since the space is small, I won't be using the rented drums (at least not the whole kit). I'll be using the kit that's in the practice space along with my own snare and cymbals. Before we left home, Matt was in touch with Mike (our tour manager/driver in Europe) and the rental company in Germany (gatetohell.net) and decided with Lufthansa's crazy new luggage overages, we'd rather not take Matt's guitar amp head, and just get a rental. 

Gatetohell actually let us have another amp for free, which was exciting. We joked that it would break the first day...and lo'and behold, the effects return that Matt need to use is busted. 

So for this show, Matt will use the backup head we have, and we'll figure out the rest as we go. However, even though I'm not playing the full rental kit tonight, I did take a look at it, and am completely stoked about the Ludwig kit I got. 

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The show was a lot of fun. We're all really tired, so I'm hoping we actually played well. There were people from the UK and the U.S. There too, which is rad. 

After we said our goodbyes, we drove with Davey to his town, making a short stop off for some much needed delicious foods. 

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Headed back to Davey's house afterwards. It's still under construction, so we're having to sleep on inflatable mattresses and couches, but I'm okay with that. Sleep time now, tomorrow, Utrecht.