No Fly Zone (Tour Journal #1)

Hey everybody,

Here's a little tour update for all two of you who might stumble upon this little blog site:

We left home last Wednesday, the 24th, at some ungodly hour (11 am) and got truckin' to Lincoln, Nebraska. The drive was fairly uneventful -- Dan was a trooper and took the whole 7/8 hours head on (even through the boringness of rural middle America). The rest of us read books ("Glamorama" for Mark, "Confederacy of Dunces" for Mike, and "American Psycho" for me), which is something of anomaly for us (we usually watch movies, VHS-style). Suffice to say, with that much drive time, we've scorched through a few books each (we're sort of on a Bret Easton Ellis binge, with the two aforementioned titles being passed around in addition to "Rules of Attraction." Unfortunately, John Kennedy Toole only wrote two books, and we're without the other title).

We played Box Awesome in Lincoln, made a few new friends, and got to stay for free w/ the Schwandt boys' great uncle Alton, who was more than hospitable. Nothing like a delicious hot breakfast to get the day started.

From there, we headed to Kearney, NE, and passed the day with some beers, busking, and promotion. It was our day off and we had two days in Kearney, so we checked into a hotel for mighty cheap. We hit some fun bars, met more fun people, etc. Little did we know what was in store . . .

We played Copperfield's Friday night in Kearney, and realized when we got there that the promoter had put us on a local, Heavy Metal Battle of the Bands bill. We'll let you fill in the blanks . . . suffice it to say not many were interested. Our favorite part of our Kearney stop was getting our oil changed and watching an edited version of "Training Day" late on USA. Yeah.

Next, we headed to Colorado for our gig Sunday at the Larimer Lounge. We spent Saturday night in Loveland, CO w/ Dan's 2nd cousin and had a beautiful mountain view, plenty of ice cold keg beer, and even a jacuzzi to relax in. Fantastic! Relaxation, cool mountain air . . . not much is better. We watched "Almost Famous" and were inspired. Colorado is awesome.

Sunday we actually showed up in Denver, and walked around looking for our record in stores, passing out fliers, and catching "Rocktober Fever." Unfortunately for us, everyone in Denver was concerned with the World Series elimination game for their hometown Rockies, so no one was much interested in music. Even so, we made a few new friends and really enjoyed ourselves. Denver is a pretty awesome city.

That night we shot down to Colorado Springs to stay with Mike's friend Zach, an Olympic weightlifter, and stayed at his place for the next couple of nights (we love all of you for helping us save money on hotels . . . fantastic). We were treated to a tour of the Olympic Training Facility in Colorado Springs, some fantastic lasagna, and an awesome ghost expedition up into the mountains. Apparently, back in the 50's or 60's a bus load of kids was crushed when a cave collapsed on their bus in the middle of a mountain pass. These days, they say if you go in to a cave in the dark, turn off your headlights and car, and put it in neutral, the kids help your car through the cave to safety (they don't tell you that the cave is on an incline . . . but bear with me here . . .). We tried one cave to no avail, but decided, What the hell, let's do the other one, too. After all, we did have a cat (Sushi) with us to detect paranormal activity (she never seemed too worried).

In the second cave, we stopped, went through the procedure, and started rolling (incline), and didn't see any ghosts. We were quite disappointed. Then, both mysteriously and ominously, we heard what sounded like a small child sobbing, over and over, for about 30 seconds. All of us heard the same sound, at the same time, and it was creepy. Can't say we're all convinced of the existence of ghosts, but it was an awesome paranormal experience.

Next day we drove through western Kansas to Lawrence. It was windy, the view never changed, (insert more cliche middle America driving irritations), and it was definitely not exciting. There were a few pretty bluffs after the first six hours, and some pretty cool clouds, but that's once we got into the eastern half.

Once we got to Lawrence we unloaded, etc. and played a fun show at the Replay Lounge. It definitely wasn't packed, but we had a great reception and look forward to our return to Lawrence. It was a cool little town and we hope to see more of it on our next visit (not to mention stay in the haunted hotel . . . yeah we're kinda weird . . .). We're in Tulsa for Halloween, which is where I'm writing from now, and tonight seems like it'll be a fun time. Next up is Eau Claire on Friday with our buddies in So It Goes, so it's bound to be a wild and crazy time. Rock music!

- Joe