Well here I am once again riding the great steed, our proud lady of the highways, on my way to winning hearts, opening minds, sharing our music & performance & most of all talking a tremendous amount of trash along the way.
We pulled out of Portland yesterday Sunday, June 29 at about Noon & are now somewhere in Northern California. There is a lot of sage around & not much else except for the occasional tiny town or shack. We have a smaller than thought contingent & so it is pretty spacious (for our standards) & there is a general feeling of "SUMMER IS HERE!!!". It is nice to be out under the open desert sky rolling along with old friends & tried & true travelers.
Last night we pulled into our campsite just south of Klamath Falls & set up our tents under the starry sky. Much sausages, hot dogs, & tofu pups were had by all, along with a very long & painfully hilarious joke circle before everyone tucked in for the night. I, however, was not able to participate in either the meal nor the jokes for it seems like a case of the "Tour Clog" (coined by TallBoy) brought on by 5 hours of playing hearts & drinking cheap beer & snacking destroyed my stomach...so I turned in early, shoved my earplugs in, tucked my towel (I forgot our PILLOWS>>>DOH!!) under my head & fell asleep like a log. That is perhaps one of my favorite skills, I can pretty much fall asleep ANYWHERE. Not 30 feet away, the entire Marching Band was drinking & joking into the night...
The evil SUN woke me up at 6:45 am so I begrudgingly got up, brushed my teeth & moved the tent (with Topher in it) into a shady spot....much better. We slept for another couple of hours there in the cool dawn, birds chirping all around, dragonflies doing their thing over head, & the morning breakfast crew slowly stirring. YUMMY crepes & fresh Mt. Hood stawberries, greek yogurt & all the fixins for our breakfast, then we leisurely stretched, played frisbee, some practiced their instruments & some drummers learned a new cadence from TallBoy. Pack up & get on the road to RenO.
There I resumed my position at the Hearts table. Determined to take out my arch Nemesis, Jeremiah, no matter what. We have a sometimes nasty but mostly good spirited rivalry at the table & it needed to be settled, once and for all. LONG STORY SHORT & two more hours later, Jeremiah was flicking me sh*t ALL morning...not very nice. I wasn't playing very well either, so it was doubly not fun. But I hung in there...we play to 100...it finally got to the point where I was holding steady in the low 90's for about 8 rounds, while Jeremiah was slowly creeping up in points behind me. Then finally, lady luck shined her shiny diamonds upon my head & I had the moment before me to SHOOT THE MOON. I did it, and there wasn't anything anyone could do about it... In one fell swoop, I put everyone else up 26 points, putting Jeremiah out, putting Topher to 100 & thus back down to 0 & accomplishing my only goal of the day. WOOHOO! By the end of the next 2 rounds,
I was out, and just in the nick of time as my blood sugar alarm clock went off. I made thee tastiest of sandwiches & am currently chillin in the front of the bus, watching the road path beneath us, taking in the high desert plateau views & keeping Nathan, our driver watered & in good company.
We'll be in Susanville soon, where we need to get some coolant, as the bus is running a little hot. We'll check into our hotel at the Sands in Reno tonight & no gigs!!! Tomorrow we have a pretty leisurely day, and then evening we are the Reno Art Town parade, then the headlining band for thier big downtown festival & then march back through the town leading everyone to the main square for a pyrotechnics show. We go to Tahoe on Wednesday where we play for a Casino, and then from there we head to High Sierra Music Festival for two days of gigging, then we high tail it back to Portland where we have the 6:30 slot at the Blues Festival on Sunday night. Maybe we will see you there. We'll be good & warmed up & in tip top shape by the time we get back to PDX....come on out, we'd love to see you to welcome us back.
I'll be posting a few more times on the tour, until then, from MarchFourth, the drinking band with a marching problem, LOVE YOU ALL!!!!!
