Today was to be the day of the epic 1300 mile drive from Chapel Hill, NC to Austin, TX for the fest. Our plan was to drive around 12 hours today and make it to around New Orleans, get a cheap motel room for the night, and do the rest of the drive the following day. Seemed tough, but could be worse for sure.
The next day,we wake up early, get our stuff together, load up the van and leave pretty much dead on 9:00am. So far, so good. Or at least for about ten minutes until we realize that the AC (that was fixed for a mere $700 a couple of days previously), isn't doing the best job of keeping us cooled down. It's in fact blowing really hot air out. No big deal. The mechanic probably just forgot to put the coolant in. We drop the van back off at the mechanics and pop to the local coffee place to get some breakfast. Three hours pass and we decide that it's probably a smart move to see what's going on. It turns out that the pipe is leaking and needs to be replaced. They may be able to get it from the next town over so we decide to wait it out.
A few more hours pass and we get a call saying they've found it and can put it in. Daniel drives the van back and drops us off at the local cinema to kill time. Me and Tim go watch 'The Hangover 2' in the most cold cinema ever. At one point I try and buy a small bottle of water. "That'll be $4.95 please sir." Yeah, good one mate.
Following that, a whole 8 hours after initally setting off, we leave for Austin. Now we've wasted the time we allotted for resting, we pretty much drive straight for 25 hours with Daniel and Tim taking the drive in shifts. We arrive in Austin the next afternoon with a whole 90 minutes to kill before the fest starts, so it's time to drink...
Monday 20 June 2011
Wednesday 1 June 2011
MY AMERICA: 2011 - Days 1 & 2
For real this time, and not when I'm drinking homemade cocktails in a kitchen while using someones laptop...
So far, both myself and TD have been in North Carolina for two nights now, ahead of the others arriving in Austin on Thursday for the start of the tour. To cut a story short, we discovered that Daniel (of Sorry State Records, Logic Problem, Devour, and Limits booking enterprises) was planning to drive all the way from North Carolina to Austin by himself in the van to get to Austin for the start of tour, so we decided to come ahead to keep him company. Thankfully, this also meant we had time to relax beforehand, which is something we almost never get to do on tour, or even at home, so we jumped on it.
We left my flat in Holloway around 9am on Monday after Tim finished his 12 hour nightshift at the hospital and took the train to Heathrow, of course remembering to sing along to '29 Bus' by Hygiene on the bus of the same name, while carrying bags full of crap and punk post. Once we got to Heathrow, and had our token overpriced breakfast (big price / small portion - the best of both worlds), and took a pretty uneventful, cramped flight to Chicago, consuming sleeping pills and trying to clear my head of various shit that no-one needs to be bored with, trying to be nice to immigration and finally getting on the worlds smallest aeroplane and getting to Greensboro.
Once there, we quickly met up with Daniel, found out our bags weren't actually put on the plane, and went to eat Thai food with Daniel's girlfriend Jet, who is an elementary school teacher and quite the character. We hit up the local hipster bar after that and
then headed back for a collection of home made drinks (as documented below. I was definitely too scared to try the Cheese Vodka) and crashed out in a nearby guest house that Jet had hooked up for us.
DAY 2
Today was supposed to be all about errands, and getting stuff ready for the tour, but was instead dedicated to much more important things. Namely, spending 3 hours drinking beer, floating on 'water noodles' and talking shit in a quarry in the middle of the woods in Durham. It was pretty amazing. A mile walk into the woods there's a 100 x 100 meter wide spot that has pretty much ice cold water, which is perfect for the 36 degree heat we're experiencing at the moment. Apart from the token moments I couldn't actually stay afloat on the two of these things that were between my legs (did I mention the water was over 50 feet deep right at the very edge, only to get way, way deeper as you go on), it was the most relaxed I've been in a long, long time, and everything that was in the back of my mind seemed to fuck off for a bit. I'll post pictures of us all squirming at some point. After that the errands actually had to happen, but not before eating the most ridiculous sweet potato burrito, but that's another story.
Tour starts in two days, kicking off with Chaos In Tejas, and routine will kick in soon enough, but until then I'm enjoying the nearest thing to a holiday I've had since forever.
So far, both myself and TD have been in North Carolina for two nights now, ahead of the others arriving in Austin on Thursday for the start of the tour. To cut a story short, we discovered that Daniel (of Sorry State Records, Logic Problem, Devour, and Limits booking enterprises) was planning to drive all the way from North Carolina to Austin by himself in the van to get to Austin for the start of tour, so we decided to come ahead to keep him company. Thankfully, this also meant we had time to relax beforehand, which is something we almost never get to do on tour, or even at home, so we jumped on it.
We left my flat in Holloway around 9am on Monday after Tim finished his 12 hour nightshift at the hospital and took the train to Heathrow, of course remembering to sing along to '29 Bus' by Hygiene on the bus of the same name, while carrying bags full of crap and punk post. Once we got to Heathrow, and had our token overpriced breakfast (big price / small portion - the best of both worlds), and took a pretty uneventful, cramped flight to Chicago, consuming sleeping pills and trying to clear my head of various shit that no-one needs to be bored with, trying to be nice to immigration and finally getting on the worlds smallest aeroplane and getting to Greensboro.
Once there, we quickly met up with Daniel, found out our bags weren't actually put on the plane, and went to eat Thai food with Daniel's girlfriend Jet, who is an elementary school teacher and quite the character. We hit up the local hipster bar after that and
then headed back for a collection of home made drinks (as documented below. I was definitely too scared to try the Cheese Vodka) and crashed out in a nearby guest house that Jet had hooked up for us.
DAY 2
Today was supposed to be all about errands, and getting stuff ready for the tour, but was instead dedicated to much more important things. Namely, spending 3 hours drinking beer, floating on 'water noodles' and talking shit in a quarry in the middle of the woods in Durham. It was pretty amazing. A mile walk into the woods there's a 100 x 100 meter wide spot that has pretty much ice cold water, which is perfect for the 36 degree heat we're experiencing at the moment. Apart from the token moments I couldn't actually stay afloat on the two of these things that were between my legs (did I mention the water was over 50 feet deep right at the very edge, only to get way, way deeper as you go on), it was the most relaxed I've been in a long, long time, and everything that was in the back of my mind seemed to fuck off for a bit. I'll post pictures of us all squirming at some point. After that the errands actually had to happen, but not before eating the most ridiculous sweet potato burrito, but that's another story.
Tour starts in two days, kicking off with Chaos In Tejas, and routine will kick in soon enough, but until then I'm enjoying the nearest thing to a holiday I've had since forever.
Tuesday 31 May 2011
AMERICA 2011 - DAY ONE
This morning I was on the 29 bus from Holloway to Finsbury Park, tonight I'm drinking cocktails in North Carolina, USA. Limits are on tour again, I intend to actually update this diary with this time round. We'll see how that goes. Time to sleep, after one more glass of Blood Orange, whiskey, vodka, basil, citrus, ginger and hibiscus. That's all I've got right now.
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